He believed wholly the Yancey confession of faith; that secession was a constitutional right; that African slavery was ordained of God; that the South was paramount, the North inferior.

Yet in worldly knowledge he had learned more than Yancey--was an abler man than Jefferson Davis--and but for his affections and generous habits he would have made a larger figure in the war, having led the South's exit from the Senate.
VI I do not think that either Hammond or Chestnut, the Senators from South Carolina, both men of parts, had at bottom much belief in the practicability of the Confederate movement.

Neither had the Senators from Arkansas and Alabama, nor Brown, of Mississippi, the colleague of Jefferson Davis.

Mason, of Virginia, a dogged old donkey, and Iverson, of Georgia, another, were the kind of men whom Wigfall dominated.
One of the least confident of those who looked on and afterward fell in line was the Vice President, John C.Breckenridge, of Kentucky.

He was the Beau Sabreur among statesmen as Albert Sidney Johnston, among soldiers.