that he suggested Napoleon.

He smiled into Colonel Lee's face and his smile lighted the room. Every
man and woman present was warmed by it.

Douglas had scarcely greeted Mrs. Lee and passed into an earnest
conversation with the young Congressman when Robert Toombs of Georgia
entered.

Toombs had become within two years the successor of John C. Calhoun. He
had the genius of Calhoun, eloquence as passionate, as resistless;
and he had all of Calhoun's weaknesses. He called a spade a spade.
He loathed compromise. Three years before he had swept the floor and
galleries of the House with a burst of impassioned eloquence that had
made him a national figure.

Lifting his magnificent head he had cried:

"I do not hesitate to avow before this House and the Country, and in
the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to
drive us from the Territory of California and New Mexico, purchased
by the blood of Southern white people, and to abolish Slavery in the
District of Columbia, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation
upon half the States of this Confederacy, _I am for disunion_. The
Territories are the common property of the United States. You are their
common agents; it is your duty while they are in the Territorial state
to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment by both sections--the
slave holder and the non-slave holder!"

He was the man of iron will, of passionate convictions. He might lead a