Hon. J. L. M. Curry , LL.D., William Robertson Garrett , A. M. , Ph.D., Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 1.1, Legal Justification of the South in secession, The South as a factor in the territorial expansion of the United States
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

While John Brown was plotting his invasion of Virginia, and the Helper Manifesto was rekindling the subsiding Kansas local animosity into the wider aggression on the slavery institution everywhere, the dissension in the ranks of the controlling men who had hitherto balked the progress of disunion causes, now more seriously and vividly portrayed the coming Confederation of seceded Southern States. The increasing Southern alarm caused several prominent statesmen of the South to declare their despair of the Union, and to announce themselves in favor of secession. Among them was Mr. Iverson, senator from Georgia, who predicted in 1859 that a sectional President would be inaugurated in 1861, which he affirmed would be such a declaration of war as to justify an independent Southern Confederacy, but his extreme ideas caused his defeat by the Georgia legislature for the Senate. His views were opposed by Mr. Stephens, who regarded the differences North and South constitutionally settled, and uttered his hope that an institution, ‘National and State, may long continue to bless millions yet unborn as they have blessed us.’ Mr. Toombs, of the same State, made also in 1859 a conservative speech advising against all extreme action, and especially opposing the particular demand by his party for national protection of slavery in the territories. Mr. Jefferson Davis was uttering the same hopeful opinions in Mississippi, and the Southern members of Buchanan's cabinet were advising against dissensions on the sectional question. There was no ‘Southern Rights’ party. Broken down in 1851, it had no existence in 1859.