Websters March 7th Speech/Secession | Page 9

Foote, vainly tried to restrain secession.
[31] South Carolina, Acts, 1849, p, 240, and the following Laws or Acts, all 1850: Georgia, pp. 418, 405-410, 122; Texas, pp. 93-94, 171; Tennessee, p. 572 (Globe, XXI. I. 417. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 161) ; Mississippi, pp. 526-528; Virginia, p. 233; Alabama, Weekly Tribune, Feb. 23, Daily, Feb. 25.
In the states unrepresented at the Nashville Convention-Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana--there was much sympathy with the Southern movement. In Louisiana, the governor's proposal to send delegates was blocked by the Whigs.[32] "Missouri", in case of the Wilmot Proviso, "will be found in hearty co-operation with the slave-holding states for mutual protection against . . . Northern fanaticism", her legislature resolved.[33] Missouri's instructions to her senators were denounced as "disunion in their object" by her own Senator Benton. The Maryland legislature resolved, February 26: "Maryland will take her position with her Southern sister states in the maintenance of the constitution with all its compromises." The Whig senate, however, prevented sanctioning of the convention and sending of delegates. Florida's governor wrote the governor of South Carolina that Florida would co-operate with Virginia and South Carolina "in any measure in defense of our common Constitution and sovereign dignity". "Florida has resolved to resist to the extent of revolution", declared her representative in Congress, March 5. Though the Whigs did not support the movement, five delegates came from Florida to the Nashville Convention. [34]
[32] White, Miss. Valley Hist. Assoc., III. 283.
[33] Senate Miscellaneous, 1849-1850, no. 24.
[34] Hamer, p. 40; cf. Cole, Whig Party in the South, p. 162; Cong. Globe, Mar. 5.
In Kentucky, Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion" and "entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a Southern Union governor.[35] Crittenden's changing attitude reveals the growing peril, and the growing reliance on Webster's and Clay's plans. By April, Crittenden recognized that "the Union is endangered", "the case . . . rises above ordinary rules", "circumstances have rather changed". He reluctantly swung from Taylor's plan of dealing with California alone, to the Clay and Webster idea of settling the "whole controversy".[36] Representative Morehead wrote Crittenden, "The extreme Southern gentlemen would secretly deplore the settlement of this question. The magnificence of a Southern Confederacy . . . is a dazzling allurement." Clay like Webster, saw "the alternative, civil war".[37]
[35] Coleman, Crittenden, I. 333, 350.
[36] Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369.
[37] Smith, History of Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, letter, in Curtis, Webster, II, 584-585.
In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the Union; but the extremists--typified by Clingman, the public meeting at Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington Courier--reveal the presence of a dangerously aggressive body "with a settled determination to dissolve the Union" and frankly "calculating the advantages of a Southern Confederacy." Southern observers in this state reported that "the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law or the abolition of slavery in the District will dissolve the Union". The North Carolina legislature acquiesced in the Compromise but counselled retaliation in case of anti-slavery aggressions.[38] Before the assembling of the Southern convention in June, every one of the Southern states, save Kentucky, had given some encouragement to the Southern movement, and Kentucky had given warning and proposed a compromise through Clay.[39]
[38] Clingman, and Wilmington Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I. 200-205, 311; National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; Cobb, Corr., pp. 217-218; Boyd, "North Carolina on the Eve of Secession," in Amer. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1910), pp. 167-177.
[39] Hearndon, Nashville Convention, p. 283.
Nine Southern states-Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee sent about 176 delegates to the Nashville Convention. The comparatively harmless outcome of this convention, in June, led earlier historians to underestimate the danger of the resistance movement in February and March when backed by legislatures, newspapers, and public opinion, before the effect was felt of the death of Calhoun and Taylor, and of Webster's support of conciliation. Stephens and the Southern Unionists rightly recognized that the Nashville Convention "will be the nucleus of another sectional assembly". "A fixed alienation of feeling will be the result." "The game of the destructives is to use the Missouri Compromise principle [as demanded by the Nashville Convention] as a medium of defeating all adjustments and then to . . . infuriate the South and drive her into measures that must end in disunion." "All who go to the Nashville Convention are ultimately to fall into that position." This view is confirmed by Judge Warner and other observers in Georgia and by the unpublished letters of Tucker.[40] "Let the Nashville Convention be held", said the Columbus, Georgia, Sentinel, "and let the undivided voice of the South go forth . . . declaring our determination to resist even to civil war."[41] The speech of Rhett of South Carolina, author of