from South
Carolina, newly arrived at Washington, sought in vain to persuade the
President to order Anderson back to Moultrie. The Secretary of War made
the subject an issue before the Cabinet. Unable to carry his point, two
days later he resigned. *

* The President had already asked for Floyd's resignation
because of financial irregularities, and Floyd was shrewd
enough to use Anderson's coup as an excuse for resigning.
See Rhodes, "History of the United States," vol. II pp. 225,
236 (note).

The Georgia Governor, who had not hitherto been in the front rank of
the aggressives, now struck a great blow. Senator Toombs had telegraphed
from Washington that Fort Pulaski, guarding the Savannah River, was "in
danger." The Governor had reached the same conclusion. He mustered the
state militia and seized Fort Pulaski. Early in the morning on January
3,1861, the fort was occupied by Georgia troops. Shortly afterward,
Brown wrote to a commissioner sent by the Governor of Alabama to confer
with him: "While many of our most patriotic and intelligent citizens in
both States have doubted the propriety of immediate secession, I feel
quite confident that recent events have dispelled those doubts from
the minds of most men who have, till within the past few days, honestly
sustained them." The first stage of the secession movement was at an
end; the second had begun.

A belief that Washington had entered upon a policy of aggression swept
the lower South. The state conventions assembling about this time passed
ordinances of secession--Mississippi, January 9; Florida, January 10;
Alabama, January 11; Georgia, January 19; Louisiana, January 26; Texas,
February 1. But this result was not achieved without considerable
opposition. In Georgia the Unionists put up a stout fight. The issue
was not upon the right to secede--virtually no one denied the right--but
upon the wisdom of invoking the right. Stephens, gloomy and pessimistic,
led the opposition. Toombs came down from Washington to take part with
the secessionists. From South Carolina and Alabama, both ceaselessly
active for secession, commissioners appeared to lobby at Milledgeville,
as commissioners of Alabama and Mississippi had lobbied at Columbia.
Besides the out-and-out Unionists, there were those who wanted to
temporize, to threaten the North, and to wait for developments. The
motion on which these men and the Unionists made their last stand
togeth