now are opposed to secession might find themselves inclined, from
a feeling of honor, to back the States resolving on disunion.
Without this common demand and common failure he thought there
would be no such danger of united action, and therefore a
stronger prospect of some future plan of reconciliation.

Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, thought well of the
plan of calling for a general convention--thought his State
(Mississippi) about equally divided between the union and
disunion men. He deprecated the idea of force, and said any show
of it by the Government would instantly make Mississippi a unit
in favor of disunion.

Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, thought well of the appeal for
the convention--coincided in an opinion I had expressed, that
retaliatory State measures would prove most availing for bringing
the Northern fanatics to their senses.

I expressed myself decidedly opposed to any rash movement, and
against the idea of secession at this time. I did so because I
think that Lincoln's administration will fail, and be regarded as
impotent for good or evil within four months after his
inauguration. We are to meet to-morrow at 1 o'clock.

[Sidenote] Pollard, "Life and Times of Robert E. Lee," etc., pp.
790-94.

November 10 ... We had a Cabinet meeting to-day, at which the
President read a very elaborate document, prepared either as a
part of his message or as a proclamation. It was well written in
the main, and met with extravagant commendation from General
Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt. Cobb, Thompson,
and myself found much to differ from in it,--Cobb because it
inculcated submission to Lincoln's election and intimated the use
of force to coerce a submission to his rule, and because it
reprehended the policy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Thompson
because of the doctrine of acquiescence and the hostility to the
secession doctrine. I objected to it because I think it misses
entirely the temper of the Southern people and attacks the true
State-Rights doctrine on the subject of secession. I do not see
what good can come of the paper, as prepared, and I do see how
much mischief may flow from it.

It is an open question whether we may accept these extracts at their
full literal import. Either the words "coerce," "submission," "use of
force,"