of secession were not slow to avail themselves of the
favorable situation. Between the date of the message and the incoming
of the new and possibly hostile Administration there intervened three
full months. It was the season of political activity--the period
during which legislatures meet, messages are written, and laws
enacted. It afforded ample time to authorize, elect, and hold State
conventions. Excitement was at fever heat in the South, and public
sentiment paralyzed, despondent, and divided at the North.

Accordingly, as if by a common impulse, the secession movement sprang
into quick activity and united effort. Within two months the States of
South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and
Texas, in the order named, by formal ordinances of conventions,
declared themselves separated from the Union. The recommendation of
Yancey's "scarlet letter" had been literally carried out; the Cotton
States were precipitated into revolution.

In this movement of secession the State of South Carolina was the
enthusiastic pioneer. At the date of the President's message she had
already provided by law for the machinery of a convention, though no
delegates had been elected. Nevertheless, her Legislature at once
plunged pell-mell into the task of making laws for the new condition
of independent sovereignty which by common consent the convention was
in a few days to declare. Questions of army and navy, postal
communication, and foreign diplomacy, for the moment eclipsed the
baser topics of estray laws or wolf-scalp bounties, and the little
would-be Congress fully justified the reported sarcasm of one of her
leading citizens that "the Palmetto State was too small for a republic
and too large for a lunatic asylum."

But, with all their outward fire and zeal for nationality, her
politicians were restrained by an undercurrent of prudence. A
revolution even under exceptional advantages is a serious thing.

[Sidenote] Speech of Mr. Magrath in the South Carolina Convention,
Dec. 19, 1860. "Annual Cyclopedia," 1861, p. 619.

Therefore the agitators of South Carolina scanned the President's
message with unconcealed eagerness. In that paradox of assertions and
denials, of purposes to act and promises to refrain, they found much
to assure them, but also something to cause doubt. "As I understand
the message of the President of the United States," explained Mr.
Magrath to the South Carolina Convention, "he affirm