e Union."
[8]

That Beverley Tucker rightly judged that this speech of Calhoun
expressed what was "in the mind of every man in the State" is confirmed
by the approval of Hammond and other observers; by their judgment that
"everyone was ripe for disunion and no one ready to make a speech
in favor of the union"; by the testimony of the governor, that South
Carolina "is ready and anxious for an immediate separation"; and by
the concurrent testimony of even the few "Unionists" like Petigru and
Lieber, who wrote Webster, "almost everyone is for southern separation",
"disunion is the... predominant sentiment". "For arming the state
$350,000 has been put at the disposal of the governor." "Had I convened
the legislature two or three weeks before the regular meeting," adds the
governor, "such was the excited state of the public mind at that time,
I am convinced South Carolina would not now have been a member of the
Union. The people are very far ahead of their leaders." Ample first-hand
evidence of South Carolina's determination to secede in 1850 may be
found in the Correspondence of Calhoun, in Claiborne's Quitman, in the
acts of the assembly, in the newspapers, in the legislature's vote "to
resist at any and all hazards", and in the choice of resistance-men
to the Nashville Convention and the state convention. This has been so
convincingly set forth in Ames's Calhoun and the Secession Movement of
1850, and in Hamer's Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852,
that there is need of very few further illustrations. [9]

That South Carolina postponed secession for ten years was due to the
Compromise. Alabama and Virginia adopted resolutions accepting the
compromise in 1850-1851; and the Virginia legislature tactfully urged
South Carolina to abandon secession. The 1851 elections in Alabama,
Georgia, and Mississippi showed the South ready to accept the
Compromise, the crucial test being in Mississippi, where the voters
followed Webster's supporter, Foote. [10] That Petigru was right in
maintaining that South, Carolina merely abandoned immediate and separate
secession is shown by the almost unanimous vote of the South Carolina
State Convention of 1852, [11] that the state was amply justified "in
dissolving at once all political connection with her co-States",
but refrained from this "manifest right of self-government from
considerations of expediency only". [12]

In Mississippi, a preliminary convention, instigated by Calhou