egates 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the unpublished letters of Tucker.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 the convention's "Address", "frankly and boldly unfurled the flag of
disunion". "If every Southern State should quail... South Carolina alone
should make the issue." "The opinion of the [Nashville] address is, and
I believe the opinion of a large portion of the Southern people is, that
the Union cannot be made to endure", was delegate Barnwell's admission
to Webster. [42]

The influence of the Compromise is brought out in the striking change in
the attitude of Senator Foote, and of judge Sharkey of Mississippi,
the author of the radical "Address" of the preliminary Mississippi
Convention, and chairman of both this and the Nashville Convention.
After the Compromise measures were reported in May by Clay and Webster's
committee, Sharkey became convinced that the Compromise should be
accepted and so advised Foote. Sharkey also visited Washington and
helped to pacify the rising storm by "suggestions to individual
Congressmen". [43] In the Nashville Convention, Sharkey therefore
exercised a moderating influence as chairman and refused to sign its
disunion address. Convinced that the Compromise met essential Southern
demands, Sharkey urged that "to resist it would be to dismember the
Union". He therefo