y the opposite argument.
Though desiring secession, he threw all his weight against it because
the rest of the South was averse. He charged his opponents, whose leader
was Robert Barnwell Rhett, with aiming to place the other Southern
States "in such circumstances that, having a common destiny, they would
be compelled to be involved in a common sacrifice." He protested that
"to force a sovereign State to take a position against its consent is
to make of it a reluctant associate.... Both interest and honor must
require the Southern States to take council together."

That acute thinker was now in his grave. The bold enthusiast whom
he defeated in 1851 had now no opponent that was his match. No great
personality resisted the fiery advocates from Alabama and Mississippi.
Their advice was accepted. On December 20, 1860, the cause that ten
years before had failed was successful. The convention, having adjourned
from Columbia to Charleston, passed an ordinance of secession.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, at a hundred meetings, the secession issue was
being hotly discussed. But there was not yet any certainty which way the
scale would turn. An invitation from South Carolina to join in a general
Southern convention had been declined by the Governor in November.
Governor Brown has left an account ascribing the comparative coolness
and deliberation of the hour to the prevailing impression that President
Buchanan had pledged himself not to alter the military status at
Charleston. In an interview between South Carolina representatives and
the President, the Carolinians understood that such a pledge was given.
"It was generally understood by the country," says Governor Brown, "that
such an agreement... had been entered Into... and that Governor Floyd
of Virginia, then Secretary of War, had expressed his determination
to resign his position in the Cabinet in case of the refusal of the
President to carry out the agreement in good faith. The resignation of
Governor Floyd was therefore naturally looked upon, should it occur,
as a signal given to the South that reinforcements were to be sent to
Charleston and that the coercive policy had been adopted by the Federal
Government."

While the "canvass in Georgia for members of the State convention was
progressing with much interest on both sides," there came suddenly the
news that Anderson had transferred his garrison from Fort Moultrie to
the island fortress of Sumter. That same day commissioners