cession Convention to meet at
Columbia December 17th, was passed by the Senate, and on the 12th of
November went through the House; and both of the United States Senators
from South Carolina had now resigned their seats in the United States
Senate.

Besides all these and many other incitements to Secession was the fact
that at Milledgeville, Georgia, Governor Brown had, November 12th,
addressed a Georgian Military Convention, affirming "the right of
Secession, and the duty of other Southern States to sustain South
Carolina in the step she was then taking," and declaring that he "would
like to see Federal troops dare attempt the coercion of a seceding
Southern State! For every Georgian who fell in a conflict thus incited,
the lives of two Federal Soldiers should expiate the outrage on State
Sovereignty"--and that the Convention aforesaid had most decisively
given its voice for Secession.

It was about this time, however, that Alexander H. Stephens vainly
sought to stem the tide of Secession in his own State, in a speech
(November 14) before the Georgia Legislature, in which he declared that
Mr. Lincoln "can do nothing unless he is backed by power in Congress.
The House of Representatives is largely in the majority against him. In
the Senate he will also be powerless. There will be a majority of four
against him." He also cogently said: "Many of us have sworn to support
it (the Constitution). Can we, therefore, for the mere election of a
man to the Presidency--and that too, in accordance with the prescribed
forms of the Constitution--make a point of resistance to the Government,
and, without becoming the breakers of that sacred instrument ourselves,
withdraw ourselves from it? Would we not be in the wrong?"

But the occasional words of wisdom that fell from the lips of the few
far-seeing statesmen of the South, were as chaff before the storm of
Disunion raised by the turbulent Fire-eaters, and were blown far from
the South, where they might have done some good for the Union cause,
away up to the North, where they contributed to aid the success of the
contemplated Treason and Rebellion, by lulling many of the people there,
into a false sense of security. Unfortunately, also, even the ablest of
the Southern Union men were so tainted with the heretical doctrine of
States-Rights, which taught the "paramount allegiance" of the citizen to
the State, that their otherwise powerful appeals for the preservation of
the Un