Hamer, Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852, pp.
49-54.


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]