[20] Johnston, Stephens, pp. 238-239, 244; Smith, Political
History of Slavery, 1. 121.


On February 8, 1850, the Georgia legislature appropriated $30,000
for a state convention to consider measures of redress, and gave
warning that anti-slavery aggressions would "induce us to
contemplate the possibility of a dissolution".[21] "I see no
prospect of a continuance of this Union long", wrote Stephens two
days later.[22]

[21] Laws (Ga.), 1850, pp. 122, 405-410.

[22] Johnston, Stephens, p. 247.


Speaker Cobb's advisers warned him that "the predominant feeling
of Georgia" was "equality or disunion", and that "the
destructives" were trying to drive the South into disunion. "But
for your influence, Georgia would have been more rampant for
dissolution than South Carolina ever was." "S. Carolina will
secede, but we can and must put a stop to it in Georgia."[23]

[23] Corr., pp. 184,193-195, 206-208, July 21. Newspapers, see
Brooks, in Miss. Valley Hist. Review, IX. 289.


Public opinion in Georgia, which had been "almost ready for
immediate secession", was reversed only after the passage of the
Compromise and by means of a strenuous campaign against the