The "ultras" in Virginia, under the lead of Tucker, and in
Alabama under Yancey, frankly avowed their desire to stimulate
impossible demands so that disunion would be inevitable. Tucker
at Nashville "ridiculed Webster's assertion that the Union could
not be dissolved without bloodshed". On the eve of Webster's
speech, Garnett of Virginia published a frank advocacy of a
Southern Confederacy, repeatedly reprinted, which Clay declared
"the most dangerous pamphlet he had ever read".[27] Virginia, in
providing for delegates to the Nashville Convention, announced
her readiness to join her "sister slave states" for "mutual
defence". She later acquiesced in the Compromise, but reasserted
that anti-slavery aggressions would "defeat restoration of
peaceful sentiments".[28]

[27] Hammond MSS., Jan. 27, Feb. 8; Virginia Resolves, Feb. 12;
Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, p. 246; N. Y. Tribune, June 14;
M. R. H. Garnett, Union Past and Future, published between Jan.
24 and Mar. 7. Alabama: Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, p.
281; Dubose, Yancey, pp. 247-249, 481; Fleming, Civil War and
Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 13; Cobb, Corr., pp. 193-195, 207.
President Tyler of the College of William and Mary kindly
furnished evidence of Garnett's authorship; see J. M. Garnett, in
Southern Literary Messenger, I. 255.

[28] Resolutions, Feb. 12, 1850; Acts, 1850, pp. 223-224; 1851,
p. 201.


In Texas there was acute danger of collision over the New Mexico
boundary with Federal troops which President Taylor was preparing