dissolve the Union". The North Carolina legislature acquiesced in
the Compromise but counselled retaliation in case of anti-slavery
aggressions.[38] Before the assembling of the Southern convention
in June, every one of the Southern states, save Kentucky, had
given some encouragement to the Southern movement, and Kentucky
had given warning and proposed a compromise through Clay.[39]

[38] Clingman, and Wilmington Resolutions, Globe, XXI. I.
200-205, 311; National Intelligencer, Feb. 25; Cobb, Corr., pp.
217-218; Boyd, "North Carolina on the Eve of Secession," in Amer.
Hist. Assoc., Annual Report (1910), pp. 167-177.

[39] Hearndon, Nashville Convention, p. 283.


Nine Southern states-Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee sent about
176 delegates to the Nashville Convention. The comparatively
harmless outcome of this convention, in June, led earlier
historians to underestimate the danger of the resistance movement
in February and March when backed by legislatures, newspapers,
and public opinion, before the effect was felt of the death of
Calhoun and Taylor, and of Webster's support of conciliation.
Stephens and the Southern Unionists rightly recognized that the
Nashville Convention "will be the nucleus of another sectional
assembly". "A fixed alienation of feeling will be the result."
"The game of the destructives is to use the Missouri Compromise
principle [as demanded by the Nashville Convention] as a medium
of defeating all adjustments and then to . . . infuriate the
South and drive her into measures that must end in disunion."