at once without delay or hesitation...that the only effective
plan of cooperation must ensue after one State had seceded and
presented the issue when the plain question would be presented to
the other Southern States whether they would stand by the
seceding State engaged in a common cause or abandon her to the
fate of coercion by the arms of the Government of the United
States."

Ten years before, in the unsuccessful secession movement of 1850
and 1851, Andrew Pickens Butler, perhaps the ablest South
Carolinian then living, strove to arrest the movement by exactly
the opposite argument. Though desiring secession, he threw all
his weight against it because the rest of the South was averse.
He charged his opponents, whose leader was Robert Barnwell Rhett,
with aiming to place the other Southern States "in such
circumstances that, having a common destiny, they would be
compelled to be involved in a common sacrifice." He protested
that "to force a sovereign State to take a position against its
consent is to make of it a reluctant associate.... Both
interest and honor must require the Southern States to take
council together."

That acute thinker was now in his grave. The bold enthusiast whom
he defeated in 1851 had now no opponent that was his match. No
great personality resisted the fiery advocates from Alabama and
Mississippi. Their advice was accepted. On December 20, 1860,
the cause that ten years before had failed was successful. The
convention, having adjourned from Columbia to Charleston, passed
an ordinance of secession.