* The President had already asked for Floyd's resignation because
of financial irregularities, and Floyd was shrewd enough to use
Anderson's coup as an excuse for resigning. See Rhodes, "History
of the United States," vol. II pp. 225, 236 (note).

The Georgia Governor, who had not hitherto been in the front rank
of the aggressives, now struck a great blow. Senator Toombs had
telegraphed from Washington that Fort Pulaski, guarding the
Savannah River, was "in danger." The Governor had reached the
same conclusion. He mustered the state militia and seized Fort
Pulaski. Early in the morning on January 3,1861, the fort was
occupied by Georgia troops. Shortly afterward, Brown wrote to a
commissioner sent by the Governor of Alabama to confer with him:
"While many of our most patriotic and intelligent citizens in
both States have doubted the propriety of immediate secession, I
feel quite confident that recent events have dispelled those
doubts from the minds of most men who have, till within the past
few days, honestly sustained them." The first stage of the
secession movement was at an end; the second had begun.

A belief that Washington had entered upon a policy of aggression
swept the lower South. The state conventions assembling about
this time passed ordinances of secession--Mississippi, January 9;
Florida, January 10; Alabama, January 11; Georgia, January 19;
Louisiana, January 26; Texas, February 1. But this result was not
achieved without considerable opposition. In Georgia the
Unionists put up a stout fight. The issue was not upon the right
to secede--virtually no one denied the right--but upon the wisdom
of invoking the right. Stephens, gloomy and pessimistic, led the