They appear to be the expressions of men who talked for effect, and who professed themselves ready for a shock of arms which they believed would never come.
But the majority of the utterances were by men who meant all they said; who, if they did not anticipate a bloody conflict, were yet prepared for it, and who were too deeply stirred by resentment and passion to give due heed to consequences.
On the 21st of January the senators from Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi formally withdrew from the Senate.

Their speeches showed little variety of thought, consisting chiefly of indictments against the free States for placing the government under the control of an anti-slavery administration.

Mr.Yulee was the first to speak.

He solemnly announced to the Senate that "the State of Florida, though a convention of her people, had decided to recall the powers which she had delegated to the Federal Government, and to assume the full exercise of all her sovereign rights as an independent and separate community." At what particular period in the history of the American continent Florida had enjoyed "sovereign rights," by what process she had ever "delegated powers to the Federal Government," or at what time she had ever been "an independent and separate community," Mr.Yulee evidently preferred not to inform the Senate.

His colleague, Mr.Mallory, implored the people of the North not to repeat the fatal folly of the Bourbons by imagining that "the South would submit to the degradation of a constrained existence under a violated Constitution." Mr.Mallory regarded the subjugation of the South by war as impossible.