Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the great civil war, which shook a continent, was precipitated by the fact that the South-Carolina Legislature assembled at the unpropitious moment.

Without taking time for reflection, without a review of the situation, without stopping to count the cost, with a boldness born of passionate resentment against the North, the rash men of South Carolina fired the train.

In a single hour they created in their own State a public sentiment which would not brook delay or contradiction or argument.

The leaders of it knew that the sober second thought, even in South Carolina, would be dangerous to the scheme of a Southern confederacy.

They knew that the feeling of resentment among the Southern people must be kept at white-heat, and that whoever wished to speak a word of caution or moderation must be held as a public enemy, and subjected to the scorn and the vengeance of the people.
In this temper a convention was ordered by the Legislature.