action, as the Legislature had adjourned, but the public agitation and discussion continued. The disunion sentiment began to grow very rapidly as a result of events which were transpiring outside the State. Amid the intense excitement which followed the taking of Fort Sumter, Governor Harris issued a call for a second extra session of the Legislature. On the 18th of April he had replied to President Lincoln's call for troops: "Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thousand, if necessary, for the defence of our rights and those of our Southern brothers."
The Legislature convened on the twenty-seventh of April. The public were excluded from its meeting, and its members were pledged to secrecy. The session opened with the reading of the gubernatorial message,[1] which asserted that the President of the United States had wantonly inaugurated an internecine war upon the people of the slave States. "This war," he said, "is likely to assume an importance, nearly, if not equal to the struggle of our revolutionary fathers in their patriotic efforts to resist usurpations and throw off the tyrannical yoke of the British Government.
"This declaration of war upon the South has virtually dissolved the Union. It will be idle to speak of ourselves any longer as members of the Federal Union; and it is believed by many whose opinions are entitled to the highest respect, that, by reason of the subversion of the Constitution by the authorities in power, inaugurating a revolution between the States thereof, each and every individual is already released from his obligations to that government; yet, as best comports with the dignity of the subject, and also from due regard to those who may hold a different opinion—and further still, that all the world may be advised of our action,—I respectfully recommend that our connections with the Federal Union be formally annulled in such manner as shall involve the highest exercise of the sovereign
- ↑ Acts of Tennessee, 2d Extra Session, 1861, pp. 1 to 11.
