Accordingly, as if by a common impulse, the secession movement sprang into quick activity and united effort. Within two months the States of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, in the order named, by formal ordinances of conventions, declared themselves separated from the Union. The recommendation of Yancey's "scarlet letter" had been literally carried out; the Cotton States were precipitated into revolution. In this movement of secession the State of South Carolina was the enthusiastic pioneer. At the date of the President's message she had already provided by law for the machinery of a convention, though no delegates had been elected. Nevertheless, her Legislature at once plunged pell-mell into the task of making laws for the new condition of independent sovereignty which by common consent the convention was in a few days to declare. Questions of army and navy, postal communication, and foreign diplomacy, for the moment eclipsed the baser topics of estray laws or wolf-scalp bounties, and the little would-be Congress fully justified the reported sarcasm of one of her leading citizens that "the Palmetto State was too small for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum." But, with all their outward fire and zeal for nationality, her politicians were restrained by an undercurrent of prudence. A revolution even under exceptional advantages is a serious thing. [Sidenote] Speech of Mr. Magrath in the South Carolina Convention, Dec. 19, 1860. "Annual Cyclopedia," 1861, p. 619. Therefore the agitators of South Carolina scanned the President's message with unconcealed eagerness. In that paradox of assertions and denials, of purposes to act and promises to refrain, they found much to assure them, but also something to cause doubt. "As I understand the message of the President of the United States," explained Mr. Magrath to the South Carolina Convention, "he affirms it as his right, and constitutional duty, and high obligation to protect the property of the United States within the limits of South Carolina, and to enforce the laws of the Union within the limits of South Carolina. He says he has no constitutional power to coerce South Carolina, while at the same time he denies to her the right of secession. It may be, and I apprehend it will be, Mr. President, that the attempt to coerce South Carolina will be made under the pretense of protecting the property of the United States within the limits of South Carolina. I am disposed, therefore, at the very threshold to test the accuracy of this logic, and test the conclusions of the President of the United States." [Sidenote] "Mr. Buchanan's Administration," p. 126.