Mr. Buchanan's truce with the South Carolina Representatives had as little effect in arresting the secession intrigues as his non-coercion doctrine officially announced in the annual message. On the evening of the day (December 8)[1] on which he received the South Carolina pledge, the Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, of Georgia, tendered his resignation, announcing in the same letter his intention to embark in the active work of disunion. It had been generally understood that the non-coercion theories of the message were adopted by the President in deference to the wishes and under the influence of Cobb, Thompson, and Floyd, and undoubtedly they had also been largely instrumental in bringing about the unofficial truce at Charleston. If, amid all his fears, Mr. Buchanan retained any sensibility, he must have been profoundly shocked at the cool dissimulation with which Mr. Cobb, everywhere recognized as a Cabinet officer of great ability, had assisted in committing the Administration to these fatal doctrines and measures, and then abandoned it in the moment of danger. "My withdrawal," he wrote to the President, "has not been occasioned by anything you have said or done. Whilst differing from your message upon some of its theoretical doctrines, as well as from the hope so earnestly expressed that the Union can be preserved, there was no practical result likely to follow which required me to retire from your Administration. That necessity is created by what I feel it my duty to do; and the responsibility of the act, therefore, rests alone upon myself." Ignoring the fact that the Treasury was prosperous and solvent when he took charge of it, and that at the moment of his leaving it could not pay its drafts, Mr. Cobb, five days later, published a long and inflammatory address to the people of Georgia, concluding with this exhortation: "I entertain no doubt either of your right or duty to secede from the Union. Arouse, then, all your manhood for the great work before you, and be prepared on that day to announce and maintain your independence out of the Union, for you will never again have equality and justice in it." [Sidenote] G.T. Curtis, "Life of James Buchanan." Vol. II., p. 399.