was upon them; whereas they said that _secession_ was their lawful right, without any regard whatsoever to the motive which induced them to exercise it.[131] Such was the character of the issue between the North and the South prior to the first ordinance of secession. The action of South Carolina, followed by the other Gulf States, at once changed that issue, shifting it from pro-slavery versus anti-slavery to union versus disunion. This alteration quickly compelled great numbers of men, both at the North and at the South, to reconsider and, upon a new issue, to place themselves also anew. It has been said by all writers that in the seven seceding States there was, in the four months following the election, a very large proportion of "Union men." The name only signified that these men did not think that the present inducements to disunion were sufficient to render it a wise measure. It did not signify that they thought disunion unlawful, unconstitutional, and treasonable. When, however, state conventions decided the question of advisability against their opinions, and they had to choose between allegiance to the State and allegiance to the Union, they immediately adhered to the State, and this none the less because they feared that she had taken an ill-advised step. That is to say, at the South a "Union man" _wished_ to preserve the Union, whereas at the North a "Union man" recognized a supreme _obligation_ to do so. While the South, by political alchemy, was becoming solidified and homogeneous, a corresponding change was going on at the North. In that section the great numbers--of whom some would have re-made the Constitution, others would have agreed to peaceable separation, and still others would have made any concession to retain the integrity of the Union--now saw that these were indeed, as Jefferson Davis had said, "quack nostrums," and that the choice lay between permitting a secession accompanied with insulting menaces and some degree of actual violence, and maintaining the Union by coercion. In this dilemma great multitudes of Northern Democrats, whose consciences had never been in the least disturbed by the existence of slavery in the country or even by efforts to extend it, became "Union men" in the Northern sense of the word, which made it about equivalent to coercionists. Their simple creed was the integrity and perpetuity of the nation.