The existence of a disunion cabal in Buchanan's Cabinet, working to bring about disunion, was hardly a secret. Howell Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, John B. Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and possibly others, were of the Cabinet cabal. Buchanan, though himself desiring to preserve the Union, had not the bold temperament, and he had too long been a political tool of the slave power to effectually resist its violent aggressions; nor did he have the discernment to discover that his official household was the centre of a disunion movement. His Secretary of War distributed officers of the army believed to be friendly to the South where they could become available to it; he sent from the North small arms and cannon, ammunition and stores where they could be seized at the right time.(103) Members of the Cabinet kept the secession leaders advised of all acts of the administration, and generally aided them. The auspicious time, if ever, seemed to have come for a successful dissolution of the Union. The army and navy were full of able Southern men, ready, as the sequel proves, to go with their States, abandon the country that had nurtured and educated them, and the flag that had been their glory. Governor Wm. H. Gist, of South Carolina, October 5, 1860, by confidential letters to the governors of the cotton States, fairly inaugurated disunion, based on the anticipated election of Abraham Lincoln a month thence.(104) One week later, without waiting for a consultation of governors of slave States, he, by proclamation, convened the Legislature of South Carolina to "_take action for the safety and protection of the State_." This body met November 5th, the day preceding the Presidential election. The alleged grounds of justification for this early meeting were: "The strong possibility of the election to the Presidency of a sectional candidate by a party committed to the support of measures which, if carried out, will inevitably destroy _our equality in the Union_," etc. This was the avowed reason, finally, for secession, though the true reason was the absolute restriction of slavery and the overthrow of the slave power in the Republic. The election of a Republican President was, of course, a disappointment to Southern statesmen, long used to absolute sway in Congress and in the administration of the government. The charge that Lincoln was a sectional President was true only to the extent that freedom was sectional. Slavery only was then, by secessionists, regarded as national.