It was Yancey of Alabama, chief among fire-eaters, who, in the afternoon of the same day, warmed the cockles of the Southern heart. Gifted with all the graces of Southern orators, he made an eloquent plea for Southern rights. Protection was what the South demanded: protection in their constitutional rights and in their sacred rights of property. The proposition contained in the minority report would ruin the South. "You acknowledged that slavery did not exist by the law of nature or by the law of God--that it only existed by State law; that it was wrong, but that you were not to blame. That was your position, and it was wrong. If you had taken the position directly that slavery was right, and therefore ought to be ... you would have triumphed, and anti-slavery would now have been dead in your midst.... I say it in no disrespect, but it is a logical argument that your admission that slavery is wrong has been the cause of all this discord."[829] These words brought Senator Pugh to his feet. Wrought to a dangerous pitch of excitement, he thanked God that a bold and honest man from the South had at last spoken, and had told the whole of the Southern demands. The South demanded now nothing less than that Northern Democrats should declare slavery to be right. "Gentlemen of the South," he exclaimed, "you mistake us--you mistake us--we will not do it."[830] The convention adjourned before Pugh had finished; but in the evening he told the Southern delegates plainly that Northern Democrats were not children at the bidding of the South. If the gentlemen from the South could stay only on the terms they proposed, they must go. For once the hall was awed into quiet, for Senator Pugh stood close to Douglas and the fate of the party hung in the balance.[831] Sunday intervened, but the situation remained unchanged. Gloom settled down upon the further deliberations of the convention. On Monday, the minority report (the Douglas platform) was adopted by a vote of 165 to 138. Thereupon the chairman of the Alabama delegation protested and announced the formal withdrawal of his State from the convention. The crisis had arrived. Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas followed in succession, with valedictories which seemed directed less to the convention than to the Union. Indeed, more than one face blanched at the probable significance of this secession. Southerners of the Yancey following, however, were jubilant and had much to say about an independent Southern Republic.[832]