Governor Isham G. Harris, fired with increased zeal by the beginnings of actual hostilities, called an extra session of the Legislature for May, 1861. The certainty of war determined some minds to favor resistance to the Federal Government by force, which had before adhered to the Union without reference to such an ordeal. A conservative regard for institutions derived from the past, had influenced them at first to cherish Union sentiments, but their intimate personal and social relations were more with men who were already enlisted in sympathy with the intended revolution. They had resisted the influence of these associates while the peace was unbroken, yet they had combative temperaments and the President’s Proclamation roused their slumbering pugnacity. Their own passions being loosed from bit and bridle, as they must have a share in the contention, on whose side should it be but on that of nearest kith and kin. The cause they had deemed unrighteous and against which they had argued and voted, became righteous in their eyes, when seen through the red and lurid atmosphere of Mars. Others there were who had little strength of character, and had been opposed to secession chiefly because it threatened to disturb the even tenor of their lives. The noise of war in the air did not stir their blood or change their minds: but the same easy-going disposition--the same aversion to be disquieted which had made them Unionists at first, led them to fall into the current of popular feeling in their vicinity, which the entrance upon bloody strife made stronger and swifter for secession. Some for the first time, then heartily responded to the pleas they heard for sympathy and co-operation from Tennessee with the Southern States, as more nearly its sisters, and needing its help. Others yielded to those pleas, because they feared the reproach of their communities for want of right affection and just conduct, or worse still, to be called “scalawags” and “Lincolnites.”