Three days after Jackson reached Washington, the South Carolina Legislature fixed November 3d as the date for the Nullification Convention. Silently, but sternly, soldier-wise, the President was clearing the decks for action. The day he left the Hermitage the Collector of Customs in Charleston received instructions as to his course; on reaching the capital, the commander in charge of troops there was warned of possible attempts to seize the forts; to his apprehensive friends he was sending reassuring messages. “I am well advised as to the views and proceedings of the leading Nullifiers,” he wrote Hamilton on November 2d. “We are wide awake here. THE UNION WILL BE PRESERVED; REST ASSURED OF THAT.”[542] Five days later, Cass was ordering additional troops to Fort Moultrie, and Jackson was dispatching a secret emissary to Charleston, with instructions to communicate with Poinsett, and to report upon the conditions of the forts and the lengths to which the Nullifiers might go.[543] The day preceding the meeting of the Nullification Convention, Cass ordered General Scott to Charleston, with minute instructions.[544] With Scott hurrying to South Carolina, the convention met, the Nullification Ordinance was passed, and February 1st was set as the day for it to go into operation. Three days after the convention adjourned, the Legislature met and passed laws to put the ordinance into effect. The Unionist Convention immediately met, denounced Nullification, and began to organize their forces for a possible armed conflict. Meanwhile Scott had performed his mission with a discretion and sound judgment which called forth the commendation of Jackson.[545] Five days before Congress met, five thousand stand of muskets with equipment had been ordered to Castle Pinckney, and a sloop of war with smaller vessels were on their way to Charleston Harbor.[546] “The Union must be preserved, and its laws duly executed, but BY PROPER MEANS,” wrote the President to Poinsett.