The disunion movement manifested also dangerous strength in Virginia and Alabama, and showed possibilities of great danger in Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas. The majority of the people may not have favored secession in 1850 any more than in 1860; but the leaders could and did carry most of the Southern legislatures in favor of uniting for resistance. The "ultras" in Virginia, under the lead of Tucker, and in Alabama under Yancey, frankly avowed their desire to stimulate impossible demands so that disunion would be inevitable. Tucker at Nashville "ridiculed Webster's assertion that the Union could not be dissolved without bloodshed". On the eve of Webster's speech, Garnett of Virginia published a frank advocacy of a Southern Confederacy, repeatedly reprinted, which Clay declared "the most dangerous pamphlet he had ever read". [27] Virginia, in providing for delegates to the Nashville Convention, announced her readiness to join her "sister slave states" for "mutual defence". She later acquiesced in the Compromise, but reasserted that anti-slavery aggressions would "defeat restoration of peaceful sentiments". [28] In Texas there was acute danger of collision over the New Mexico boundary with Federal troops which President Taylor was preparing to send. Stephens frankly repeated Quitman's threats of Southern armed support of Texas. [29] Cobb, Henderson of Texas, Duval of Kentucky, Anderson of Tennessee, and Goode of Virginia expressed similar views as to the "imminent cause of danger to the Union from Texas". The collision was avoided because the more statesmanlike attitude of Webster prevailed rather than the "soldier's" policy of Taylor. The border states held a critical position in 1850, as they did in 1860. "If they go for the Southern movement we shall have disunion." "Everything is to depend from this day on the course of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri." [30] Webster's conciliatory Union policy, in harmony with that of border state leaders, like Bell of Tennessee, Benton of Missouri, Clay and Crittenden of Kentucky, enabled Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri to stand by the Union and refuse to send delegates to the Nashville Convention.