In Kentucky, Crittenden's repeated messages against "disunion" and "entangling engagements" reveal the danger seen by a Southern Union governor. [35] Crittenden's changing attitude reveals the growing peril, and the growing reliance on Webster's and Clay's plans. By April, Crittenden recognized that "the Union is endangered", "the case... rises above ordinary rules", "circumstances have rather changed". He reluctantly swung from Taylor's plan of dealing with California alone, to the Clay and Webster idea of settling the "whole controversy". [36] Representative Morehead wrote Crittenden, "The extreme Southern gentlemen would secretly deplore the settlement of this question. The magnificence of a Southern Confederacy... is a dazzling allurement." Clay like Webster, saw "the alternative, civil war". [37] In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the Union; but the extremists--typified by Clingman, the public meeting at Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington Courier--reveal the presence of a dangerously aggressive body "with a settled determination to dissolve the Union" and frankly "calculating the advantages of a Southern Confederacy." Southern observers in this state reported that "the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law or the abolition of slavery in the District will dissolve the Union". The North Carolina legislature acquiesced in the Compromise but counselled retaliation in case of anti-slavery aggressions. [38] Before the assembling of the Southern convention in June, every one of the Southern states, save Kentucky, had given some encouragement to the Southern movement, and Kentucky had given warning and proposed a compromise through Clay. [39]