Nine Southern states-Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee sent about 176 delegates to the Nashville Convention. The comparatively harmless outcome of this convention, in June, led earlier historians to underestimate the danger of the resistance movement in February and March when backed by legislatures, newspapers, and public opinion, before the effect was felt of the death of Calhoun and Taylor, and of Webster's support of conciliation. Stephens and the Southern Unionists rightly recognized that the Nashville Convention "will be the nucleus of another sectional assembly". "A fixed alienation of feeling will be the result." "The game of the destructives is to use the Missouri Compromise principle [as demanded by the Nashville Convention] as a medium of defeating all adjustments and then to... infuriate the South and drive her into measures that must end in disunion." "All who go to the Nashville Convention are ultimately to fall into that position." This view is confirmed by Judge Warner and other observers in Georgia and by the unpublished letters of Tucker. [40] "Let the Nashville Convention be held", said the Columbus, Georgia, Sentinel, "and let the undivided voice of the South go forth... declaring our determination to resist even to civil war." [41] The speech of Rhett of South Carolina, author of the convention's "Address", "frankly and boldly unfurled the flag of disunion". "If every Southern State should quail... South Carolina alone should make the issue." "The opinion of the [Nashville] address is, and I believe the opinion of a large portion of the Southern people is, that the Union cannot be made to endure", was delegate Barnwell's admission to Webster. [42]