 A pro-secessionist proposal was made in the Memphis "Appeal" to build a fort at Randolph, Tennessee, on the Mississippi River.Governor Isham G. Harris convened an emergency session of the Tennessee General Assembly in January 1861.During his speech before the legislative body on January 7, he described the secession of the Southern states as a crisis caused by "long continued agitation of the slavery question" and "actual and threatened aggressions of the Northern States ... upon the well-defined constitutions rights of the Southern citizen."