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 The State Rights party immediately held a rally in the form of a subscription supper with a business meeting added. Some six or seven hundred were present. This meeting adopted an address to the people to explain the defeat of the party. It was due in large part, they said, to what they called the false charge that they would involve the state in war, which had turned the bankers and merchants against them. They declared that they would not give up, but had just begun to fight; and they were confident that the state could be carried for the convention even without St. Philip's and St. Michael's.

The election for state representatives and senators came on October 11 and 12. The Union party had come out openly against a convention, but even up to the time of the election the adherents of the State Rights party in Charleston, or at least their paper, the Mercury, had not openly declared for a convention. Their policy, softened by their recent defeat, was, as the Courier put it, to leave "their flag white, to be painted by the Columbia artists." By this concealment of their motive they hoped to gain votes, and they persuaded three of the Union party's nominees to let