Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/310

Rh Kansas was organized, the Governor delegated a Republican. Both were allowed seats, although manifestly, Mr. Ewing should have retired.

When the vote was declared, it appeared that eight States had voted in the affirmative, and eleven States in the negative. The border State men were sorely disappointed, and some of them wept like children. The result they must have anticipated, but they had been wrought to a high condition of nervous excitement, due in part to the circumstance that they were unable to discuss the business of the convention in public. The disagreeable silence which followed the announcement of the vote, was broken by Mr. Francis Granger, who counseled calmness and deliberation, and finally, he appealed to the States of the majority to move a reconsideration. This was done by the State of Illinois, through Mr. Turner, who made the motion. The next day the resolution was adopted by a vote of nine to eight. Upon this question the Missouri delegation refused to vote, under the lead, it was said, of General Doniphan, who denounced the resolutions as not satisfactory to either side. Doniphan was a large, muscular man, who acquired some fame in the Mexican War as the leader of a cavalry expedition to California, of which nothing was heard for about six months.

The reconsideration was attributed to the interference of Mr. Lincoln or of his recognized friends.

When the convention was about to adjourn, President Tyler made a speech in which he thrice invoked the blessing of Heaven upon the doings of the convention, and from that act he went to Richmond, and in less than three days he was an avowed and recognized leader in secession. Indeed, it was understood in the convention that Mr. Seddon was his representative on the floor. The doings of the Congress were endorsed by Maryland, but in the National Congress, and in the States North and South they were neglected utterly. The re-