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[21] through its chairman, Judge Hamilton R. Gamble. ‘The position of Missouri,’ it said, ‘in relation to the adjacent States which would continue in the Union, would necessarily expose her, if she became a member of a new confederacy, to utter destruction whenever any rupture might take place between the different republics. In a military aspect, secession and connection with a Southern confederacy is annihilation for Missouri. The true position for her to assume is that of a State whose interests are bound up in the maintenance of the Union, and whose kind feelings and strong sympathies are with the people of the Southern States with whom they are connected by ties of friendship and blood.’

At the same time the committee submitted a series of resolutions in conformity with the report. George Y. Bast moved to add to the resolutions a declaration that if the Northern States refused to accept the .Crittenden compromise, and the other border slaveholding States should thereupon secede, Missouri would not hesitate to go with them. For this motion only 23 members of the convention voted. One after another the convention voted down all amendments or modifications of the report of the committee, and, after a short discussion, adopted it as a whole. It then adjourned subject to the call of a committee which was appointed for that purpose. The real sentiment of the convention was expressed by William A. Hall when he said: ‘Our feelings and sympathies may incline us to go with the South, in the event of a separation. But feeling is temporary—interest is permanent.’ In the proceedings of the convention the ordinary courtesies of life were observed, but the intent of what it did was radically anti-Southern. The leaders talked very much as they talked in the campaign that preceded their election as delegates, but what they did was what Frank Blair wanted them to do. Their action marked the absorption, in great part, of the Conditional Union party, which had gained control of the convention

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