Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[348] Ordinance was passed by it two days thereafter: Yeas 84; Nays 15. Mississippi having, next to South Carolina, the largest proportional Slave population of any State in the Union, it is probable that this action more nearly conformed to the real sentiment of her reading, governing class, than that of any other State which is claimed as having seceded.

In Louisiana, Gov. Thomas O. Moore, an extensive planter and slaveholder, cherishing the prejudices of his class, called¹ her new Legislature to meet at Baton Rouge, December 10th. This lost no time in calling² a Convention, by which an Ordinance of Secession was passed³ Yeas 103; Nays 17. But a New Orleans journal, which had not yet fallen into treason, confidently asserted that a majority of the people who voted for delegates to that Convention had voted for Union delegates, and challenged the Secessionists to publish and scrutinize the popular vote. This they were finally impelled to do, figuring out a small majority for their own side. It was plain that, while every Secessionist voted and many Unionists abstained, the vote for Union and that for Secession delegates were just about equal. As made up by the Secessionists, they stood: For Secession, 20,448; Against it, 17,296. The vote for Secession is only two-fifths of the vote cast for President just before. The Convention refused--84 to 45--to submit their act to a vote of the people.

In Texas, a Convention — called, as we have seen — assembled at Austin, January 28th, passed⁴ an Ordinance of Secession: Yeas 166; Nays 7. This ordinance was submitted to a popular vote, and ratified by a considerable majority; it being very much safer, in most districts, to vote Secession than not at all, and not to vote at all than to vote Union.

Arkansas, in spite of her Governor's reticence, was blest with a Convention;⁵ her Legislature voting a call for one; but her popular vote showed a Union majority, and the conspirators were baffled for the time.

North Carolina was under the rule, but not at first under the control, of the conspirators. Among the dispatches flying, thick as hail, over the South the day after Lincoln's election, was the following:

Raleigh, N. C., Nov. 7, 1860.

The Governor and Council are in session. The people are very much excited. North Carolina is ready to secede.

The Governor (John W. Ellis) and Legislature being of the Breckinridge school of Democracy, it was easy to call a Convention, but difficult to assemble one without giving the People some voice in the premises. And they, upon the appointed day of election, not only chose a strong majority of Union delegates, but voted further (for fear of what might happen) that the Convention should not meet at all. Yet that same Convention was, directly after the reduction of Sumter, called together, and voted the State out of the Union!

So, in Virginia, where Gov. Letcher had early and heartily entered into the counsels of the Disunionists, the Legislature was called by him to meet in extra session at Richmond on the 7th of January, which it did, and⁶ passed a bill calling a Convention;