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[349] but the people returned an overwhelming Union majority; which, so late as April 4th, by 89 to 45, decided not to pass an Ordinance of Secession.

Missouri, under Gov. C. F. Jackson's rule, had a Democratic Legislature, which voted1 to call a Convention; but that body, when convened, was found to be decidedly and inflexibly Union. The pretended Secession of the State, some time afterward, was the work of unauthorized persons, and had not a shadow of legal validity.

So, Tennessee, whose Legislature met January 7th, though her Governor, Isham G. Harris, was thoroughly with the Disunionists, could not be induced to take the first step in their company.2

In Kentucky, the open Secessionists were but a handful, and were unable to make any show of strength in the Legislature. The few slave-traders, some scions of the planting aristocracy, with quite a number of politicians of bygone eminence and power (many, if not most, of them ‘Whigs’ of other days), were early en-listed in the movement, and sought to counterbalance, if not conceal, their paucity of numbers by intense bitterness and preternatural activity. They were enabled, through the timidity and twaddling of the leading politicians who had supplanted them in place and power, to exert a baleful influence over the course of their State throughout the ensuing year, but never to drive or lure her to the brink of Secession.

So, in Maryland, which was early visited by emissaries from the seceded States, who exerted every art to drag her after them into the abyss. They were patiently, respectfully treated; feasted and toasted by the aristocratic few, but nowise encouraged or sympathized with by the great body of the industrious classes. Gov. Thomas H. Hicks, though a slaveholder, and not very determined nor consistent in his course at the outset of the Rebellion, met the original appeal for Secession with a decided rebuff. Being strongly memorialized to convene the Legislature in extra session, he responded3 as follows:

Identified. as I am, by birth, and every other tie, with the South--a slaveholder, and feeling as warmly for my native State as any man can do — I am yet compelled by my sense of fair dealing, and my respect for the Constitution of our country, to declare that I see nothing in the bare election of Mr. Lincoln which would justify the South in taking any steps tending toward a separation of these States. Mr. Lincoln being elected, I am willing to await further results. If lie will administer the Government in a proper and patriotic manner, we are all bound to submit to his Administration, much as we may have opposed his election.

As an individual, I will very cheerfully sustain him in well-doing, because my suffering country will be benefited by a constitutional administration of the Government. If, on the contrary, he shall abuse the trust

1 January 16, 1861.

2 The Nashville Banner, a leading journal of the old Whig school, contained late in January, 1860, the following warning of the treacherous schemes that were then culminating in Tennessee:

Let every true, honest citizen of the South beware. The vilest, most damnable, deep-laid and treacherous conspiracy that was ever concocted in the busy brain of the most designing knave, is being hatched to destroy his liberties by breaking up this Government. If the people do not rise in their strength and put back these meddling politicians, the latter will chloroform them with sectional prejudice, and then ride over them rough-shod before they can recover from the narcotic. The political tricksters, who see their power slipping from their grasp, are playing a desperate game, and will not “lose a trick” if they can help it. Let honest men see that the double-dealers do not “stock the cards.”

3 November 27, 1861.

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