These dispatches, it is said, decided the wavering vote of Georgia for secession, at the election on the 2d of January, and yet the ballot-box showed twenty-five or thirty-thousand fewer votes than usual, and of these there was a decided majority against immediate secession. “With all the appliances brought to bear, with all the fierce, rushing, maddening events of the hour, the Co-operationists had a majority, notwithstanding that falling off of nearly thirty thousand, and an absolute majority of elected delegates of twenty-nine. But, upon assembling, by coaxing, bullying, and all other arts, the majority was changed.” 1
The Convention assembled on the 16th of January. The number of members was two hundred and ninety-five. They chose Mr. Crawford to preside over them, and invited Commissioners Orr, of South Carolina, and Shorter, of Alabama, to seats in the Convention. On the 18th, a resolution was passed, by a vote of one hundred and sixty-five ayes to one hundred and thirty noes, declaring it to be the right and the duty of the State to withdraw from the Union. On the same day, they appointed a committee to draft an Ordinance of Secession. It was reported almost immediately, and was shorter than any of its predecessors. It was in a single paragraph, and simply declared the repeal and abrogation of all laws which bound the commonwealth to the Union, and that the State of Georgia was in “full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.” The debate on the ordinance elicited many warm expressions of Union sentiments; and it was on this occasion that Alexander H. Stephens made the speech already cited.2 Toombs was in the Convention, and the chief manager of the secession machinery. He worked it with energy, and many changes among the Co-operationists were apparent. A. H. Stephens, his brother Linton, Herschel V. Johnson (the candidate of the Douglas Democrats for Vice-President), B. H. Hill, and others who afterward took an active part in rebellion, tried to prevent immediate secession, but in vain. Toombs and his party were strong enough to give to the ordinance, when it came up for a final vote, two hundred and eight ballots against eighty-nine. The vote was taken at two o'clock in the afternoon. That evening the event was celebrated in the Georgia capital, by a grand display of fireworks, a torchlight procession, music, speeches, and the firing of cannon. Similar demonstrations of joy were made at Savannah and Augusta.
An effort to postpone the operation of the Ordinance of Secession until the 3d of March failed. A resolution was then adopted, requiring every member of the Convention to sign the ordinance. Another, proposing to submit the ordinance to a final consideration by the people through the ballot-box, was rejected by a large majority. A copy of a resolution by
