Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[59] preparations for the secession of the State. An act was passed, providing for a Convention, to be held on the 7th of January; and the 20th of December was the day appointed by it for the election of delegates thereto. The Governor (John J. Pettus) was authorized to appoint commissioners to visit each of the Slave-labor States, for the purpose of officially informing the governors or legislatures thereof, that the State of Mississippi had called a Convention, “to consider the present threatening relations of the Northern and Southern sections of the Confederacy, aggravated by the recent election of a President upon principles of hostility to the States of the South; and to express the earnest hope of Mississippi, that those States will co-operate with her in the adoption of efficient measures for their common defense and safety.” A portion of the Legislature was for immediate separation and secession. The press of the State was divided in sentiment, and so were the people, while their representatives in Congress were active traitors to their government. One of these (Lucius Quintius Curtius Lamar, a native of Georgia, who remained in Congress until the 12th of January, 1861, and was afterward sent to the. Russian Court, as a diplomatic agent of the conspirators), submitted to the people of Mississippi, before the close of November, 1860, a plan for a “Southern Confederacy.” After reciting the ordinance by which Mississippi was created a State of the Union, and proposing her formal withdrawal

Lucius Q. C. Lamar.

therefrom, the plan proposed that the State of Mississippi should “consent to form a Federal Union” with all the Slave-labor States, the Territory of New Mexico, and the Indian Territory west of Arkansas, “under the name and style of the United States of America, and according to the tenor and effect of the Constitution of the United States,” with slight exceptions. It proposed to continue in force all laws and treaties of the United States, so far as they applied to Mississippi, until the new Confederation should be organized, and that all regulations, contracts, and engagements made by the old Government should remain in force. It provided that the Governor of Mississippi should perform the functions of President of the new United States, within the limits of that State, and that all public officers should remain in place until the new government should. be established. It was also provided that the accession of nine States should give effect to the proposed ordinance of confederation; and that, when such accession should occur, it should be the duty of the Governor to order an election of Congressmen and Presidential Electors. This scheme, like a score of others put forth by disloyal men, ambitious to appear in history as the founders of a new empire, soon found its appropriate place in the tomb of forgotten things.

The southern portion of Alabama was strongly in favor of secession, while the northern portion was as strongly in favor of Union. The Governor (Andrew B. Moore) sympathized with the secessionists, and, with Yancey