. The passage of the ordinance was,
therefore, for several days delayed, while the cooperationists were
plied with arguments to induce them to acquiesce in that which it was
now impossible for them to prevent. At length, after four days of
deliberation, it became evident that all of this party had succumbed
whom it seemed possible to change, and on the morning of the 11th of
January it was publicly announced that the ordinance of secession had
passed the convention by a vote of sixty-one in the affirmative against
thirty-nine in the negative.

By the insurrectionists the announcement was received with transports of
joy, but by the Unionists it was met with demonstrations of grief, which
they made no efforts to conceal. Women wept, and houses were closed as
for a day of mourning. In the northern part of the State the
manifestations of disappointment were still more unmistakable.
Indignation meetings were held, and one of the delegates received a
telegram from his constituents, charging him with having betrayed them
on the very issue for which he was elected, and demanding explanations.
At length the loyal feeling of the State seemed aroused, and had the
ordinance of secession been now submitted to the people, all admitted
that it would have been rejected by an unquestionable majority. But the
ordinance was not submitted to the people, and the Union sentiment,
which had already, within the interval of a few weeks, passed through
two complete oscillations--vibrating from the loyalty which preceded the
presidental election through all the changes of the strong disunion
reaction which followed--was now again in the ascendant. But from this
point it soon began to recede, descending slowly along an arc of which
no eye can see the end, with a momentum that permits no prediction as to
the time of its return.

A multitude of influences began at once to weaken the energy of the
Union sentiment. From the first, it had been the policy of the disunion
leaders to represent the question of secession as lying wholly with the
South. In case this section should decide upon disunion, there would be
little reason, it was said, to fear any prolonged opposition on the part
of the North--least of all a war. Nothing appeared on the part of the
Federal Executive to refute these assertions. It was by a large class
believed, therefore, that the leaders were right when they said that the
secession would be a mere withdrawal of the Southern States,