oo slowly, the senators
from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi,
and Florida held a meeting in Washington on the 5th of January,
1861. The South had always contended for the right of States to
instruct their senators, but now the Southern senators proceeded
to instruct their States. In effect they sent out commands to the
governing authorities and to the active political leaders, that
South Carolina must be sustained; that the Cotton States must stand
by her; and that the secession of each and all of them must be
accomplished in season for a general convention to be held at
Montgomery, not later than Feb. 15, and, in any event, before the
inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. The design was that the new President
of the United States should find a Southern Confederacy in actual
existence, with the ordinary departments of government in regular
operation, with a name and a flag and a great seal, and all the
insignia of national sovereignty visible.

It is a suggestive fact that, in carrying out these designs, the
political leaders determined, as far as possible, to prevent the
submission of the ordinances of Secession to the popular vote. It
is not indeed probable that, in the excited condition to which they
had by this time brought the Southern mind, Secession would have
been defeated; but the withholding of the question from popular
decision is at least an indication that there was strong apprehension
of such a result, and that care was taken to prevent the divisions
and acrimonious contests which such submission might have caused.
In the Georgia convention the resolution declaring it to be her
right and her duty to secede was adopted only by a vote of 165 to
130. A division of similar proportion in the popular vote would
have stripped the secession of Georgia of all moral force, and
hence the people were not allowed to pass upon the question.

ACTION OF OTHER COTTON STATES.

Georgia was really induced to secede, only upon the delusive
suggestion that better terms could be made with the National
Government by going out for a season than by remaining steadfastly
loyal. The influence of Alexander H. Stephens, while he was still
loyal, was almost strong enough to hold the State in the Union;
and but for the phantasm of securing better terms outside, the
Empire State of the South would have checked and destroyed the
Secession movement at the very outset.