g to the
convention, the more ill-tempered and ill-bred secession members
intimating that such a body of 'submissionists' were unworthy to
represent Missouri, and undeserving of any pay. The manifest ill feeling
between the two bodies--the legislature elected eighteen months
previously, and without popular reference to the question of secession,
and the convention chosen fresh from the people, to decide on the course
of the State--soon indicated the infelicity of the two remaining in
session at the same time and in the same place. Accordingly, within a
few days after the organization of the convention, it adjourned its
session to the city of St. Louis. It did not meet a cordial reception
there. So insolent had the secession spirit already grown, that on the
day of the assembling of the convention in that city, the members were
insulted by taunts in the streets and by the ostentatious floating of
the rebel flag from the Democratic head-quarters, hard by the building
in which they assembled.

Being left in the undisputed occupancy of the seat of government, the
governor, lieutenant-governor, and legislature gave themselves up to the
enactment of flagrant and undisguised measures of hostility to the
federal government. Commissioners from States that had renounced the
Constitution, and withdrawn, as they claimed, from the Union, arrived at
Jefferson City as apostles of treason. They were received as
distinguished and honorable ambassadors. A joint session of the
legislature was called to hear their communications. The
lieutenant-governor, Reynolds, being the presiding officer of the joint
session, required that the members should rise when these traitors
entered, and receive them standing and uncovered. The commissioners were
allowed to harangue the representatives of Missouri, by the hour, in
unmeasured abuse of the federal government, in open rejoicings over its
supposed dissolution, and in urgent appeals to the people of Missouri to
join the rebel States in their consummated treason. Noisy demonstrations
of applause greeted these commissioners; and legislators, and the
governor himself, in a public speech in front of the executive mansion,
pledged them that Missouri would shortly be found ranged on the side of
seceded States. The treason of the governor and legislature did not stop
with these manifestations. They proceeded to acts of legislation,
preparatory to the employment of force, after the manner of their
'Souther