NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
January-February 1865
From The Missouri Democrat, Friday, January 6, 1865.
THE CONVENTION.
Elsewhere will be found a list of names of members elect to the Convention which assembles in the city to-day. We learn that the members are generally present in the city, and may be be [sic] expected to go to work without delay. A glance at the list is sufficient to satisfy any one familiar with Missouri affairs for the last two years, that the radically loyal element of the State is strongly represented. So far as we enjoy the pleasure of their acquaintance, they are thoroughly in earnest and competent to do good and effective work. We look for nothing else at their hands. The responsibility they are called upon to assume is of the gravest character, and the country looks to them to be swayed neither by fear or favor in meeting and discharging it. We believe the action of the Convention will be such as to satisfy all reasonable expectations on this ground.
What will greatly facilitate the Convention’s labors, is the emphatic instruction it has received from the people, in the last election, upon the main issues to arise in its deliberations. Immediate and unconditional emancipation and the disfranchisement of rebels are the principal measures expected. The first is a very simple proposition, and admits of but one course of action, while the latter will necessarily be more complicated and difficult in its details. On one thing, however, the members of the Convention may rest assured, namely, that the people they represent expect such enactments from them that their enforcement will make the State safe for loyal me to live in, and very unsatisfactory for disloyal ones. The sooner Missouri can be made the home of none but loyal men the better for her.
If any incentive to thorough and fearless work were needed by the members of the Convention about to assemble, they would have it in contemplating the popular verdict pronounced upon the Convention which adjourned little more than one year ago. That body saw fit to pursue a conservative and compromising course. Never was repudiation more complete than that which it has encountered. Not only has its policy been condemned in the call of a new Convention, pledged to a different course, but with the exception of a very few men in the former body, who there radically differed from the great majority of their associates, the members of the old Convention have all been left out of the new. This action of the people means a great deal.
