intention to commission justices of the peace for the purpose of administering the oath of allegiance and opening the polls. He urged the people to resume their accustomed pursuits; refugees were encouraged by an offer of protection to return to the State, and freedmen were instructed in the duties peculiar to their altered circumstances.

By a second proclamation, dated August 8, the choice of delegates to the proposed convention was fixed for September 21 succeeding. Some delay in appointing a date for holding the election was occasioned by a desire to afford the people an opportunity of enrolling their names and obtaining the required certificates.

By such voters as were not included in any of the excepted classes, together with the few who had been able to procure the Presidential pardon, full delegations were chosen in all but three counties. The details of this election accessible to the writer are exceedingly meagre. Owing much to the timely publication and the admirable character of the orders of General Schofield, who had exercised the functions of military governor until superseded by Mr. Holden, the contest appears to have been free from unusual violence, though newspaper correspondents, it is true, reported disturbances at several polling places and mention rumors of rioting.

The convention, which assembled at Raleigh on October 2, was composed for the most part of members who had either openly opposed or reluctantly joined the secession movement. There were few, however, who had not given aid and comfort to the enemy. In other words, they were Whigs and conservative Democrats. Every representative readily took the oath to support the Constitution of the United States. The convention organized by electing Edwin G. Reade, an exmember of the Thirty-fifth Congress, as president. On taking his seat Mr. Reade made an appropriate and conciliatory address.

The Provisional Governor also submitted to the members of the convention a brief message in which he observed that their duties were too plain to require any suggestions from him. North Carolina, he said, attempted in May, 1861, to separate herself from the Union. That attempt involved her She entered the rebellion

1

in protracted and disastrous war. a slaveholding and emerged from it a non-slaveholding State. "In other respects," he declared, " so far as her existence as a State and her rights as a State are concerned, she has undergone no change." He assumed that the convention would insert in the organic law a provision forever prohibiting involuntary servitude in North Carolina. The language abolishing that institution, the form of the resolution abrogating the ordinance of secession and the nature of the action to be taken on the war debt were the most important questions before the convention.

On October 7 the repealing ordinance was passed unanimously in the following terms:

The ordinance of the convention of the State of North Carolina, ratified on the 21st day of November, 1789, which adopted and ratified the Constitution of the United States, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly ratifying and adopting amendments to the said Constitution, are now, and at all times since the adoption and ratification thereof, have been, in full force and effect, notwithstanding the supposed ordinance of the 20th of May, 1861, declaring the same to be repealed, rescinded, and abrogated; and the said supposed ordinance is now, and at all times hath been, null and void.2

The resolution abolishing slavery, reported on the following day, was adopted on the 9th of October, and is as follows:

Be it declared and ordained by the delegates of the people of the State of North Carolina in convention assembled, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than for 1 Ann. Cycl., 1865, p. 626.

1

'This ordinance was ratified by a vote of 20,506 to 2,002; Poore's Charters and Constitutions, Vol. II. p. 1419n; also Three Decades of Federal Legislation, p. 385.

crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited within the State.'

Not without some reluctance there was also adopted a resolution prohibiting any future Legislature from assuming or paying any State debt created directly or indirectly for the purpose of aiding the Rebellion. There seems to have been in the convention a strong element opposed to the passage of such a measure, or at all events who preferred to refer it to a popular vote. The decision of the convention on this subject appears to have been influenced by a telegram from the President to Governor Holden, in which the former says:

Every dollar of the debt created to aid the rebellion against the United States should be repudiated finally and forever. The great mass of the people should not be taxed to pay a debt to aid in carrying on a rebellion which they in fact, if left to themselves, were opposed to. Let those who have given their means for the obligations of the State look to that power they tried to establish in violation of law, Constitution, and will of the people. They must meet their fate. It is their misfortune, and cannot be recognized by the people of any State professing themselves loyal to the Government of the United States and in the Union.

66

.

The convention adjourned October 19 to reassemble on the fourth Thursday of May, 1866. Judge Reade, its president, previously delivered a farewell address, in which he said: Our work is finished. The breach in the Government, as far as the same was by force, has been overcome by force; and so far as the same has had the sanction of legislation, the legislation has been declared to be null and void. So that there remains nothing to be done except the withdrawal of military power when all our governmental relations will be restored, without further asking, on the part of the United States. The element of slavery, which so long distracted and

1 Ratified by 19,039 to 3,970 votes. Poore's Charters and Constitutions, Vol. II. p. 1419n.

'McPherson's Pol. Hand-Book, 1868, p. 19.

divided the sections, has by an unanimous vote been abolished. Every man in the State is free. The reluctance which for a while was felt to the sudden and radical change in our domestic relations—a reluctance which was made oppressive to us by our kind feelings for the slave, and by our apprehensions of the evils which were to follow him — has yielded to the determination to be to him, as we always have been, his best friends; to advise, protect, educate and elevate him; to seek his confidence, and to give him ours, each occupying appropriate positions to the other. It remains for us to return to our constituents and engage with them in the great work of restoring our beloved State to order and prosperity." 1

On

An election, fixed for November 9, was ordered by Mr. Holden for the choice of Governor, members of a General Assembly, county officers and Representatives in Congress. the same occasion the people were to vote on the ordinance abolishing and prohibiting slavery. The action of the convention on the Confederate debt being final, that subject was not referred to the popular judgment.

On behalf of the convention the president and other delegates soon after adjournment proceeded to Washington to acquaint Mr. Johnson with the result of their deliberations. They related to him what has already been placed before the reader. As the convention had yielded what was involved in the war, President Johnson was requested to declare on the part of the Federal authorities that the governmental relations of North Carolina had been reconciled. Notwithstanding what had been done they feared that their State delegation would be excluded from Congress by the imposition of a test oath which few men in that commonwealth could take. The convention, therefore, petitioned Congress, through Mr. Johnson, to repeal the requirement. The President, after expressing his satisfaction with what North Carolina had done, 'Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXXII., p. 127.

reminded the delegates that to make restoration practicable one thing still remained to be accomplished, namely, their acceptance of the amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United States.

The ordinances submitted to the people were ratified at the November election, when Jonathan Worth was chosen Governor over Mr. Holden by a majority of 6,730, in a total of 58,554 votes. The repeal of the secession ordinance was ratified by a vote of 20,506 to 2,002, and that prohibiting slavery by 19,039 against 3,970.

In a dispatch of November 27, President Johnson, thanking the Provisional Governor for the efficient manner in which he had executed his duties, said that the result of the election was greatly to damage the prospects of the State in the restoration of its government, that if the action and spirit of the Legislature were in the same direction it would greatly increase the harm already done, and might prove fatal. He hoped the mischief would be repaired.1

Meanwhile the Legislature during a brief session ratified, with only six dissenting votes, the Thirteenth Amendment, and elected John Pool and William A. Graham United States Senators. Seven Representatives in Congress had been previously chosen.

Mr. Holden, who continued to perform the functions of his office until the inauguration of his successor on the 15th of December, probably owed his appointment to his reputation as a Democratic editor. Though his rise to political prominence was similar to that of the President, he had not the latter's inflexibility of principle. A secessionist in 1856, when the success of Fremont appeared probable, he soon began to recede from that position, and in 1859 was opposed to disunion; subsequently he drifted with the popular current and even went so far in an advanced stage of the Rebellion as to 'Ann. Cycl., 1865, p. 628.