ed citizens of the
State. In a speech that was really prophetic, he predicted that to
admit me would be to show dragons' teeth, and that ultimately I would
be followed by a horde which should devour the state.

James L. Orr made a speech in favor of my admission, and said that he
hoped to see the state overrun with just such newcomers. I was,
perhaps, the youngest man in the convention, and was surrounded by men
of the first rank of the State. Scarcely a man in that convention but
had a title. There were ex-senators, ex-governors, ex-chancellors,
ex-judges and ex-members of Congress. It was the intellectual power of
the state to say nothing of ex-generals, colonels and ex-captains of
the confederate army. Probably two-thirds of those men had been
members of the convention which carried the state out of the Union,
and had looked upon that act at the time it was performed as

THE CROWNING END

of a lifetime of agitation and anxiety. Now they were called upon to
undo it all, but they seemed incapable of understanding the true
position of affairs, and were totally ignorant of what had been
accomplished by the war and blind to the logic of events.

For instance, one of the questions early raised and referred to the
judiciary committee was whether Negroes should be allowed to testify
in the courts. Judge Frost of Charleston introduced a resolution that
the ordinance fixing the status of the Negro upon this question should
be passed by the convention. Chancelor Ingalls, who recently died in
Baltimore, opposed the proposition, claiming that a sovereign
convention called as this was for a special purpose, ought not to
legislate. Upon the question of discharging the committee from further
consideration of the subject, there were but two votes in the
negative, Judge Frost, the mover, a man of 80 years, and myself.

Isolated as I was from the start, I was treated by the convention with
the utmost courtesy, and when I occasionally rose to speak, I received
the

UNDIVIDED ATTENTION

of the members, and the rather obtrusive attention of the ladies who
filled the galleries. Such remarks could be heard as: "There, that
Yankee is going to speak."

Another point that agitated the convention was, what laws should be
passed to fix the status of the Negro, and, after a long discussion, a
committee was appointed to frame a code of laws to be submitted to the
legislature, which should assemble under the constitution adopted by
t