ntion reassembled, as
provided, at Wheeling. The principal work of this convention was the
adoption of an ordinance to provide for the formation of a new State
out of a portion of the State of Virginia.[60] It provided also for an
election to be held on the twenty-fourth of October (1) to ratify the
ordinance there adopted and (2) to select delegates to a convention to
frame a constitution for the new State, in case a majority of the
voters should decide in favor of formation. The vote at this election
was 18,408 for ratification and 481 for rejection. Accordingly, upon
certification of the same to the governor, he issued his proclamation,
calling the delegates elected to a constitutional convention to meet
in Wheeling on the twenty-sixth of November.[61]

The Constitutional Convention met at the scheduled time in the United
States Court room at Wheeling.[62] Thirty-four delegates of the forty
chosen were present. No time was lost in effecting a permanent
organization of the Convention, in order that the momentous problems
to be solved might be brought before that august body. Not the least
important one of these questions was that of the disposal of slavery.
The questions of the hour were these: Was the new State to be a free
or a slave State? Would the Union admit another slave State?

It was on the fourteenth day of the Convention that Robert Hagar, a
Methodist preacher from Boone county, offered a resolution to the
effect that the convention inquire into the propriety of making the
new State free, by incorporating into the Constitution a clause for
gradual emancipation.[63] A counter proposal was offered on the same
day by Mr. Brown, an ardent pro-slavery advocate, from Kanawha. His
resolution asserted that it was "unwise and impolitic to introduce the
question of slavery into the Convention."[64] Despite the fact that
the organic law of the new State was then being framed, this
pro-slavery champion deplored any attempt of the body to discuss or
decide upon the question of slavery, the most vital question of
economic policy with which the people would be concerned. There were
present, however, other men who were determined to champion the cause
of freedom.

On the sixteenth day of the convention the courageous Mr. Gordon
Battelle, a delegate from Ohio county, offered for reference the
following proposition:[65]

(1) "No slave shall be brought into the State for permanent
residence after the adoption o