The "crisis" had in reality come on Thursday night, in the committee-room, in the hopeless first double report of its platform committee. The dissolution of the convention did not take place till the Monday following. A great party, after a vigorous and successful life of thirty years, could not die easily. The speeches of Avery and Payne, of Yancey and Pugh, on Friday, were recognized as cries of defiance, but not yet accepted as moans of despair. On Saturday morning. President Buchanan's lieutenant, William Bigler, of Pennsylvania, essayed to ride the storm and steer to a Southern victory. But he only succeeded in securing a recommittal of both platforms to the committee. Nothing, however, was gained by the manoeuvre. Saturday afternoon the committee once more reported the same disagreement in slightly changed phraseology;[6] two antagonistic platforms, presenting the same sharp difference of principle--one demanding Congressional intervention, the other declaring against it. Then the parliamentary storm was unloosed for the remainder of that day with such fury that the chairman declared his physical inability to continue a contest with six hundred gentlemen as to who should cry the loudest, and threatened to leave the chair. On Monday, April 30, the seventh day of the convention, a final decision was reached. The proposal of Butler's report simply to reaffirm the Cincinnati platform was supported by only 105 ayes to 198 noes. Then, by 165 to 138, the convention voted to substitute the minority report for that of the majority; in other words, to adopt the Douglas non-intervention platform. [Illustration: W.L. YANCEY.] The explosion was near, but still delayed, and the delegates of the Cotton States sat sullenly through a tangle of routine voting. Finally, the question was renewed on Butler's proposition to adopt the Cincinnati platform pure and simple. This was the red flag to the mad bull. Mississippi declared that the Cincinnati platform was a great political swindle on one half the States of the Union; and from that time on the Cotton States ceased to act as a part of the convention. As soon as a lull in the proceedings permitted, Mr. Yancey put in execution his programme of demand, disruption, disunion, and rebellion, labored for through long years, and announced by himself, with minute distinctness, nine months before.[7] Led by the Alabama delegation, the Cotton States,--Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas,--with protests and speeches, with all the formality and "solemnity" which the occasion allowed, seceded from the Charleston Convention, and withdrew from the deliberations in Institute Hall.