Nothing now remained to complete Tennessee’s absorption into the Confederacy but the election of representatives to the Confederate Congress. In October, the Legislature selected Langdon C. Haynes and Gustavus Henry as Confederate Senators. Haynes was a distinguished Democrat of East Tennessee, while Henry was a Whig. Representatives to the Lower House were chosen by a vote of the people. Here again the Whigs and Democrats were equally represented. [1] Cox: _Three Decades of Federal Legislation_. [2] Acts of Tennessee, Extra Session, 1861, pp. 1 to 13. [3] Acts of Tennessee, Extra Session, 1861, p. 14. [4] Acts of Tennessee, 2d Extra Session, 1861, pp. 1 to 11. [5] Acts of Tennessee, 2d Extra Session, 1861, p. 13. [6] Acts of Tennessee, 2d Extra Session, 1861, p. 19. CHAPTER II RESPONSIBILITY FOR SEPARATION Just as radical differences of opinion have existed as to the parties responsible for the whole secession movement, so the action of Tennessee has been variously interpreted. A number of writers have contended that the majority of her citizens were never in favor of secession, and it was only a _coup d’état_ of Governor Harris that carried the State into the Confederacy. This view is a survival of the opinion once so widely prevalent in the North that the Civil War was the result of a conspiracy of a few ambitious Southern politicians, who tricked the mass of the Southern people into a war which never had their genuine approval. It must be confessed that at first view the mode of Tennessee’s withdrawal gives some countenance to this theory. In February, 1861, she had placed her disapproval upon secession by voting down a proposition to call a convention. Instead of yielding to this mandate of the people, Governor Harris and the Legislature had entered into a military league with the Confederate authorities, and having thus surrendered the real control of the State, they again went through the form of appealing to a plebiscite for approval of their action. Nevertheless, we are confident that an unprejudiced examination of these events will show that Tennessee, with the exception of the eastern part of the State, joined the Confederacy as willingly as South Carolina or Mississippi. In the first place, these writers have made the mistake of classing Tennessee among the border States. Mr. Wilson in his _History of the Slave Power_ says: “Exactly why Tennessee should have been taken out of the Union, while Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were prevented from going, no man is wise enough to say. At least, none but general reasons can be given. Exactly why the conspirators were foiled in one case and not in the other, exactly by whom the current of treason was checked and turned in the one and not in the other, the wisest can only conjecture.”