The seizure of government property went on through January and February. In Louisiana all the commissary stores were confiscated, and the revenue cutter McClelland surrendered. The mint at New Orleans, containing over half a million in gold and silver, was seized. More than half of the regular army were stationed in Texas, under General Twiggs. In February, at the demand of a secessionist committee of public safety, he surrendered his entire force, together with eighteen military posts. The troops were sent to a Gulf port and there detained. This wholesale seizure of government property, worth some $20,000,000, has brought down upon the South much scathing rebuke. The conduct of Floyd, stabbing his country under the cloak of a cabinet office, cannot be too strongly condemned; but with the seceding States the case was different. Having (so they thought) established themselves as independent republics, they could not allow the military works within their borders to remain in the hands of a foreign power. As to the Government's property right, they recognized it, and proposed to pay damages. The provisional constitution of the Confederacy, adopted in February, provided for negotiations to settle the claim of the United States. The southern leaders were not more anxious to get the slave States out of the Union than to get them into a grand Southern Confederacy. Early in January a caucus of secession congressmen was held at Washington, and arrangements made for a constitutional convention. February 4, 1861, delegates from the States which had left the Union met at Montgomery, Ala., and formed themselves into a provisional Congress. A temporary government, styled "The Confederate States of America," was soon organized. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was chosen President by the Congress, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President. Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808. He graduated at West Point, fought as colonel in the Mexican war, served three terms as congressman from Mississippi, the last two in the Senate, and was Secretary of War under Pierce. After Calhoun's death, in 1850, he became the most prominent of the ultra southern leaders. The new President was brought from Jackson, Miss., to Montgomery by a special train, his progress a continual ovation. Cheering crowds gathered at every station to see and hear him. February 18th Davis was inaugurated. In his address, which was calm and moderate in tone, he declared that reunion was now "neither practicable nor desirable;" he hoped for peace, but said that if the North refused this, the South must appeal to arms, secure in the blessing of God on a just cause. [Illustration: Portrait.] Jefferson Davis.