In 1860 there were in all Virginia 498,887 slaves, of whom 12,771 were in the forty-eight counties originally constituting the State of West Virginia.[44] With an overwhelming majority of all the slaves in the State located in the East, the people of this section were, naturally enough, profoundly interested in the events then occurring in other pro-slavery commonwealths. Influenced by the secession of six States from the Union and their subsequent formation of the Confederate States of America, Governor Letcher issued a proclamation convening the General Assembly in extra session on the seventh day of January, 1861.[45] According to the act of the Assembly, a state convention was assembled at Richmond on the thirteenth day of February. Forty-seven of the one hundred and fifty-two delegates present represented counties now included in the State of West Virginia.[46] On the sixteenth of April the Convention met in secret session and the chairman of the Committee on Federal Relations appointed early in February reported a measure entitled "An Ordinance to Repeal the Ratification of the Constitution of the United States."[47] The ordinance recited the reasons for the repeal of the ratification of the Federal Constitution, dissolved the union between Virginia and the other States, asserted the complete sovereignty of the State of Virginia, released her citizens from responsibility to the Federal Constitution, noted the date upon which and provided the conditions under which the said ordinance would become effective. It was adopted the next day by a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five. Immediate steps were then taken to form an alliance with the Confederate States,[48] the same being effected on the twenty-fifth day of April. Meanwhile some of the delegates from Western Virginia withdrew from the Convention. When news of the action taken by the Richmond convention reached Northwestern Virginia a storm of protest arose. A vast majority of the citizens of this region were not in accord with the action of the State in seceding to the Confederacy. They were determined, therefore, that the part of the State known as the trans-Allegheny region should be saved to the Union. Resolutions emanating from the meetings held in the several counties joined with the press to denounce the action taken by the aforesaid convention. The Clarksburg[49] meeting, assembled for this purpose on the twenty-second of April, sounded the call for united action and proposed that a convention composed of the twenty-seven counties of Western Virginia should assemble at Wheeling on the thirteenth of May.