We should first of all carefully note the fact that although General Lyon in desperate battle laid down his life, he had accomplished his purpose. He had sustained by arms the decision of the Convention in March against secession, and, in spite of all who were disloyally striving to reverse that decision, had held Missouri true in her allegiance to the Union. By his military movements he had put to flight the secession Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and legislature, so that the State had now no governing body except her sovereign Convention. That had adjourned in March to meet in December, unless, on account of some exigency, it should be called together earlier. That exigency was at hand. If the processes of civil government were not to be wholly abandoned, there must be some duly appointed officers of the State, through whom its authority might find legitimate expression. So while Lyon and his devoted soldiers kept the disloyal at bay in the southwestern part of the State, the committee which had been previously appointed by the Convention for that purpose, on the 6th of July, summoned the members of that sovereign body to meet at the capital of the State, on the 26th of that month. In response to this call, it met at the appointed time and place. On the 30th of July, it declared vacant the offices of Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and Secretary of State; also the seats of the members of the General Assembly. Moreover, it provided for the reorganization of the Supreme Court, giving to the Governor, whom they should choose, authority to appoint four new justices in addition to the three which then comprised the court.[71] The Convention also repealed the radical and mischievous war measures enacted in May in secret session, by the now scattered and defunct legislature. On the 31st, it chose as provisional State officers, Judge Hamilton R. Gamble, Governor; Willard P. Hall, Lieutenant-Governor; and Mordecai Oliver, Secretary of State. These provisional officers were inaugurated on the next day, August 1st, making short, sensible, patriotic addresses, in which they showed their keen appreciation of the difficulties that attended them in the anomalous position into which they had been thrust against their will.[72] But radical as these acts of the Convention were, it did not forget the sacred rights of the people. It decreed that its measures should be submitted to them for ratification or rejection, and that on the first Monday in November they should elect by ballot State officers, although on account of the stress and confusion of war, the date was subsequently changed to November, 1862. It also in a carefully prepared paper explained to the people of the State the imperative necessity that called them together, and that justified their revolutionary action.