Whether the acts of the Convention were wise or unwise, the whole drift of the Constitution framed by it clearly shows that this was its sole and commendable object. But after the Emancipation Act was passed, the Convention, having, against the earnest protest of some of its own members, doggedly set itself to the work of making a new Constitution, lost, to a large extent, the confidence of many of the best loyal men of the State. Even a goodly number of the delegates that composed it became to the extent of their power obstructionists. Absenteeism grew apace, and only by the rigid enforcement of the rules could the Convention be saved from disastrous disintegration. Some of its members fell into a vein of ridicule and one of them offered a string of satirical resolutions, which, though unmitigated balderdash, the Convention complacently spread on its minutes. Most of the constituents of the Convention, while generously recognizing the great merit of much of its work, were often ashamed of what it did and said. In fact its debates were never published, beyond the brief and imperfect reports of them in the daily papers. In explanation of this curious fact, it was hinted that the leaders of the Convention were so mortified by them, that they managed to suppress the whole, both good and bad together. The Convention, after dragging drearily on for seventy-eight days, completed its work. It submitted the new Constitution which it had wrought out to the suffrages of the people, that it might be by them adopted or rejected. On the sixth of June it was ratified at the polls by less than two thousand majority. This slender majority was in part accounted for when, on analyzing the vote, it was found that the saner radicals either stayed at home on election day or voted with the opposition. On the first day of July (1865) the Governor formally proclaimed the vote for the adoption of the “Revised and amended Constitution,” and declared that “it will take effect as the Constitution of the State of Missouri, on the fourth day of the present month of July.” And while this Constitution was not in all respects what the sanest minds demanded, it contained so much that was progressive and admirable that its rejection at that transitional epoch would have been a calamity. While some parts of it were reprehensible, it embodied much of the most advanced statesmanship of the day, and crystallized in fundamental law what we had achieved by the war. It was progress made permanent.