This act was approved by the Governor on the 21st of January. The election of the members of the Convention took place on the 18th of February, and the Convention met, according to the provision of the act by which it was created, at Jefferson City, the capital of the State, on February 28th, 1861. But if this Convention was to keep the State from secession as some began to hope it might, it was unmistakably clear that it should not continue its deliberations at the capital of the State. Jefferson City was then a small, and to sojourners in it, a somewhat desolate place. Since the legislature was in session the Convention could not meet in its halls, which, for such a body, were the only suitable places of meeting in the city. Instead of that, the delegates were compelled to occupy for their deliberations a small, repulsive court-house. No desks were there provided for them. Moreover, the hotel accommodations were meagre and unattractive, and, most of all, the libraries and reading-rooms of the capital were about equivalent to nothing. The tallow candles and oil lamps which at night gave just enough light in the houses and on the muddy streets to make darkness visible, were far more luminous than the intellectual lights of that then cheerless place; and the light of the legislature then in session was darkness. There was at that time hardly any considerable town in Missouri more intellectually stagnant than its capital. Should the Convention carry on its deliberations there, its members would have few if any facilities for the investigation of vastly important questions that were certain to arise, while all the currents of influence that would flow in upon them, would urge them on to declare for secession. To all this the Union men of St. Louis, together with a few scattered here and there throughout the State, were keenly alive. Dr. Linton, a distinguished physician of our city, and a member of the Convention, said, “When I got to Jefferson City and heard nothing but the ‘Marseillaise’ and ‘Dixie’ in place of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ I felt uneasy enough, and when I heard Governor Jackson speak I felt badly.... I recollect, with my colleague, Mr. Broadhead, hearing ‘Dixie’ played on the streets, and that we stepped up to the leader of the band and asked him to play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner;’ he said, being a foreigner, ‘Me ’fraid to play that.’ We assured him that there was no danger, and he played one stanza of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ but immediately went off into ‘Dixie,’ and of course we went off in disgust.”