Third: timid men were everywhere crying out for compromise. And most of the members of the Convention still hugged the delusion that the political antagonisms, which were then shaking the nation to its foundations, and had already severed seven States from the Union, might be overcome by compromise. To inaugurate measures by which such compromise might be effected some advocated a convention of the border slave States; others of the border slave and border free States; and still others of all the States, and, so long as they cherished hope of such a peaceful adjustment of difficulties, they thought it inexpedient for Missouri to secede. Fourth: most of the Convention believed that the seven States which had already seceded had been carried out of the Union by ambitious politicians; that the people had not been permitted fairly and fully to discuss the question of secession, and freely to cast their ballots for or against it. During the deliberations of the Convention extreme Southern politicians, like Yancey of Alabama, were roundly and bitterly denounced. Moreover, the State pride of the Missourians had been deeply stung by the seceded States. Those States, they affirmed, had rudely snapped the tie which bound them to the Union, without any consultation with the border slave States, and then after they were out of the Union and had gone so far as to set up a Southern Confederacy, they complacently turned around and invited the States whose counsels they had ignored to join them. Missouri felt that she should have been consulted before secession was enacted, and some strong pro-slavery members of the Convention declared in unmistakable terms that they were utterly opposed to following the cotton lords of the South Atlantic and Gulf States. Thus the precipitancy of the hot-headed Southern politicians became no inconsiderable element of the force which kept Missouri in the Union.