To return to the Missouri Legislature: Lieut.-Gov. Reynolds could, as a lieutenant always can, be more outspoken and radical than his chief, who labored under responsibility. On the day the Legislature met he published an important letter which thoroughly indicates the feeling of the Secessionists at that period. He urged the General Assembly to promptly express the determination of Missouri to resist every attempt by the Federal Government to coerce any State to remain in the Union, or to use force in any way to collect revenues or execute the laws in any seceding State. He denounced President Buchanan's distinction between "coercing a State" and "compelling the citizens of the State to obey the laws of the United States" as a "transparent sophistry." "To levy tribute, molest commerce, or hold fortresses, are as much acts of war as to bombard a city." He also urged immediate and thorough organization of the militia and other preparations for "putting the State in complete condition for defense." If the present controversy could not be adjusted before March 4, the State of Missouri "should not permit Mr. Lincoln to exercise any act of Government" within her borders. This was certainly distinctly defiant, and shrewdly calculated to gather about the new administration all the wavering men who could be attracted by inflammatory appeals to their prejudices against the North, to their State pride, and to their hopes of making Missouri the arbiter in the dispute. Lieut.--Gov. Reynolds followed up his pronunciamento by carefully organizing the Senate committees with radical Secessionists at the head, and the immediate introduction of bills ably contrived to put the control of the State in the hands of those who favored Secession. These committees promptly reported several bills. 33 One provided for calling a State Convention, an effective device by which the other Southern States had been dragged into Secession. Another provided for the organization of the Militia of the State, which would be done by officers reliable for Secession, and the third was intended to extinguish resistance by taking away much of the police power of the Republican Mayor of St. Louis, who had at his back the radical Germans, organized into semi-military Wide-Awake Clubs. All these bills seemed to be heartily approved all over the State, and the Southern Rights leaders were exultant at their success. Apparently the 117 "Doubtfuls" were flocking over to them.