The bitterly-disappointed Secessionists denounced the majority as "Submissionists," and threatened all manner of things. The election occurred on the same day that Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President of the Southern Confederacy. When the State Convention met at Jefferson City, it was found that of its 99 members 53 were natives of either Virginia of Kentucky, and all but 17 had been born in Slave States. Only 13 were natives of the North, three were Germans, and one an Irishman. A struggle at once ensued for the organization of the Convention, which resulted in a victory for the Union men, ex-Gov. Sterling Price being elected President by 75 votes, to 15 cast for Nathaniel W. Watkins, a half-brother of Henry Clay, and a strenuous advocate of Southern Rights. As soon as the Convention completed its organization it adjourned to St. Louis, to avoid the badgering of the pronounced Secessionists, who constituted the State Government, and the clamorous bullying of the crowd assembled in the State Capital to influence its action. 50 On assembling at St. Louis the Convention immediately addressed itself to the duty for which it had assembled. Judge Hamilton R. Gamble, a Virginian, leader of the Unconditional Union men, and afterwards Governor of the State, as Chairman of the Committee on Federal Relations, made a long report, in which it was denied that the grievances complained of were sufficient to involve Missouri in rebellion; that in a military sense Missouri's union with the Southern Confederacy meant annihilation; that the true position of the State was to try to bring back her seceding sisters, and to this effect a Convention of all the States was recommended, to adopt the Crittenden Proposition. An attempt to amend this report by the declaration that if the Northern States refused to assent to the Crittenden Compromise Missouri would then side with her sister States of the South received only 23 votes, but among them was that of Sterling Price, who had begun to drift southward. The Convention adopted Gamble's report, and a few days afterward adjourned subject to call of the committee. The Secessionists were greatly discouraged by the result, and the Legislature also adjourned. Then came another fluctuation in public opinion. The great majority wanted peace. The attitude of the Governor and his faction, who seemed to look toward peace by putting Missouri in a state of defense to prevent the new Republican President from making war, appealed to many, and in the Spring elections the Unconditional Union men were defeated by a small majority, and St. Louis passed from their official control to that of the Conditional Union Men. 51