It is a suggestive fact that, in carrying out these designs, the political leaders determined, as far as possible, to prevent the submission of the ordinances of Secession to the popular vote. It is not indeed probable that, in the excited condition to which they had by this time brought the Southern mind, Secession would have been defeated; but the withholding of the question from popular decision is at least an indication that there was strong apprehension of such a result, and that care was taken to prevent the divisions and acrimonious contests which such submission might have caused. In the Georgia convention the resolution declaring it to be her right and her duty to secede was adopted only by a vote of 165 to 130. A division of similar proportion in the popular vote would have stripped the secession of Georgia of all moral force, and hence the people were not allowed to pass upon the question. ACTION OF OTHER COTTON STATES. Georgia was really induced to secede, only upon the delusive suggestion that better terms could be made with the National Government by going out for a season than by remaining steadfastly loyal. The influence of Alexander H. Stephens, while he was still loyal, was almost strong enough to hold the State in the Union; and but for the phantasm of securing better terms outside, the Empire State of the South would have checked and destroyed the Secession movement at the very outset. Mississippi followed Jefferson Davis with a vote amounting almost to unanimity. Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama followed with secession ordained by conventions and no vote allowed to the people. Texas submitted the ordinance, after the other States had seceded, and by the force of their example carried it by a vote of about three to one. These were the original seven States that formed the nucleus of the Confederacy. They had gone through what they deemed the complete process of separation from the Union, without the slightest obstruction from any quarter and without the interposition of any authority from the National Government against their proceedings.