These names give a fair indication of the character and weight of the convention. It was intended to be, and was, a representative body of true Union men, of the men who had borne persecution for Loyalty's sake, of the men who, having aided in achieving great victory, were resolved that it should not fail to bear its legitimate fruits. The delegates from all the States first assembled in Independence Square, and after a meeting of congratulation, marked by great enthusiasm, proceeded to form into two conventions,--one containing the loyalists who had called the convention, and the other the Northern delegates who had met to welcome them. Of the Southern Convention Mr. Thomas J. Durant of Louisiana was selected as temporary chairman, and Honorable James Speed of Kentucky as permanent chairman; and of the Northern Convention Governor Curtis of Pennsylvania was both temporary and permanent chairman. The motive for thus separating was to leave the Southern loyalists entirely untrammeled in their proceedings, in order that their voice might have greater weight in the country than if it were apparently directed by a large majority of Northern men assembling in the same body with them. The Northern Convention concluded its proceedings on the third day with a mass-meeting larger than any that had ever assembled in Philadelphia. The Southern Convention remained in session full five days. The interest was sustained from beginning to end, and besides the delegates present, a vast assemblage of people thronged the streets of Philadelphia during all the sessions of the conventions. In an off year, as partisans call it, there had never been seen so great excitement, enthusiasm and earnestness in any political assemblage. Mr. Durant called the Southern Convention to order with the same gavel that had been used in the Secession Convention in South Carolina. Governor Hamilton of Texas, who presented it for the occasion, reminded his audience that the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, and that it seemed a poetic retribution that a convention of Southern loyalists should be called to order with the same instrument that had rapped the South into disunion and anarchy.