II.

The Convention met at the State House in Annapolis on
Wednesday, April 27, 1864. Of the ninety-six members
elected, eighty were present on the first day. The re-
maining sixteen, of whom fifteen were from the southern
counties, appeared within the next week or two, with the
exception of John F. Dent, of St. Mary's, who did not take
his seat in the Convention till July 7, having been detained
by illness in his family and other domestic causes.

It would have been difficult to have found at that time
a more representative body of Maryland men, nearly all of
them native-born to the state, with two striking exceptions
—Henry Stockbridge, of Baltimore City, a native of Mas-
sachusetts, and Oliver Miller, of Anne Arundel, a native of
Connecticut—who were prominent in the councils of the
majority and minority respectively. The members from
the southern part of the state in particular, were largely
from the oldest and best known families of Maryland, and
showed their conservatism in the fact that they formed the
minority which not only opposed emancipation, but also
nearly all other measures of reform introduced in the Con-
vention.

Five of the members had been in the Convention of
1850-1 which had formed the old Constitution—Messrs.
Chambers, Dennis, Dent, Lee and Ridgely—and J. S.
Berry, of Baltimore County, had been Speaker of the House
of Delegates of the "Know Nothing" Legislature of 1858,
and at this time held the office of Adjutant-General of the
state. Messrs. Goldsborough, Smith of Carroll, Briscoe
and Dennis had been members of the celebrated "Fred-
erick Legislature"¹ of 1861, the two former as pronounced

¹ Suppressed by the military authorities.