About one-fourth of the counties sent regularly chosen delegates; the rest were volunteers.

In spirit and enthusiasm it was rather a mass-meeting than a convention; but every man present was in some sort a leader in his own locality.

The assemblage was much more representative than similar bodies gathered by the ordinary caucus machinery.

It was an earnest and determined council of five or six hundred cool, sagacious, independent thinkers, called together by a great public exigency, led and directed by the first minds of the State.

Not only did it show a brilliant array of eminent names, but a remarkable contrast of former antagonisms: Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, Abolitionists; Norman B.Judd, Richard Yates, Ebenezer Peck, Leonard Swett, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, Owen Lovejoy, Orville H.Browning, Ichabod Godding, Archibald Williams, and many more.