Secession's Opponents

From Alabama: The History of a Deep South State, by William Warren Rogers, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, and Wayne Flynt (The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1994), 184:

Just before the secession vote was taken by the convention, within sight of the capitol, the Episcopal bishop of Alabama, Nicholas Hamner Cobbs, was sticken by a fatal stroke. An opponent of secession, which he believed could not be accomplished peacefully, Cobbs had openly prayed that "if it was God's will" he be spared the anguish of living to see Alabama secede. He did not. Jeremiah Clemens, author of the minority report against secession, wrote his Huntsville friend George W. Neal on the night of January 11 that secession "was celebrated today by the firing of cannon and ringing of bells. Tonight bonfires are blazing, speeches are being made, music is swelling on the air, and every conceivable demonstration of joy and enthusiasm is everywhere being made." Clemens could not restrain his tears when the American flag was lowered and the new flag of Alabama, made by the ladies of Montgomery, was raised. He warned Neal that he envisioned "storms that are gathering," and he could "not see how we are to pass through them." (quoted in Malcolm Cook McMillan, The Alabama Confederate Reader, University of Alabama Press, 1963; reprint, 1993, pp. 36-37)