State House Square was a 20-acre center of Georgia state government and the site of its capitol from 1807 until 1868. The State House contained the offices of the governor and the chambers of the Georgia legislature and state supreme court, and from late 1860 through the Civil War it also served as the headquarters of Major General Henry C. Wayne, Georgia's Adjutant and Inspector General, who organized and occasionally commanded the state's military forces. On Wednesday, January 16, 1861, Georgia's Secession Convention of 300 delegates assembled in the House of Representatives chamber, where speakers included Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and James L. Orr, while Robert Barnwell Rhett and Edmund Ruffin attended as observers. After debate, on January 19th the delegates voted 208 to 89 to remove Georgia from the Union. Before Union Major General William T. Sherman's army arrived on the March to the Sea, the square was the tented campground of Milledgeville's garrison of Georgia state troops, including Pruden's artillery battery, Talbot's company of scouts, and the two-company battalion of cadets from the Georgia Military Institute in Marietta under Major Francis W. Capers; Governor Joseph E. Brown's eldest son Julius, age 16, was among the cadets. Federal 14th and 20th Corps forces occupied Milledgeville from November 22 to 24, 1864, and the square became a center of activity for them, with provost guard campsites of the 3rd Wisconsin and 107th New York Infantry Regiments there. Federal troops destroyed the State Magazine, emptied the State Arsenal of six wagonloads of munitions and dumped them into the Oconee River, then blew up the arsenal, damaging nearby St. Stephens Episcopal Church; they also extensively vandalized the church and State House. Inside the State House, soldiers staged a mock session of the Georgia legislature and repealed the Ordinance of Secession, scattered state documents and papers through the halls and grounds, dumped the library from the windows, and held a mock funeral for Governor Brown using an empty Joe Brown Pike crate as a coffin. Damage to the capitol building forced the legislature to meet in Macon's city hall for the rest of the war, Georgia's capital moved to Atlanta in 1868, and since 1880 the square has been the site of Georgia Military College.