Ensign H. Kellogg, Mass.
R. G. Hazard, Rhode Island.
E. F. Cleveland, Connecticut.
Wm. O. Noyes, New York.
E. Z. Rogers, New Jersey.
Thaddeus Stevens, Penn.
John C. Clark, Delaware.
Wm. L. Marshall, Maryland.
Richard Crawford, Virginia.
George D. Burgess, Ohio.

Hans Crocker, Wisconsin.
Henry P. Schotte, Iowa.
Aaron Goodrich, Minnesota.
Henry T. Blow, Missouri.
W. D. Gallagher, Kentucky
W. T. Chandler, Texas.
A. A. Sargent, California.
Joel Burlingame, Oregon.
Wm. Ross, Kansas.
George Harrington, Dist. Col

A. S. Paddock, Nebraska.

SECRETARIES.

Chas. A. Wing, Maine.
Nathl. Hubbard, New Hamp.
R. R. Hazard, R. Island.
H. H. Starkweather, Conn.
C. O. Rogers, Massachusetts.
Theodore M. Pomeroy, N. Y.
Edward Bettie, N. Jersey.
J. Bollman Bell, Penn.
Benj. C. Hopkins, Delaware.
William E. Coale, Maryland.
A. W. Campbell, Virginia.
Horace Z. Beebe, Ohio.
D. D. Pellate, Indiana.

S. Davis, Illinois.
Wm. M. Stoughton, Mich.
L. T. Trisby, Wisconsin.
W. R. Allison, Iowa.
D. A. Secamb, Minnesota.
J. J. Kidd, Missouri.
John J. Hawes, Kentucky.
Dunbar Henderson, Texas.
D. J. Staples, California.
Eli Thayer, Oregon.
John A. Martin, Kansas.
H. R. Hitchcock, Nebraska.

Mr. Ashmun, in taking the Chair, spoke as follows:

Gentlemen of the Convention, Republicans and Americans: My first duty is to express to you my deep sense of this distinguished mark of your confidence, and in the spirit in which it is offered I accept of it. I am sensible of the difficulties which surround the position, but I am cheered and sustained by the faith that the same generosity which brought me here will carry me through the discharge of my duties. I will not shrink from the position which is at the same time the post of danger as well as honor. (Applause.) Gentlemen, we have come here to-day at the call of the country, from widely separated homes, to fulfil a great and important duty.

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No ordinary call has brought us together. Nothing but a momentous question would have called this vast multitude together, thing but the deep sense of danger into which the Government is fast running, could have rallied the people thus in this city to-day for the purpose of rescuing the Government from the deep degradation into which it has fallen. (Loud applause.) We have come here at the call of the country for the purpose of preparing for the most solemn duty that freemen can perform. We have here, in our ordinary capacity as delegates of the people, to prepare for the formation and carrying on of a new administration, and with the help of God we will do it. (Loud applause.) No mere controversy about miserable abstractions brought us here to-day. We do not come here on any idle question. The sacrifice which we have made in an extended journey, and the time we have devoted to it, would not have been made except on some solemn call. The stern look which I see on every face, and the earnest behavior which has been manifested in all the preliminary discussion, show that all have a true and deep sense of the solemn obligations which are resting upon us. Gentlemen, it does not belong to me to make any extended address, but rather to assist in the details of the business which belongs to the Convention; but allow me to say I think we have a right here to-day, in the name of the American people, to impeach the administration of our General Government of the highest crimes that can be committed against a constitutional government, against a free people, and against humanity. (Prolonged cheers.) The catalogue of its crimes it is not for me to recite; it is written on every page of the history of the present administration of the Government, and I care not how many paper protests the President may send into the House of Representatives. (Laughter and applause.) We here, as a grand inquest of the nation, will find out for him and his confederates, not only a punishment terrible and sure, but a remedy that shall be satisfactory. (Loud applause.) Before proceeding to business, the Convention will allow me to congratulate you and the people on the striking features which I think must have been noticed by everybody who has mixed in the preliminary discussions of the people who have gathered in this beautiful city; it is that brotherly kindness and generous emulation which have marked every conversation and every discussion, showing a desire for nothing save the country's good. Earnest, warm. generous preferences are expressed; ardent hopes and fond purposes are

declared, but not during the three days I have spent among you all have I heard one unkind word uttered by one man against another. I hail it as an augury of success, and if during the proceedings of the Convention you will unite to perpetuate that feeling and allow it to pervade all your proceedings, I declare to you that it will be the surest and brightest omen of our success, whoever may be the standard-bearer in the great contest that is pending. (Applause.) In that spirit, gentlemen, let us now proceed to business — to the great work which the American people have given into our hands to do. (Loud cheers.)

On Thursday, the 17th, the Committee on Resolutions reported the following platform, which was adopted amid the wildest enthusiasm.

PLATFORM OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Resolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican Electors of the United States, in Convention assembled, in the discharge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations : —

First, That the history of the nation during the last four years has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now more than ever before demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph.

Second: That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Federal Constitution, is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the States, must and shall be preserved; and that we reassert “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Third: That to the union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in population; its surprising development of

material resources; its rapid augmentation of wealth; its happiness at home, and its honor abroad: and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for disunion, come from whatever source they may; and we congratulate the country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or countenanced a threat of disunion, so often made by Democratic members of Congress without rebuke and with applause from their political associates; and we denounce those threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascendency, as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people strongly to rebuke and forever silence.

Fourth: That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions, according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection. and endurance of our political faith depends, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

Fifth: That the present Democratic administration has far exceeded our worst apprehensions in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a sectional interest, as is especially evident in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon the protesting people of Kansas, — in construing the personal relation between master and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons, in its attempted enforcement everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and the Federal Courts of the extreme pretentions of a purely local interest, and in its general and unvarying abuse of the power intrusted to it by a confiding people.

Sixth: That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the system of plunder of the public treasury by favored partisans; while the recent startling developments of fraud and corruption at the Federal metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively demanded.

Seventh: That the new dogma that the Constitution of its own force carries slavery into any or all the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit

provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposi tion, and with legislative and judicial precedent, is revolutionary in its tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.

Eighth: That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; that as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, or dained that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without the process of law, it becomes our duty, by legis lation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempt to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.

Ninth: That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave-trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity, a burning shame to our country and age, and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic.

Tenth: That in the recent vetoes by their Federal Governors of the acts of the legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those Territories, we find a practical illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of non-intervention and popular sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas and Nebraska bill, and a denunciation of the deception and fraud involved therein.

Eleventh: That Kansas should of right be immediately admitted as a State under the Constitution recently formed and adopted by her people, and accepted by the House of Representatives.

Twelfth: That while providing revenue for the support of the General Government by duties upon imposts, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interest of the whole country, and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working-men liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence.

Thirteenth : That we protest against any sale or alienation to others