breach in our ranks wider and wider." George B. Loring of Massachusetts pleaded earnestly and eloquently for their admission, and begged the convention "to interpose no obstacle, but to invite and assist them to come back." Mr. Hallett from the same State appealed to New York to save the country. We have severed ourselves, he said, from eight, and now we are about to strike a blow that will send off the other seven of the Southern States. "And then," he asked, "what is the convention? Nay, what is the great Democratic party of the Union? Nay, in God's name, what is the Union itself?" Mr. West of Connecticut well represented the difficulties into which these Southern demands were placing Northern Democrats. "If you are determined," he said, "to rend this party and the Union, our homes amid the hills of New England are as safe and sacred as yours upon your sunny plains around you. And we simply ask you that you shall not take a position which shall be tantamount to absolute ruin when we return to our constituents. As to your taunts and threats, we heed them not."

These words of the Connecticut member very well defined the position of Mr. Douglas and his friends in the convention. What they dreaded, what they were compelled to avoid, was this very "absolute ruin" at home. "To submit to these new demands of the Slave Power was "tantamount to absolute ruin" when they returned to their "constituents." The "taunts and threats" they could disregard, as they did all consistency and the moral aspects of the great issue, accepting, as the creed of the party, even in the report presented by Mr. Payne, under the euphemism that the rights of property are "judicial in their character," the baldest doctrines of the Dred Scott decision. The same, too, was more unequivocally announced in the almost unanimous vote subsequently given by the convention, in support of a resolution offered by exGovernor Wickliffe of Louisiana, pledging the party to accept the decision of the Supreme Court as the same "has been or shall hereafter be finally determined" by it, a sentiment which General Butler declared at Charleston to be "enough to make the bones of old Jackson rattle in his coffin," a senti

ment, too, which, as the Supreme Court was then constituted, and according to its decision already announced, differed in no appreciable degree from the majority report which was defeated at Charleston.

Why Mr. Davis and his friends were willing to accept the one and not the other, and why the propagandists were willing to rend the party for a distinction without a difference, are among the inscrutable mysteries that can be solved on no recognized principles of human conduct, unless, on the part of the former, it is referable to that political legerdemain, not infrequent, by which men seek by indirection what they fail of securing openly. Why the latter were willing to destroy the party that had always been its subservient tool, the sheetanchor of its hopes, now that the storm beat most heavily and the dangers which menaced them were assuming their most threatening aspect, can be satisfactorily explained only on the supposition that there were other than human agencies at work, and that a mightier Hand than man's was moving among the discordant elements and clashing forces of that mad hour.

But the die was cast. The fiat had gone forth, and the great Democratic party, with all its prestige of past victories on its banners, and in the plenitude of its power, was to be dismembered. The adoption of the majority report from the committee on credentials became the signal of a rupture similar to that which had taken place at Charleston. The entire delegations of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, California, and Delaware, and portions of Maryland, Kentucky, and Massachusetts, withdrew. These withdrawals, and a motion to proceed to a vote, became the occasion of demonstrations more violent and discreditable than any that were made at Charleston. Mr. Smith of California said: "California is here with melancholy face, California is here with a lacerated heart, bleeding and weeping over the downfall and the destruction of the Democratic party, yes, sir, the destruction of the Democratic party, consummated by assassins now grinning upon this floor." Mr. Butler said: "I will not sit in a convention where the African slave-trade-which is piracy by the laws

of my country is approvingly advocated." Mr. Cushing resigned his seat as chairman, " in order," he said, "to take my seat on the floor as a member of the delegation of Massachusetts," and because "his action would no longer represent the will of the majority." Pierre Soulé of Louisiana, who still clung to Douglas, was terribly severe upon the seceders, and spoke of the "unrelenting war" against him "by an army of unprincipled and unscrupulous politicians."

A vote was at length reached, and Mr. Douglas received all the votes cast but thirteen, and was declared the Democratic candidate for the Presidency. For Vice-President it selected Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama, a gentleman unreservedly committed by his votes and declared opinions against the doctrine of popular sovereignty, and in favor of that of Congressional intervention, even voting, a few days before his selection, in the United States Senate for the extreme doctrines of the Davis resolutions. He, however, declined, spurning the proffered honor, preferring to remain in form with the section where his interests and sympathies really lay. The national committee then, in consultation with Mr. Douglas himself, selected Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia as candidate for the same office, a gentleman, if possible, more fully committed, by past declarations, acts, and affiliations, to the extremest of Southern dogmas, having declared that "capital should own labor," that property in slaves was as sacred and inviolable as any other; and that "neither the general government nor any Territorial government can impair the right to slave property in the common Territories." Surely the annals of political contests will be searched in vain for more marked examples of party profligacy and absolute insincerity than were here revealed, especially in the selection of the two gentlemen chosen as candidates for the Vice-Presidency, men in full and avowed accord with the extremest doctrines maintained by the most violent of the seceders. They who went into the conflict of 1860 with "popular sovereignty' flaunting on their Northern banners, the ringing watchwords of their Northern speeches, but with such admissions in their resolutions, and with such a candidate for the second office, richly merited what they received, a crushing defeat.

The seceders and the delegations of Louisiana and Alabama, who had been refused admission, met at the Maryland Institute on the 28th of June. There were twenty-one States represented. Caleb Cushing was chosen president. The delegates from South Carolina and Florida who had been accredited to the Richmond convention were also admitted. A committee of five, Mr. Cushing chairman, was chosen to prepare an address on "the principles of the party." The resolutions offered by Mr. Avery at Charleston were unanimously adopted. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, and General Joseph Lane of Oregon, were then unanimously adopted as candidates for President and Vice-President, and the convention adjourned.

In the mean time the seceding convention at Charleston had held its adjourned meeting at Richmond on the 12th. It adjourned to the 21st, and then continued to meet and adjourn from day to day, awaiting the action of the Baltimore seceding convention. After the action of the latter, it adopted its platform and candidates, and adjourned sine die.

CHAPTER LV.

CONSTITUTIONAL UNION AND REPUBLICAN CONVENTIONS, AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1860.

"Constitutional " convention. No platform. — Candidates. — Speeches of Lee, Hillard, and Brooks. - Republican convention. - Platform. Amendment. --Names for candidates proposed. - Seward and Lincoln. Seward leads. Strong fight against him. - Lincoln selected. - Hamlin for Vice-President. Great enthusiasm. Friends of Seward disappointed. - Canvass. Men en"Radical" and Garrison aboligaged. Prominent part of Mr. Seward. tionists. Their course. - Breckinridge and Lane occupy extreme Southern ground. Equivocal and inconsistent position of Douglas and Johnson. - Bell and Everett. Antecedents and position. Congressional debate. Heated contest. Combinations in several States. — Douglas concedes Lincoln's election. His fealty to the Union. - Visits the South. - Responses to ques tions. - Mobile “Register.” — Eminent Republicans engaged in the canvass. - Remarkable speeches of Mr. Seward. - Advanced ground. - Speech to his neighbors. - Canvass closed by Lincoln's election. Votes. Lincoln in a minority. Victory, though incomplete, a great advance for the cause of freedom. Slaveholders' view.

THE Constitutional Union National Convention met at Baltimore the 9th of May. John J. Crittenden called it to order, and Washington Hunt of New York presided. A platform, reported by Joseph R. Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, affirming that experience had demonstrated that platforms adopted by partisan conventions had the effect to mislead and deceive the people, declared it to be the part of both patriotism and duty to recognize no political principles other than "the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws." John Bell received the nomination for President on the second ballot. Mr. Henry of Tennessee, a grandson of Patrick Henry, in behalf of his State, responded, paid a glowing tribute to the character of the nominee, and spoke eloquently for the Union. The eloquent grandson of the great orator of the Revolution, while he was pouring his glowing words into the enraptured ears of the applauding con