tremely hostile feeling on the part of the North-west. The immediate friends of Douglas became rancorous. Their temper was not improved by the fact that in the most conspicuous case, and on the vital point, they were manifestly worsted in argument. The report of Mr. Stevens of Oregon from the committee on Credentials, displays the strength, according to the usage of the party, of the case of the seceders. There was no way of proceeding to business, which to them had a single pointthe nomination of Douglas-but to blow up the Convention. If a single one of the Douglas delegations from the Gulf States should be admitted, the explosion would take place just as if all were admitted. The compromising and trading New Yorkers found an absence of available material for obtaining advantages in political stock gambling. They were alternately bulls tossing up the Douglas stock and bears tearing it down, and yet, through all the fluctuations, they were unable to make a sale or a purchase on which any thing could be realized. The North-west was as determined and impracticable regarding one scheme as the South was regarding another. The Democracy of the North-west rose out of the status of serfdom. There was servile insurrection, with attendant horrors, and Baltimore became a political St. Domingo. The South was amazed to hear its favorite threat of secession despised and hooted at. The seceders were sneeringly asked why they came back? and told that they had no business there that Richmond was the place for them. Yancey had said it would be dishonorable for seceders to sneak back and beg to be allowed to re-enter the Convention. Now, why were they sneaking back? What had they done with their honor? The double-headed mass-meetings held every night for a week, constantly inflamed every antagonism within the party. Every old feverish sore was rent open by speakers from one stump or the other, and the want of unity in the party was so manifest that feeble efforts to make speeches in the old time strain of "conciliation, harmony, every thing for the man, nothing for the principle," were received with derision and remarks abundantly garnished with profanity, that there was no occasion for that sort of twaddle. Just in the crisis of the Convention Mr. Douglas lost his nerve, and wrote by mail and telegraph to his most confidential and influential friends, beseeching them to save the party, if it could be done by withdrawing his name from the contest. It was too late, however. He was the implement of a revolution, and it was necessary that he should be used. He had raised a greater tempest than he had imagined. He had stirred up the storm but could not control the whirlwind. After the Conventions, the feeling between the people of the Theatre and those of the Institute was so fiercely belligerant, that they could not talk in good humor. The fact that a family quarrel is of the most remorseless character, was manifest in the conversation of every group of ten persons to be seen on the streets or about the hotels. Each faction accused the other in the most harsh terms, of being factionists, bolters, traitors, incendiaries, etc., etc.-epithets conveying imputations offensive, in a political sense, being exhausted in vain efforts on both sides to do justice to the subject. have drifted away, and the sunlight of principle, under the Constitution, and of the Union under the Constitution, shines brightly upon the National Democracy. He declared that the Democracy, the Constitution, and through them the Union, were yet safe. In defining his position in regard to the Union, he said: I am, however, no worshiper at the shrine of the Union. I am no Union shrieker. I meet great questions fairly, on their own merits. I do not try to drown the judgment of the people by shrieking for the Union. I am neither for the Union nor against the Union-neither for disunion nor against disunion. I urge or oppose measures upon the ground of their constitutionality and wisdom or the reverse. He said of Mr. Douglas: But I will let Mr. Douglas rest where his friends have placed him, contending, however, that they have buried him to-day beneath the grave of squatter sovereignty. The nomination that was made (I speak it prophetically), was made to be defeated and it is bound to be defeated. Mr. Yancey reviewed very clearly, the scriptural and historical references made in the Douglas Convention by Mr. Green of Ky., respecting the few righteous men of Sodom, and by Mr. Claiborne of Missouri, who introduced the story of Lord James Douglas and the heart of Bruce. And with all Mr. Yancey's power, it is due the truth to say that he was guilty of that terrible offense on such an occasion-too much speaking and contrived to use up very handsomely the brilliant reputation with which he came to Baltimore, as an orator of the first order, and a man of wonderful ability, perfect tact, and fascinating address. He has great and glittering qualities, but the Baltimoreans had over-estimated him. His speech was a disenchanter. He was not calculated to assist his party at all, but rather to place embarrassments in its way. He denied being a disunionist, but his talk respecting the Union did not indicate any warmth of affection for our common nationality. It was very calculating, and to the man who loves the Union for itself, and entertains a sentiment of national pride, which has its origin rather in the warm emotions of the heart, than the cold reason of the head, was offensive and distressing. He proceeded to elaborate the same argument made by Mr. Stevens in his minority report, and did not improve it at all by his redundancy of words. He had the bad taste, too, to enter largely into Alabama politics, and gave details of matters purely local in their nature. The people left the hall by hundreds; yet he spoke on, as if unconscious that instead of captivating the multitudes he was boring them. Cushing became uneasy, nervous and fidgety. Yancey was speaking the people out of the hall, and using up all the time with Alabama matters. It had been intimated that Burnett of Kentucky should respond to the nomination of John C. Breckenridge, but now there was no time for Burnett. Yancey was interrupted once, delicately as possible, to attend to some necessary business, but he could not or would not take the hint, but resuming, talked on and on-most injudiciously irritating the nerves of the people, and tampering with the patience of all who would have been glad to have heard all he had to say on another occasion. He was doing another thing that was undesirable. By talking so loud and long then and there, and putting himself and Alabama so prominently for. ward, he was identifying his name, and the ultraism of Alabama, too intimately and conspicuously with the movement represented in that hall. When he concluded it was evident that there would not be any more speech making. If the eloquence of Yancey had become a weariness, who should dare propose to stand up before the jaded crowd, sick, as all were, of the very sound of the human voice. Mr. Avery of North Carolina offered a resolution of thanks to Mr. Cushing, who, on rising to acknowledge the compliment, was received with extravagant applause. He said: Gentlemen of the Convention-I beg you to accept the expression of my heartfelt acknowledgment of your thanks. I do not intend to say any thing more, except to congratulate you upon the most felicitous termination of your labors, both in the adoption of platform, and in the nomination of your candidates. A motion, by Judge Meek, that the President have power to appoint committees, was adopted. And at eleven o'clock the Convention ad journed sine die. THE CONTEST AT BALTIMORE-THE SPIRIT OF THE SPLIT. When the Seceders appeared at Baltimore, pursuant to the programme of the Southern Congressmen, advertised in their manifesto and perfected at Richmond, the contest between the antagonisms which had been fully developed at Charleston, resolved itself into a simple one on credentials, between the original Charleston delegates, and the delegations from several States, provided to fill up the gaps caused by secession, with the deciding vote in the hand of Dean Richmond, chairman of the New York delegation. Richmond & Co., while able to say whether the Convention should be consolidated by admitting the original Southern delegates, or disrupted by excluding the seceders, could not say, in case of consolidation, who should be the nominee. The friends of Douglas were without confidence in Richmond ("the Dean"), and were only prevented from denouncing him, by the appreciation of their dependence upon him. If he slaughtered Douglas, they had the power and the will to slaughter his man, and would have prevented the nomination of any candidate for whom he, in connection with the South, might have thrown his influence. Hence the hesitation of New York-her long consultations-her vascillation, and retrograde movements. She struggled for a compromise, but both sides were so fierce that compromising was out of the question. The Southerners thought they had compromised enough in coming to Baltimore, and condescending to ask admission into the Convention from which they had seceded. The friends of Douglas could not be expected to throw away the last chance for their candidate, by making up the Convention, so far as possible, out of its original materials. Such a compromise as that would have been, not a capitulation, but a surrender at discretion. They did, at the solicitation, indeed the dictatorial demand of New York, back out from two propositions, and were sorry for it afterward. They had taken the ground that no delegate accredited to the Richmond Convention, should be allowed to enter that at Baltimore. They were drawn from this point by the strong case of Mississippi. They had also declared the necessity of a pledge or understanding, that all delegates entering the Convention, should make or assent to, to the effect that they would support the nominees of the Convention. After urging this for a few hours, and observing the explosive excitement engendered by it, they withdrew it. They also, or rather New York, succumbed respecting their delegation from Georgia. Yet it was impossible to satisfy the demands of the South and preserve the unity of the Convention, without passing under the yoke of Yancey, and they could not consent to that humiliation. The friends of Mr. Douglas finding their boasted availability in candidate and platform repudiated, and themselves treated as "property,' rather than Sovereign, became infuriated. They were animated by passions whose force is terrible. There was in the first place an unappeasable hungering for the spoils, common, I suppose, to all politicians. They had long been placed on short allowance. In yielding to the demands of the South, and following their leaders ambitious of national eminence, they had been deserted by the greater portion of the people of their own localities. They had long been stung by the taunts of their Republican neighbors, that they were serfs of Southern masters, and in the new demands and arrogant intolerance of the South, they felt that they were regarded as inferiors, and treated accordingly. They had assumed that the South was under obligations to them for fighting battles for Slavery, and were exasperated upon discovering that no such obligation was recognized as having existence. They found, in short, that they could not be "sound" on the slavery question, without yielding up their most profound convictions, and all manly instincts. They were prepared to say that slavery should be tolerated-they could even go so far as to say that they did not care whether it was voted up or down-in or out of a Territory-but they were not willing to vote it up, and glorify it as a good thing, and especially acknowledge its political pre-eminence. And behind all this, they represented the purposes of Mr. Douglas, and had taken up his quarrel with the Lecompton wing of the party, and it became their fixed resolution to use every atom of power they could acquire, to vindicate the position of Mr. Douglas and his regularity in the party, and if possible, to assert by authority his control over the organization. They proceeded to Baltimore in a state of stimulated enthusiasm, and partial blindness. They did not know the power and desperation of the South, and were foolish enough to believe the opposition to them in that quarter would quietly subside. They were, however, met in a spirit more intolerant than their own. Virginia, upon whom they had depended to give Douglas the nomination, in the spirit of harmony and according to Democratic usages, was the first to make threats, and finally led the seceding column-the mother of Democracy thus becoming chief of the seceders. The appearance of the Seceders at Baltimore, and their evident pur pose and power to control the Convention or destroy it, produced ex tremely hostile feeling on the part of the North-west. The immediate friends of Douglas became rancorous. Their temper was not improved by the fact that in the most conspicuous case, and on the vital point, they were manifestly worsted in argument. The report of Mr. Stevens of Oregon from the committee on Credentials, displays the strength, according to the usage of the party, of the case of the seceders. There was no way of proceeding to business, which to them had a single pointthe nomination of Douglas-but to blow up the Convention. If a single one of the Douglas delegations from the Gulf States should be admitted, the explosion would take place just as if all were admitted. The compromising and trading New Yorkers found an absence of available material for obtaining advantages in political stock gambling. They were alternately bulls tossing up the Douglas stock and bears tearing it down, and yet, through all the fluctuations, they were unable to make a sale or a purchase on which any thing could be realized. The North-west was as determined and impracticable regarding one scheme as the South was regarding another. The Democracy of the North-west rose out of the status of serfdom. There was servile insurrection, with attendant horrors, and Baltimore became a political St. Domingo. The South was amazed to hear its favorite threat of secession despised and hooted at. The seceders were sneeringly asked why they came back? and told that they had no business there-that Richmond was the place for them. Yancey had said it would be dishonorable for seceders to sneak back and beg to be allowed to re-enter the Convention. Now, why were they sneaking back? What had they done with their honor? The double-headed mass-meetings held every night for a week, constantly inflamed every antagonism within the party. Every old feverish sore was rent open by speakers from one stump or the other, and the want of unity in the party was so manifest that feeble efforts to make speeches in the old time strain of "conciliation, harmony, every thing for the man, nothing for the principle," were received with derision and remarks abundantly garnished with profanity, that there was no occasion for that sort of twaddle. Just in the crisis of the Convention Mr. Douglas lost his nerve, and wrote by mail and telegraph to his most confidential and influential friends, beseeching them to save the party, if it could be done by withdrawing his name from the contest. It was too late, however. He was the implement of a revolution, and it was necessary that he should be used. He had raised a greater tempest than he had imagined. He had stirred up the storm but could not control the whirlwind. After the Conventions, the feeling between the people of the Theatre and those of the Institute was so fiercely belligerant, that they could not talk in good humor. The fact that a family quarrel is of the most remorseless character, was manifest in the conversation of every group of ten persons to be seen on the streets or about the hotels. Each faction accused the other in the most harsh terms, of being factionists, bolters, traitors, incendiaries, etc., etc.-epithets conveying imputations offensive, in a political sense, being exhausted in vain efforts on both sides to do justice to the subject. |