stance of his speech was a warning to the Douglasites not to put Douglas in nomination and make the breach irreconcilable.

He said: "I charge my Northern friends-and I yet love to call them so-be not deceived. The feelings which have prompted me to remain in this Convention, are, I trust, high and holy. I am prepared to stay here in the hope-and I trust in God it may not prove a fruitless one-that the spirit of our ancestors, that the spirit of brotherly love, that the spirit of concord and patriotism, which hovered over those who framed the Constitution of the country, may hover over and rest amongst and upon us. Be not deceived, I repeat, for in heart and in principle I am with those who have retired from the Convention. Yet I have deemed it my duty to remain among you, and to mingle in your deliberations, with the hope that the cup of conciliation may not be drained to the dregs.

"You have perhaps supposed that the South are not in earnest. You have perhaps cause for the supposition, in the fact that a portion of the delegation remain here in this Convention, that Georgia is not a unit upon this question. Gentlemen, I have been engaged in many controversies in two States, in which my lot has been cast in different periods of my life; and the only question that has ever divided the people of the South, as far as I have seen, is simply the question of time.

I will stay here until the last feather be placed upon the back of the camel-I will stay until crushed and broken in spirit, humiliated by feeling and knowing that I have no longer a voice in the counsels of the Democracy of the Union-feeling that the Southern States are as a mere cipher in your estimation-that all her rights are trampled under foot; and I say here that I shall then be found shoulder to shoulder with him who is foremost in this contest.

All of which was understood to mean-never, never nominate Douglas, or all things dire will happen.

Maj. Flournoy then begged to be indulged in one remark. He was opposed to giving up the ship. The following is one of his paragraphs: "Mr. President, I am a Southern man. Yes, sir, I have been reared amidst the institution. All I have is the product of slave labor. I believe the institution a patriarchal one, and beneficial alike to master and slave. The bread which supports my own wife and tender babe, is the product of slave labor. I trust then that, like Cæsar's wife, I am above suspicion.'

Mr. Gaulden, the slave-trader of Savannah, gave his reasons for remaining in the Convention :

He was a slavery-extension, slave-trade man. He believed the institution to be right, socially, politically, morally and religiously. He believed that, if the institution of slavery were to be abolished, civilization would go back two hundred years. The prohibition of the slavetrade had put an end to all hope of extending the area of slavery at the present time. There was but one remedy at present for the evils the South complained of, and that was, to reopen the African slave-trade. [Cheers and loud laughter.] In this he looked to the Northern Democracy to aid them. [Renewed laughter and cheers.]

He told his fellow Democrats that the African sla e trade man is the

し

Union man-the true Christian man. He told them that the slavetrade of Virginia was more inhuman, more unchristian, in every point of view, than the African slave-trade; for the African slave-trader goes to a heathen land, and brings the savage here, and Christianizes and moralizes him, and sends him down to posterity a happy man. [Cheers and loud laughter.]

Mr. Reed of Indiana. I am with you. I favor it.

He

Mr. Gaulden. Good. Then he would put him down for one. declared that the Virginia slave-trader, who tore a slave family asunder from those ties which cluster around civilization, whether it be the slave or the free man, was far more open to rebuke than the man who brought the African from a land where he has no ties of country or family around him.

He desired not to be discourteous to Virginia; but, with all deference to the State, he believed they were influenced more than they ought to be by the almighty dollar. He had himself purchased some slaves in Virginia, and had to pay from one thousand to twelve hundred dollars, while he could buy a better nigger in Africa for fifty dollars. [Loud laughter and great applause.] Now, if any of his friends from the North would go down to his plantation in Georgia-it was not far from here, and he hoped many of them would-he would show them negroes he had purchased in Virginia, in Georgia, in Alabama, in Louisiana, and he would also show them the native African, the noblest Roman of them all. [Shouts of laughter and applause repeated round after round.]

The applause and laughter on the floor, during this gentleman's speech, were overpowering. He was in deadly earnest, and talked with no little force of expression. He is a tall, hatchet-faced man, with brown complexion, high nose, great eyes, thin, straggling, black beard and black hair. His personal appearance is much like that of Edgerton, M. C., of Ohio.

Mr. McCook of Ohio moved the adoption of the following resolution:

Resolved, That this Convention will proceed at 2 P. M. of this day, by a call of the States, to nominate a candidate for President, and immediately thereafter, to nominate a candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States.

Mr. Rafferty of New Jersey, on the part of his delegation, presented a protest against the vote of the house, overruling the decision of the chair, on the controversy respecting the casting of the vote of that State.

The condition of affairs here and now-Charleston, May 1st, twelve o'clock-is as follows: The seceding Southerners are just calling their Constitutional Democratic Convention to order, at St. Andrew's Hall. A row is in progress in this ball among the California delegates. At this moment, three of them are at sword's points, bickering as to what shall be done and who shall speak the voice of the State. John Cochrane of New York is anxious to make a speech. Mr. McCook of Ohio wants to force a motion to come to a ballot for a candidate for the Presidency at two o'clock. Half a dozen Southern delegations are out consulting, trying to find where they are to go.

One of the Californians obtains full possession of the floor, and proceeds to pour hot shot into the Popular Sovereignty camp. He charged those who had supported the minority platform, with truckling to Black Republicanism. A Connecticut delegate (Gallagher) springs up, white with rage, and black hair flying in his eyes, and raises a question of order, that the gentleman from California has no right to slander the Democracy of Connecticut. He made the point of order, too, that the Californian had no business to stand up and, as with a lash, to belather the men of the North.

California has great happiness in finding that the cap fits the gentleman from Connecticut. He proceeds to say that the South has been maltreated in the confederacy, and says that if the aggressions of the North continue, and the Union should be dissolved, the Pacific States have, thank God, the domain upon which to build up a splendid empire of their own. He concludes by grossly insulting a gentleman from Missouri. This Californian seems eager to vary the exercises by a fight. He looks and talks as if nothing would agree with his stomach so well as a bowie-knife encounter. The insulted Missourian proceeds to make a speech. He would not sit in a Convention where his motives were called in question. The chair had not heard the insult, or he would have called the Californian to order. Missouri proceeded to give forth a doleful sound about the disrupted Democracy. His lamentations were grievous as those of Jeremiah, but not so eloquent or poetic. A tall, black-bearded, ferocious looking Californian gets up, and makes the most amiable speech ever heard, rebuking, in the mildest and kindest terms, his ill-mannered and insolent colleague. McCook of Ohio jumps up and wants to press a vote on the Presidency. John Cochrane wants to speak; but objections are raised, and John can't speak. Seward of Georgia wants to explain his position. After a while, he obtains unanimous consent to go on, and proceeds to tell what he thought of the understanding between the North and South in the Kansas and Nebraska fight-all of which he saw, and part of which he was, as a member of Congress from the State of Georgia. As this letter closes, Seward is making a strong popular sovereignty speech, which is oil upon the feverish wounds of the poor Northern Democrats. He is going home to Georgia to state the case to the people of that State. And now a North Carolinian gets up and encourages the Douglasites, by telling them he is not going out.

Mr. Richardson of Illinois tried to speak comfortably to the people. Mr. Perry of South Carolina, one of the fragments that remained, rose to speak, and was greeted by a storm of hisses from the galleries. Mr. Perry begged the North, making the appeal in the most earnest and pathetic manner, simply to give up the point of controversy. He assured the Northerners that they were wrong, and should give up for the sake of harmony. The Charleston Courier reports him as saying: He deeply regretted the schisms that had been going on. He represented, with his friend, Col. Boozer, only one vote, and if the South all retired, it would be folly for them to remain; so he besought the Convention to give some boon to the South. So far as any practical good could be accomplished, it was a mere abstraction; no issue could arise under it,

for no slaveholder would go into Territories unfit for slave labor, when it was sure to become a free State upon entering the Union. He begged the North to consider these things, and to do all in its power to heal the unhappy differences that had arisen.

Mr. Howard of Tennessee had been instructed to ask of the Convention the recognition of Congressional protection. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Richardson) said that his honor and manhood forbid him from retreating from his position. Was his honor, was bis mauhood, only dependent upon a disregard of constitutional rights? He read, on the part of Tennessee and her sister State of Kentucky, which stood between the two extremes of the country, the following resolution, which he believed would reunite the North and the South, and was the ultimatum of the South:

Resolved, That all the citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle, with their property, in the Territories of the United States, and that, under the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, which we recognize as a correct exposition of the Constitution of the Unted States, neither their rights of person nor property can be destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation.

He also presented a resolution, declaring that on the ballot for President and Vice-President, no person should be declared to be nominated who did not receive two-thirds of all the votes the full Convention was entitled to cast.

Mr. Richardson of Illinois took the floor, when the chair reminded him that the debate was not in order.

Mr. Russell of Virginia said the delegation of that State believed, so far as the platform is concerned, the resolution read by the gentleman from Tenuessee formed a reasonable basis for a union of the North and South. It affirms the decision in the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, and goes no further. So far as the second resolution was concerned, relating to the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, they believed that if the selection of a candidate was made, national in its character, the South would support them, no matter what the action of delegates might be. It might be suspected that the resolution was aimed at one particular candidate. It was not so. Virginia only desired to receive the nationality of the nomination. The South would only be represented negatively in the choice, for her absent votes could not be counted in the affirmative for any candidate. They believed, too, that the true interpretation of the rule would require the votes of two-thirds of the representation to nominate, and not two thirds of those present, aloue. Unless the resolution be offered should be adopted, be was not instructed to cast the vote of Virginia on any question at present in this Convention.

Mr. Howard of Tennessee disclaimed any intention in his remarks to be threatening.

Mr. Caldwell of Kentucky said: When the delegation had retired for consultation, and had declared that the adoption of the resolution read by the gentleman from Tennessee, would be acceptable to Kentucky, and would, they believe, bring back those who had left the Convention, the Kentucky delegation had also taken action on the two-thirds

rule, and had decided that the proper construction of the two-thirds rule was, that it required two-thirds of the vote of the Electoral College to elect.

A motion was made to adjourn, and upon it the vote was taken by States.

When Georgia was called, Mr. Cohen, of that State, said ten delegates remained, and they claimed to have power to cast the vote of the State. The chair decided that the minority had no right to cast the vote of the State.

Mr. Holden of Tennessee appealed from the decision of the chair. He said: Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad. The decision of the chair is most suicidal and destructive. It destroyed the rights of the State.

The decision of the chair was sustained-148 ayes to 100 nays.

The previous question on the motion of Mr. Howard was seconded. The motion to adjourn, on which the vote by States had been called, was lost-92 ayes to 158 nays. Convention, after skirmishing, adjourned until 5 o'clock P. M.

AFTERNOON SESSION.

Mr. Howard rose to a privileged question, and moved to take up his resolution. The chair said it was not a privileged question.

Mr. Howard. Then I will state it as a privileged question.

Mr. Russell of Virginia wished to state that the decision which the chair makes on this question now, will decide whether Virginia will longer partake in the proceedings of the Convention.

Mr. Howard said the time fixed by Mr. McCook's resolution to ballot for a candidate for President had long since passed, and that the resolution was not, therefore, in order. The chair decided that the time named in the resolution would not affect its passage.

The question, shall the main question be now put, was then put, and the motion carried by the following vote:

States.

Yeas.

Nays. States.
Mississippi

0

Texas

Vermont

5

Mr. Ludlow, before the vote of New York was cast, inquired of the chair if he understood that the question of privilege on the meaning