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CHICAGO, MAY 16, 17 & 18, 1860.

ALBANY:

WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1860.

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CHICAGO, MAY 16, 17 AND 18, 1860.

At 12 o'clock on Wednesday, the 16th day of May, 1860, the delegations from various states of the Confederacy, appointed in pursuance of a call issued by the Republican National Committee, assembled in the Wigwam, at Chicago. HON. EDWIN D. MORGAN, of New York, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the Convention to order. He said:

On the twenty-second of December last, the Republican National Committee, at a meeting convened for the purpose in the city of New York, issued a call for a National Convention, which I will now read:

"A National Republican Convention will meet at Chicago, on Wednesday, the 16th day of May next, at twelve o'clock, noon, for the nomination of candidates to be supported for President and Vice-President at the next election.

"The Republican electors of the several states, the members of the People's Party of Pennsylvania and of the Opposition Party of New Jersey, and all others who are willing to cooperate with them in support of the candidates which shall there be nominated, and who are opposed to the policy of the

present administration, to federal corruption and usurpation, to the extension of slavery into the territories, to the new and dangerous political doctrine that the constitution of its own force carries slavery into all the Territories of the United States, to the opening of the African slave trade, to any inequality of rights among citizens; and who are in favor of the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union, under the constitution recently adopted by its people, of restoring the federal administration to a system of rigid economy and to the principles of Washington and Jefferson, of maintaining inviolate the rights of the states and defending the soil of every state and territory from lawless invasion, and of preserving the integrity of this Union and the supremacy of the constitution and laws passed in pursuance thereof against the conspiracy of the leaders of a sectional party, to resist the majority principle as established in this government even at the expense of its existence, are invited to send from each state two delegates from every congressional district, and four delegates at large, to the Convention."

EDWIN D. MORGAN, New York, Chairman.

JOSEPH BARTLETT, MAINE.

GEORGE G. FOGG, New Hampshire.

LAWRENCE BRAINARD, Vermont.

JOHN Z. GOODRICH, Massachusetts.

GIDEON WELLES, Connecticut.

THOMAS WILLIAMS, Pennsylvania.

GEORGE HARRIS, Maryland.

ALFRED CALDWELL, Virginia.

THOMAS SPOONER, Ohio.
CASSIUS M. CLAY, Kentucky.
JAMES SHERMAN, New Jersey.
CORNELIUS COLE, California.
JAMES RITCHEY, Indiana.
NORMAN B. JUDD, Illinois.

ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, Michigan.

JOHN H. TWEEDY, Wisconsin.
ALEXANDER RAMSEY, Minnesota.
ANDREW J. STEVENS, Iowa.

ASA S. JONES, Missouri.

MARTIN F. CONWAY, Kansas.

LEWIS CLEPHANE, District of Columbia.

WILLIAM M. CHACE, Rhode Island.

O. P. SCHOOLFIELD, Tennessee.

E. D. WILLIAMS, Delaware.

In compliance therewith, the people have sent representatives here to deliberate upon measures for carrying into effect the objects of the call.

Usage has made it my duty to take the preliminary step toward organizing the Convention—a Convention upon the proceedings of which, permit me to say, the most momentous results are depending. No body of men of equal number was ever clothed with greater responsibility than those now within the hearing of my voice. You do not need me to tell you, gentlemen, what this responsibility is. While one portion of the adherents of the National administration are endeavoring to insert a slave code into the party platform, another portion exhibits its readiness to accomplish the same result through the action of the Supreme Court of the United States [applause]; willing by indirection to do that which, if done directly, would bring a blush even to the cheek of modern Democracy. [Cheers and laughter.]

While these and other stupendous wrongs, absolutely shocking to the moral sentiment of the country, are to be fastened upon the people by the party in power, if its leaders are able to bring the factious elements that compose it into any degree of unanimity, there seems left no ray of hope except in the good sense of this Convention. [Great applause.]

Let me then invoke you to act in a spirit of harmony, that by the dignity, the wisdom and the patriotism displayed here you may be enabled to enlist the hearts of the people, and to

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