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PART FOURTH.

THE CONVENTION AND ITS NOMINATIONS.

On the sixteenth day of May the Republican National Convention met at Chicago in a large building put up for the purpose and called the "Wigwam." The doors were opened at 11 o'clock.

Long before that hour the concourse of people assembled around the doors numbered many thousands more than could gain admittance to the building. As soon as the doors were opened the entire body of the Wigwam was solidly packed with men. The seats in the galleries were equally closely packed with ladies. The interior of the hall was handsomely decorated with cvergreen, statuary, and flowers, and presented a striking appearance. There were not less than ten thousand persons in the building, while the open doors displayed to view crowds in the streets unable to obtain more than a glimpse inside of the hall.

At 12 o'clock the Convention was called to order by Gov. Morgan of New-York, Chairman of the National Committee, who named the honorable DAVID WILMOT of Pennsylvania for temporary President.

The Chair named Judge Marshall of Md., and Gov. Cleveland of Conn., to conduct Mr. Wilmot to his seat. Judge Marshall introduced Mr. Wilmot as the man who dared to do right regardless of consequences.. With such a man, he said, there is no such word as fail

Mr. WILMOT addressed the Convention briefly, returning thanks for the high and undeserved honor. He would carry the remembrance of it with him to the day of his death. It was unnecessary for him to remind the Convention of the high duty devolved upon them. A great sectional interest had for years dominated with a high hand over the affairs of the country. It had bent all its energy to the extension and naturalization of slavery. It is the mission of the Republican party to oppose this policy, and restore to the government the policy of the Revolutionary fathers; to resist the dogma that slavery exists wherever the Constitution extends; to read the Constitution as our fathers read it. That Constitution was not ordained to embrace slavery within all the limits of the country. They lived and died in the faith that slavery was a blot, and would soon be washed out. Had they deemed that the Revolution was to establish a great slave empire, not one would have drawn the sword in such a cause. The battle was fought to establish freedom. Slavery is sectional-freedom is national. [Applause.] He deemed it unnecessary to remind the delegates of the outrages and usurpations of the Democratic party.

Those outrages will not be confined to the limits of the slave States if the South have the power, and the safety of the free States requires the Republicans should take the government, and administer it as it has been administered by Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson-even down to Van Buren and Polk-before these new dogmas were engrafted in the Democratic policy. He assumed his duties, exhorting a spirit of harmony to control the action of the delegates.

Committees on business and credentials were appointed. In the afternoon session, the Committee on Organization reported the name of George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, for President, and Vice-Presidents and Secretaries from every State represented in the Convention. The subjoined Committee on Resolutions was appointed:

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On Thursday morning the Convention met at ten o'clock. The greatest enthusiasm was manifested, both inside and outside of the "Wigwam." The entire day was consumed in the consideration of the proper rules to be adopted for the government of the Convention, and in discussing the resolutions reported from the Committee. It was agreed that a majority should nominate the candidates. The following resolutions were adopted by the Convention as

THE 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 Repablican 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.

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"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 inalienable 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 pretensions 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 cotemporaneous expositions, and with legislative and judicial precedent, is revolutionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.

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