"Come as the winds come, when forests are rended; Come as the waves come, when navies are stranded." The influence was irresistible; the audience rose and acknowledged the speaker's power with cheer upon cheer. Unfortunately the speech was never reported; but its effect lives vividly in the memory of all who heard it, and it crowned his right to popular leadership in his own State, which thereafter was never disputed.

The organization of the Republican party for the nation at large proceeded very much in the same manner as that for the State of Illinois. Pursuant to separate preliminary correspondence and calls from State committees, a general meeting of prominent Republicans or anti-Nebraska politicians from all parts of the North, and even from a few border slave States, came together at Pittsburgh on Washington's birthday, February 22d. Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania sent the largest contingents; but around this great central nucleus were gathered small but earnest delegations, aggregating between three and four hundred zealous leaders, representing twenty-eight States and territories. It was merely an informal mass convention; but many of the delegates were men of national character, each of whose names was itself a sufficient credential. Above all, the members caught the inspiration of wisdom from their opportunity; they were cautious, moderate, conciliatory, and unambitious to act beyond the requirements of the hour. They contented themselves with the usual parliamentary routine; appointed a committee on national organization; issued a call for a delegate convention; and adopted and put forth a stirring address to the country. Their resolutions were brief, and formulated but four demands: the repeal of all laws which allow the introduction of slavery into territories once consecrated to freedom; resistance by constitutional means to slavery in any United States territory; the immediate admission of Kansas as a free State, and the overthrow of the present national Administration.

In response to the official call embodied in the Pittsburgh address, the first national convention of the Republican party met at Philadelphia on the 17th of June, 1856. The character and dignity of the Pittsburgh proceedings assured the new party of immediate prestige and acceptance; with so favorable a sponsorship it sprang full-armed into the political conflict. That conflict which opened the year with the long congressional contest over the speakership, and which found its only solution in the choice of Banks by a plurality vote, had been fed by fierce congressional debates, by presidential messages and proclama

tions, by national conventions, by the Sumner assault, by the Kansas war; the body politic throbbed with activity and excitement in every fiber. Every free State and several border States and territories were represented in the Philadelphia convention; its regular and irregular delegates counted nearly a full thousand of eager local leaders, full of the zeal of new proselytes.

The party was too young and its prospect of immediate success altogether too slender to develop any serious rivalry for a presidential nomination. Because its strength lay evidently among the former adherents of the now dissolved and abandoned Whig party, Seward naturally took highest rank in leadership; after him stood Chase as the representative of the independent Democrats, who, bringing fewer voters, had nevertheless contributed the main share of the courageous pioneer work. It is, however, a just tribute to their sagacity that they were willing to wait for the maturer strength and riper opportunities of the new organization. Mr. Justice McLean of the Supreme Bench, an eminent jurist, a faithful Whig, whose character happily combined both the energy and the conservatism of the great West, also had a large following; but as might have been expected, the convention found a more typical leader, young in years, daring in character, brilliant in exploit ; and after one informal ballot it nominated John C. Frémont of California. The credit of the selection and its successful management has been popularly awarded to Francis P. Blair, senior, somewhat famous as the talented and powerful newspaper lieutenant of President Jackson; but it was rather an intuitive popular choice, which at the moment seemed so indisputably appropriate as to preclude necessity for artful intrigue.

There was a dash of romance in the personal history of Frémont which gave his nomination a high popular relish. Of French descent, born in Savannah, Georgia, orphaned at an early age, he acquired a scientific education largely by his own unaided efforts in private study; a sea voyage as teacher of mathematics, and employment in a railroad survey through the then wilderness of the Tennessee Mountains, developed the taste and the qualifications that made him useful as an assistant in Nicollet's scientific exploration of the great plateau where the Mississippi River finds its sources, and secured his appointment as second lieutenant of topographical engineers. These labors brought him to Washington, where the same Gallic restlessness and recklessness which had rendered the restraint of schools insupportable brought about an attachment, elopement, and

marriage with the daughter of Senator Benton of Missouri.

Reconciliation followed in good time; and the unexplored great West being Benton's peculiar hobby, through his influence Frémont was sent with an exploring party to the Rocky Mountains. Under his command similar expeditions were repeated again and again to that yet mysterious wonderland; and never were the wildest fictions read with more avidity than his official reports of daily adventure and danger and discovery, of scaling unclimbed mountains, wrecking his canoes on the rapids of unvisited rivers, parleying or battling with hostile Indians, or facing starvation while hemmed in by trackless snows. One of these journeys had led him to the Pacific coast when our war with Mexico let loose the spirit of revolution in the then Mexican province of California. With the abandon of a petrel in a storm, Frémont joined his little company of explorers to the insurrectionary faction, organized the revolt, improvised and took command of a mounted regiment, overturned the tottering local Mexican authority and put her remnant of officials to flight, setting up instead a temporary government under a declaration of independence. VOL. XXXIV.-15.

With others he skillfully assisted in turning. this movement into a conquest of the country for the United States; and when through the famous gold discoveries California was soon afterwards organized and admitted as a new State of the Union, Frémont became for a brief period one of her first United States Senators.

So salient a record could not well be without strong contrasts, and of these unsparing criticism took advantage. High romance was changed to merciless ridicule by thousands of sharp newspaper quills in the savage dissections to which presidential candidates are subjected. Hostile journals delineated Frémont as a shallow, vainglorious, "woolly-horse," "mule-eating," "free-love," "nigger-embracing" black Republican; an extravagant, insubordinate, reckless adventurer; a financial spendthrift and political mountebank. As the reading public is not always skillful in winnowing truth from libel when artfully mixed in print, even the grossest calumnies were not without their effect in contributing to his defeat. To the sanguine zeal of the new Republican party, however, Frémont was for the hour a heroic and ideal leader; for upon the vital point at issue, his antislavery votes and

humanity had the Rebellion, even then being vaguely devised by Southern Hotspurs, burst upon the nation in the winter of 1856, with the nation's sword of commander-in-chief in the hand of the impulsive Frémont, and Lincoln, inheriting the patient wariness and cool blood of three generations of pioneers and Indian-fighters, wielding only the powerless gavel of Vice-President? But the hour of destiny had not yet struck.

The platform devised by the Philadelphia convention was unusually bold in its affirmations, and most happy in its phraseology. Not only did it "deny the authority of Congress, or of a territorial legislature, of any individual or association of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States;" it further "Resolved, that the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign power over the territories of the United States for their government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism,- polygamy and slavery." At Buchanan, recently nominated by the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, it aimed a barbed shaft: "Resolved, that the highwayman's plea that 'might makes right,' embodied in the Ostend circular, was in every respect unworthy of American diplomacy, and would bring shame and dishonor upon any government or people that gave it their sanction." It demanded the maintenance of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, of the Federal Constitution, of the rights of the States, and the union of the States. It favored a Pacific railroad, congressional appropriations for national rivers and harbors; it affirmed liberty of conscience and equality of rights; it arraigned the policy of the Administration; demanded the immediate admission of Kansas as a State, and invited "the affiliation and coöperation of men of all parties, however differing from them in other respects, in support of the principles declared."

The nominees and platform of the Philadelphia convention were accepted by the opposition voters of the free States with an alacrity and an enthusiasm beyond the calculation of even the most sanguine; and in November a vote was recorded in their support which, though then unsuccessful, laid the secure foundation of an early victory, and permanently established a great party destined to carry the country through trials and vicissitudes equal in convention-not for publication, but merely as a private expression of his feelings to an old acquaintance:

"SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 27, 1856. "HON. JOHN VAN DYKE.

MY DEAR SIR: Allow me to thank you for your kind notice of me in the Philadelphia convention.

magnitude and results to any which the world had hitherto witnessed.

In the present year none of the presidential honors were reserved for the State of Illinois. While Lincoln thus narrowly missed a nomination for the second place on the Republican ticket, his fellow-citizen and competitor, Douglas, failed equally to obtain the nomination he so much coveted as the candidate of the Democratic party. The Democratic national convention had met at Cincinnati on the 2d day of June, 1856. If Douglas flattered himself that such eminent services as he had rendered the South would now find their reward, his disappointment must have been severe. A frequent phenomenon of human nature again occurred. While the benefits he had conferred were lightly estimated or totally forgotten, former injuries inflicted in his name were keenly remembered and resented. But three prominent candidates, Buchanan, Pierce, and Douglas, were urged upon the convention. The indiscreet crusade of Douglas's friends against "old fogies" in 1852 had defeated Buchanan and nominated Pierce; now, by the turn of political fortune, Buchanan's friends were able to wipe out the double score by defeating both Pierce and Douglas. The bulk of the Southern delegates seem to have been guided by the mere instinct of present utility; they voted to renominate Pierce,

"When you meet Judge Dayton present my respects, and tell him I think him a far better man than I for the position he is in, and that I shall support both him and Colonel Frémont most cordially. Present my best respects to Mrs. V., and believe me, Yours truly, "A. LINCOLN.""

because of his subservient Kansas policy, for getting that Douglas had not only begun it, but was their strongest future ally to continue it. When after a day of fruitless balloting they changed their votes to Douglas, Buchanan, the so-called "old fogy," just returned from the English mission, and therefore not handicapped by present personal jealousies and heartburnings, had secured the firm adhesion of a decided majority, mainly from the North.* The "two-thirds rule" was not yet fulfilled, but at this juncture the friends of Pierce and Douglas yielded to the inevitable, and withdrew their favorites in the interest of "harmony." On the seventeenth ballot, therefore, and the fifth day of the convention, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania became the unanimous nominee of the Democratic party for President, and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for Vice-President.

The famous "Cincinnati platform" holds a conspicuous place in party literature for length, for vigor of language, for variety of topics, for boldness of declaration; and yet, strange to say, its chief merit and utility lay in the skillful concealment of its central thought and purpose. About one-fourth of its great length is devoted to what to the eye looks like a somewhat elaborate exposition of the doctrines of the party on the slavery question. Eliminate the verbiage and there only remains an indorsement of "the principles contained in the organic laws establishing the Territory of Kansas and Nebraska" (noninterference by Congress with slavery in State and territory, or in the District of Columbia); and the practical application of "the principles" is thus further defined:

"Resolved, that we recognize the right of the people of all the territories, including Kansas and Nebraska, acting through the legally and fairly expressed will of a majority of actual residents, and whenever the num ber of their inhabitants justifies it, to form a Constitution with or without domestic slavery, and be admitted into the Union upon terms of perfect equality with the other States."

We have already seen how deliberately the spirit and letter of "the principle" was violated by the Democratic national administration of President Pierce, and by nearly all the Democratic Senators and Representatives in Congress; and we shall see how the more explicit resolution was again even more flagrantly

*

On the sixteenth ballot Buchanan received 168 votes, of which 121 were from the free States and 47 from the slave States; Douglas received 122 votes, of which 49 were from the free States and 73 from the slave States; Cass received 6 votes, all from the free States; Pierce had been finally dropped on the previous ballot.-" Proceedings of Cincinnati Convention," p. 45.

The vote more in detail was: For Buchanan, slave States, Alabama, 9; Arkansas, 4; Delaware, 3; Flor

violated by the Democratic national administration and party under President Buchanan.

For the present, however, these well-rounded phrases were especially convenient; first, to prevent any schism in the Cincinnati convention itself, and, secondly, to furnish points for campaign speeches; politicians not having any pressing desire, nor voters the requisite critical skill, to demonstrate how they left untouched the whole brood of pertinent queries which the discussion had already raised, and which at the very next national convention were destined to disrupt and defeat the Democratic party. For this occasion the studied ambiguity of the Cincinnati platform made possible a last coöperation of North and South, in the face of carefully concealed mental reservations, to secure a presidential victory.

It is not the province of this work to describe the incidents of the national canvass, but only to record its results. At the election of November, 1856, Buchanan was chosen President. The popular vote in the nation at large stood: Buchanan, 1,838,169; Frémont, 1,341,264; Fillmore, 874,534. By States Buchanan received the votes of fourteen slave States and five free States, a total of 174 electors; Frémont the vote of eleven free States, a total of 114 electors; and Fillmore the vote of one slave State, a total of eight electors.f

Our recital has carried us forward beyond the regular order of chronological events; we must therefore turn back and once more take up the thread of local political history in the State of Illinois. Among the other work of the Bloomington convention was the nomination of a full ticket of Presidential electors, at the head of which was placed Abraham Lincoln. While this was a gratifying mark of honor, it was also a somewhat onerous post of duty, involving a laborious campaign of speech-making in support of the Republican presidential ticket. This duty Mr. Lincoln performed with faithful zeal, making about fifty speeches before election. Among the addresses which he thus delivered in the different counties, it is interesting to read a fragment of a speech he made at Galena, Illinois, discussing the charge of "sectionalism," the identical pretext upon which the South inaugurated its rebellion against his administration four years afterward:

ida, 3; Georgia, 10; Kentucky, 12; Louisiana, 6; Mississippi, 7; Missouri, 9; North Carolina, 10; South Carolina, 8; Tennessee, 12; Texas, 4; Virginia, 15. Free States, California, 4; Illinois, 11; Indiana, 13; New Jersey, 7; Pennsylvania, 27. Total, 174.

For Frémont, free States, Connecticut, 6; Iowa, 4; Maine, 8; Massachusetts, 13; Michigan, 6; New Hampshire, 5; New York, 35; Ohio, 23; Rhode Island, 4; Vermont, 5; Wisconsin, 5. Total, 114.

For Fillmore, slave State, Maryland, 8.