Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[20] age; his features expressed great mental and moral energy, and his voice was clear and musical.

On taking the chair, Mr. Cushing addressed the Convention with great vigor, He declared it to be the mission of the Democratic party to “reconcile popular freedom with constituted order,” and to maintain “the sacred

Caleb Oushing.

reserved rights of the Sovereign States.” He declared the Republicans to be those who were “laboring to overthrow the Constitution,” and “aiming to produce in this country a permanent sectional conspiracy — a traitorous sectional conspiracy of one half of the States of the Union against the other half; those who, impelled by the stupid and half insane spirit of faction and fanaticism, would hurry our land on to revolution and to civil war.” He declared it to be the “high and noble part of the Democratic party of the Union to withstand — to strike down and conquer” these “banded enemies of the Constitution.” ¹ These utterances formed a key-note that harmonized with the feelings of a large body of the delegates, and was a symphony to their action.

At the close of the second day the Convention was in fair working order. Some contests for seats were undecided, there being two sets of delegates from New York and Illinois; but the vitally important Committee on Resolutions, composed of one delegate from each State, had been appointed without much delay. It was the business of that committee to perform the difficult and delicate task of making a platform of principles for the action of the Convention, and the stand-point of the party during the approaching canvass and election. For this purpose it had been sent to Masonic Hall, at five o'clock in the afternoon; and then and there the electric spark, which kindled the prepared combustibles of civil war into a quick and devouring flame, was elicited by the attrition of radically opposing ideas.

The subject of Slavery, as we have observed, was the troubling spirit of the Convention. It appeared in the open Hall, and it was specially apparent in the room of the Committee on Resolutions. A large number of the delegates from the Slave-labor States had come instructed, and were resolved, to demand from the Convention a candidate and a platform which should promise a guaranty for the speedy and practical recognition, by the General Government and the people, of the system of Slavery as a national and permanent institution. Impelled by this resolution, they had determined to prevent the nomination of Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois (an able statesman, and effective popular orator, then in the full vigor of middle age), who was the most prominent candidate for the suffrages of the Convention. They opposed him because he was so committed to the doctrine of “Popular Sovereignty,” as it was called,--that is to say, the doctrine of the right of the people of any Territory of the Republic to decide whether Slavery should