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

[24] “Constitutional Convention,” and sneeringly called those whom they had abandoned, the “Rump Convention.” On the second day of their session they met in the Theater.¹ The dress circle was crowded with the women of Charleston. They had hitherto filled the galleries of the Institute Hall. Their sympathies were with the seceders, and they now followed them.

President Bayard, a dignified, courtly gentleman, sat near the foot-lights of the stage. The painted scene behind him was that of the Borgia Palace,² around which clustered associations of great crimes. The actors on this occasion, contrary to precedent, occupied the pit, or parquette; and there they performed only the first act of a drama to which the whole civilized world became amazed spectators. They adopted the report of the majority, offered by Mr. Avery in the regular Convention, as their platform of principles, but went no further then. They refrained from nominating a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, and refused to listen to a proposition to send forth an address to the people. Their appointed work for the present was finished. They had accomplished the positive disruption of the Democratic party, which, as a Southern historian of the war says, had become “demoralized” on “the Slavery question,” and were “unreliable and rotten,” ³ because they held independent views on that great topic of national discussion. The paralysis or destruction of that party would give the Presidency to a Republican candidate, and then the conspirators would have a wished — for pretext for rebellion.⁴ The seceders were confident that their work had been effectually performed, and their desired object attained. They well knew that their class held such absolute political control in the Slave-labor States, that the great mass of their constituency would applaud their action and follow their lead. Reposing upon this knowledge, they could afford to wait for further developments; so, on the evening of the 3d of May,

1860.

they adjourned to meet in the city of Richmond, in Virginia, on the second Monday of June following, for further action. To that Convention they invited the Democracy of the country who might sympathize with their movement and their platform to send representatives.

The seceders reassembled in Metropolitan Hall (on Franklin Street, near Governor), in Richmond, at the appointed time, namely, on Monday, the 11th day of June. In the mean time some of the leading Southern Congressmen, among whom were Robert Toombs, of Georgia, and other conspirators, had issued an address from Washington City, urging that the Richmond Convention should refrain from all important action, and adjourn to Baltimore, and there, re-entering the regular Convention, if possible defeat the nomination of Mr. Douglas, and thus, as they said, with well-feigned honesty of expression, “make a final effort to preserve the harmony and unity of the Democratic party” The consequence was, that the Convention at Richmond