June 23, 1860. |
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with the most vociferous applause, and other demonstrations of satisfaction.
On taking the chair, he declared that the body then assembled formed the true National Democratic Convention, composed, as it was, of delegates duly accredited thereto from more than twenty States.
The Convention then proceeded to business with the greatest harmony.
They resolved, that the delegates to the Richmond Convention should be requested to unite with their brethren of the National Democratic Convention, then assembled, on the same platform of principles with themselves, if they felt authorized to do so. They took seats accordingly.
Mr. Avery, of North Carolina, offered the majority report, which he had submitted in Convention at Charleston, and it was adopted without dissent, as the platform of principles of the sitting Convention, and of the party it represented.
After some further business, the Convention proceeded to the nomination of candidates for the Presidency and Vice-presidency, when George B. Loring, of Massachusetts, arose and said: “We have seen the statesmen of Mississippi coming into our own borders and fearlessly defending their principles, ay, and bringing the sectionalism of the North at their feet by their gallantry.1 We have admiration for this courage, and I trust to live by it and be governed by it. Among all these men to whom we have been led to listen, and whom we admire and respect, there is one standing pre-eminently before this country — a young and gallant son of the South.”
He then named John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, as a nominee for the Presidency.2 Vehement applause followed.
A vote by States was taken, and Breckinridge received eighty-one ballots against twenty-four for Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York.
The latter candidate was withdrawn, and the nomination of Breckinridge was declared.
Joseph Lane, of Oregon, was nominated for the Vice-presidency; and after a session of only a few hours, the business was ended and the Convention adjourned.
The South Carolina delegation, who remained in Richmond, formally assembled at Metropolitan Hall on the 21st, according to appointment, and adjourned from day to day until the evening of the 26th, when Mr. Yancey and many others arrived from Baltimore.
The Convention then organized for business, which was soon dispatched.
The platform and candidates offered to the party by the seceders' Convention at Baltimore were adopted by unanimous vote, with great cheering by the delegates and the crowd who filled the galleries.
Then the Convention adjourned.
So ended the Conventions of the divided Democratic party, in the early
1 One of these was Jefferson Davis. In a speech in Faneuil Hall, on the 11th of October, 1858, while denouncing the Abolitionists as disunionists, he said, pointing to the portraits of the elder Adams and others, on the walls:--“If those voices, which breathed the first instincts into the Colony of Massachusetts, and into the other colonies of the United States, to proclaim community — independence — and to assert it against the powerful mother country; if those voices live here still, how must they feel who come here to preach treason to the Constitution, and assail the Union it ordained and established? It would seem that their criminal hearts would fear that those voices, so long slumbering, would break their silence; that those forms which look down from these walls, behind and around, would come forth, to drive from this sacred temple these fanatical men — who deserve it more than did the changers of money and those who sold doves in the temple of the living God.” At that very time, that bold, bad man was doubtless plotting “treason to the Constitution,” and preparing to “assail the Union it ordained and established”--a proper subject for his own denunciations.
2 Mr. Breckinridge was then Vice-president of the United States under President Buchanan, and subsequent events show that he was a co-worker with Davis and others against the Government. He joined the insurgents, and, during a portion of the civil war that ensued, he was the socalled “Secretary of War” of Jefferson Davis.
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