nce to his participation in the National Convention
of his party.

The Convention, meeting in the same city where Abraham Lincoln had
first been nominated four years before, struck its keynote in
opposition to his Administration. Mr. August Belmont, Chairman of
the National Committee, opened the proceedings with a violent
speech. "Four years of misrule," he said, "by a sectional, fanatical,
and corrupt party have brought our country to the very verge of
ruin. . . . The past and present are sufficient warnings of the
disastrous consequences which would befall us if Mr. Lincoln's re-
election should be made possible by our want of patriotism and
unity." In still more explicit terms he went on to picture the
direful effects of that catastrophe. "The inevitable results of
such a calamity," he said, "must be the utter disintegration of
our whole political and social system amid bloodshed and anarchy,
with the great problems of liberal progress and self-government
jeopardized for generations to come."

Ex-Governor Bigler of Pennsylvania was made temporary chairman,
and followed in a speech which expressed similar sentiments in more
discreet and temperate language than Mr. Belmont had used. He
contented himself with general utterances, and was not betrayed
into personal reflections or prophecies of ruin. The organization
was promptly completed, and the character of the platform was
foreshadowed when it was known that Mr. Vallandigham was a ruling
spirit in the Committee on Resolutions. It was a suggestive incident
that Ex-Governor Wickliffe of Kentucky presented letters from two
delegates chosen to represent that State, explaining their absence
by the fact that they were imprisoned by the Union Government,
without cause, as they alleged, but presumably for disloyal conduct.
Various individual propositions were then brought forward. The
temper and purpose of the Convention may be judged from the offer
of a resolution by so conservative and moderate a man as Ex-Governor
Hunt of New York, declaring in favor of an armistice and of a
convention of States "to review and amend the Constitution so as
to insure to each State the enjoyment of all its rights and the
constitutional control of its domestic concerns,"--meaning in
plainer words the perpetuation and protection of slavery. This
policy aimed to stop the Rebellion by conceding what the rebels
fought for. Then came a characteristic proposition from Alexander
Long of