t on the result of the
struggle between the Democrats and Republicans.

The Republican National Convention met at Chicago on the sixteenth
of May. It was attended by immense numbers, and its action was
regarded with profound and universal solicitude. The platform of
the Convention affirmed the devotion of the party to the union of
the States and the rights of the States; denounced the new dogma
that the Constitution carried slavery into the Territories; declared
freedom to be their normal condition; denied the power of Congress
or of a Territorial Legislature to give legal existence to slavery
in any territory; branded as a crime the reopening of the African
slave trade; condemned the heresy of Know-Nothingism, and demanded
the passage of a Homestead law. The principles of the party were
thus broadly stated and fully re-affirmed, and the issues of the
canvass very clearly presented. The leading candidates were Seward
and Lincoln, who pretty evenly divided the Convention, and thus
created the liveliest interest in the result. The friends of Mr.
Seward had unbounded confidence in his nomination, and their devotion
to his fortunes was intense and absolute. The radical anti-slavery
element in the party idolized him, and longed for his success as
for a great and coveted national blessing. The delegates from New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, representing a
superficial and only half-developed Republicanism, labored with
untiring and exhaustless zeal for the nomination of Mr. Lincoln,
fervently pleading for "Success rather than Seward." Henry S. Lane
and Andrew G. Curtin, then candidates for Governor in the States
of Indiana and Pennsylvania, respectively, were especially active
and persistent, and their appeals were undoubtedly effective. When
Seward was defeated many an anti-slavery man poured out his tears
over the result, while deploring or denouncing the conservatism of
old fossil Whiggery, which thus sacrificed the ablest man in the
party, and the real hero of its principles. Time, however, led
these men to reconsider their estimate both of Seward and Lincoln,
and convinced them that the action of the convention, after all,
was for the best. On the second ballot Hamlin was nominated for
Vice President over Clay, Banks, Hickman, and others, and the
Republican campaign thus auspiciously inaugurated.

The canvass for Douglas was prosecuted with remarkable energy and
zeal. He was himself the grea