ston, Yancey took the same tone with the
convention.

Practically the whole mass of the Northern Democrats were for Douglas
now, and the mass of Southern Democrats were against him. The party was
divided, as the whole country was, by a line that ran from East to West.
Yet it was felt that nothing but the success of that party would avert
the danger of disunion, and the best judges were of opinion that it
could not succeed with any other candidate than Douglas or any other
platform than popular sovereignty. His managers at Charleston offered
the Cincinnati platform of 1856, with the addition of a demand for Cuba
and an indorsement of the Dred Scott decision and of any future
decisions of the Supreme Court on slavery in the Territories. But the
Southerners would not yield a hair's breadth. Yancey, their orator,
upbraided Douglas and his followers with cowardice because they did not
dare to tell the North that slavery was right. In that strange way the
question of right and wrong was forced again upon the man who strove to
ignore it. Senator Pugh, of Ohio, spokesman for Douglas, answered the
fire-eaters. "Gentlemen of the South," he cried, "you mistake us! You
mistake us! We will not do it." The Douglas platform was adopted, and
the men of the cotton States withdrew. On ballot after ballot, a
majority of those who remained, and a majority of the whole convention,
stood firm for Douglas, but it was decided that two thirds of the whole
convention was required to nominate. Men who had followed his fortunes
until his ambition was become their hope in life, wearied out with the
long deferment, broke down and wept. Finally, it was voted to adjourn
to Baltimore. In the interval, Davis and Douglas fell once more into
their bitter controversy in the Senate.

At Baltimore, a new set of delegates from the cotton States appeared in
place of the seceders, but they were no sooner admitted than another
group withdrew, and even Cushing, the chairman, left his seat and
followed them. Douglas telegraphed his friends to sacrifice him if it
were necessary to save his platform, but the rump convention adopted the
platform and nominated him. The two groups of seceders united on the
Yancey platform and on Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for a candidate. A new
party of sincere but unpractical Union-savers took the field with John
Bell, an old Whig, for a candidate, and a platform of patriotic
platitudes. The Republicans, guided in ways they themselve