ity organization under names differing in
separate localities. All these various factions and fragments sent
delegations to Baltimore, where they united themselves under the
designation of the Constitutional Union Party. They proposed to take a
middle course between Democrats and Republicans, and to allay
sectional strife by ignoring the slavery question.

[Sidenote] 1860.

Delegates of this party, regular and irregular, from some twenty-two
States, convened at Baltimore on the 9th of May. John J. Crittenden,
of Kentucky, called the meeting to order, and Washington Hunt, of New
York, was made temporary and permanent chairman. On Thursday, May 10,
they adopted as their platform a resolution declaring in substance
that they would "recognize no other political principle than the
Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the
enforcement of the laws." They had no reasonable hope of direct
success at the polls in November; but they had a clear possibility of
defeating a popular choice, and throwing the election into the House
of Representatives; and in that case their nominee might stand on high
vantage-ground as a compromise candidate. This possibility gave some
zest to the rivalry among their several aspirants. On their second
ballot, a slight preponderance of votes indicated John Bell, of
Tennessee, as the favorite, and the convention made his nomination
unanimous. Mr. Bell had many qualities desirable in a candidate for
President. He was a statesman of ripe experience, and of fair, if not
brilliant, fame. Though from the South, his course on the slavery
question had been so moderate as to make him reasonably acceptable to
the North on his mere personal record. He had opposed the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise and the Lecompton outrage. But upon this
platform of ignoring the political strife of six consecutive years, in
which he had himself taken such vigorous part, he and his followers
were of course but as grain between the upper and nether millstones.
Edward Everett, one of the most eminent statesmen and scholars of New
England, was nominated for Vice-President.

This party becomes historic, not through what it accomplished, but by
reason of what a portion of it failed to perform. Within one year from
these pledges to the Constitution, the Union, and the enforcement of
the laws, Mr. Bell and most of his Southern adherents in the seceding
States were banded with others in open rebellion. On the ot