FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   567   568   569   570   571   572   573   574   575   576   577   578   579   580   581   582   583   584   585   586   587   588   589   590   591  
592   593   594   595   596   597   598   599   600   601   602   603   604   605   606   607   608   609   610   611   612   613   614   615   616   >>   >|  
eetest smiles and with an occasional clapping of hands."[526] [Footnote 526: _Ibid._, p. 68.] All this was telling hard upon the New York delegation.[527] It wanted harmony more than Douglas. Dickinson aspired to bring Southern friends to his support,[528] while Dean Richmond was believed secretly to indulge the hope that ultimately Horatio Seymour might be nominated; and, under the plausible and patriotic guise of harmonising the party, the delegation had laboured hard to secure a compromise. It was shown that Douglas need not be nominated; that with the South present he could not receive a two-thirds majority; that with another candidate the Southern States would continue in control. It was known that a majority of the delegation stood ready even to vote for a conciliatory resolution, a mild slave code plank, declaring that all citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle, with their property, in the territories, and that under the Supreme Court's decisions neither rights of person nor property could be destroyed or impaired by congressional or territorial legislation. This was Richmond's last card. In playing it he took desperate chances, but he was tired of the strain of maintaining the leadership of one faction, and of avoiding a total disruption with the other. [Footnote 527: "There was a Fourth of July feeling in Charleston that night--a jubilee. The public sentiment was overwhelmingly and enthusiastically in favour of the seceders. The Douglas men looked badly, as though they had been troubled with bad dreams. The disruption is too serious for them. They find themselves in the position of a semi-Free Soil sectional party, and the poor fellows take it hard. The ultra South sectionalists accuse them of cleaving unto heresies as bad as Sewardism."--M. Halstead, _National Political Conventions of 1860_, p. 76.] [Footnote 528: "Dickinson has ten votes in the New York delegation and no more."--New York _Tribune's_ report from Charleston, April 24, 1860.] To the Southern extremists, marshalled by Mason and Slidell, the platform was of secondary importance. They wanted to destroy Guthrie, a personal enemy of Slidell, as well as to defeat Douglas, and, although it was apparent that the latter could not secure a two-thirds majority, it was no less evident that the Douglas vote could nominate Guthrie. To break up this combination, therefore, the ultras saw no way open except to break up the conve
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   567   568   569   570   571   572   573   574   575   576   577   578   579   580   581   582   583   584   585   586   587   588   589   590   591  
592   593   594   595   596   597   598   599   600   601   602   603   604   605   606   607   608   609   610   611   612   613   614   615   616   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Douglas

 

delegation

 

majority

 

Southern

 
Footnote
 
Guthrie
 

nominated

 

thirds

 

secure

 

disruption


Charleston
 

property

 
Slidell
 
States
 

wanted

 
Dickinson
 

Richmond

 

position

 
sectional
 
accuse

cleaving

 

heresies

 
sectionalists
 

fellows

 
enthusiastically
 
favour
 

seceders

 
overwhelmingly
 
sentiment
 

jubilee


public
 
looked
 

dreams

 

Sewardism

 

troubled

 

Political

 

apparent

 

evident

 

defeat

 

destroy


personal
 

nominate

 

smiles

 
ultras
 
eetest
 

combination

 

importance

 

secondary

 

Conventions

 
Halstead