others, received votes for the nomination but, on the first ballot, Fillmore received one vote more than all the others combined. When this result was made known, many Southern members, who had seceded when the platform was adopted, returned. General Call, a seceder, returned to be embraced by Parson Brownlow, who had remained, and Mr. Percy Walker, a seceder, returned, declaring "he wanted no better company than the descendants of the men who had first set foot on Plymouth Rock." On the second ballot, Mr. Fillmore received more than two-thirds of the votes cast, and was declared nominated for President. Call, of Florida, Raynor, of North Carolina, Bartlette, of Kentucky, and Donelson, of Tennessee, were placed in nomination for vice-President. On the first ballot, Donelson received the nomination. Parson Brownlow rose to announce that he would now depart for home and throughout the campaign he would "jump higher and roar louder than any other man in the State of Tennessee."

The Eastern seceders met in New York and nominated N. P. Banks, of Massachusetts, for President. The Alabama State council met to consider the action of the Philadelphia National Council. The national platform of the party was repudiated but the candidates nominated on it were accepted. Mr. Fillmore had never been a member of the order, nor had he ever renounced his early declaration of enmity to slavery. Messrs. White and Shortridge, two of the Alabama council delegates to Philadelphia, in an open letter, refused to support the platform or the nominees. Mr. Percy Walker resigned his seat in the House, at once began a canvass for re-election, on the Democratic platform, and succeeded. Colonel Withers resigned the mayoralty of Mobile, renounced the American party, stood for re-election, as a Democrat, and succeeded.

CHAPTER 16.

Forcing the Issue.

1856.

Co-temporary with its repudiation of all those guarantees of Southern rights, to which the American party had committed itself, by the June platform, of 1855, and with the irreparable sectional breach in the party, yet another new party was brought upon the field, more remarkable in the heterogeneous elements which entered it, and in the rapidity of their cohesion than any political organization known to American history. This second new party was, indeed, un-American in all of its avowed objects. The promoters of it neither expected or desired to apply the principles of Constitutional government to the conditions of the country. Rather was it their boast that the interests of the free States should dominate the government, to the abrogation of the original and still powerful interests of the slave States. At the outset, the leaders declared for the subordination of right to might; the reversion of the age of Washington to the age of the king. One hundred and sixty-one delegates, among them men of fortune and men of fame, representing every free State, and every faction and ism evolved thus far in the free States, convened at Pittsburgh, as if in travesty, on Washington's birthday, February 22, 1856. Horace Greeley, Whig, Francis P. Blair, Democrat, Joshua R. Giddings, Abolitionist, E. Rockford Hoar, American, A. Oakey Hall, type of expert politician, James G. Blaine, representative young leader,

Governors and Congressmen, men who, all their lives, had opposed each other, were now delegates, enthused with a common purpose of revolution. Eight slave States were ostensibly represented, yet, when the names of their delegates were enrolled, they were found, in every case, except Mr. Blair, from Maryland, to be men of position so ignoble at home as to justify the thoroughly sectional purposes of the convention. Mr. Blair was chosen to preside. Then and thus was organized the " Republican" party. Horace Greeley spoke at length, urging a conciliatory course toward the Americans of the free States, all of whom, he said, were devoted to the cause of anti-slavery; Mr. Blair asked for a mild course toward the Whigs of the slave States, because, in all the past, they had stood firmly by the policies of the free States; Mr. Giddings declared the Abolitionists would accept nothing less than a policy radical enough to promise a direct war against slavery, and the speedy extinction of the institution.

The object of the convention having been accomplished -the making of overtures to the Abolitionists, presenting defiance to the Americans and the designation of time and place for nominating candidates for President and vice-Presidentit adjourned; the members in high hope and the country unconscious of the decisive progress in revolution, which its work had accomplished.

Alabama again While the Ala

The more circumspect statesmen of the South were not surprised at the practical unanimity of the North, or discouraged at the vehement denunciations of the institutions and people of the slave States from that quarter. took the lead in meeting the issue presented. bama council of Americans sat, in November, 1855, at Montgomery, the Legislature convened. Quickly an address was sent out to the people, signed, first by the Governor, John A. Winston, by Benjamin C. Yancey, President of the Senate, by the Speaker of the House; signed by seventy-one of the leading men of the State, in all avocations and of all old parties, but the name of William L. Yancey, was not there, nor did he assist in the preparation. He yet awaited the return of his party to the Alabama Platform and its summons to him. The address appealed to the Democratic and anti-Know Nothing

voters of Alabama, to assemble in convention at the Capitol, on the evening of January 8, 1856. So unimportant were the preparations of the new born Republican party held to be, that the elaborate document omitted all mention of them. "It is the plain duty of the people (it said) to take warning from the vigilance, energy and dangerous character of the American party, and to assemble in convention to adopt measures for their future security, and for the preservation of their individual rights; and to determine how, in concert with the conservative patriots of all sections, at Cincinnati, in the coming spring or summer, they may best promote and perpetuate the principle of State Rights and the Union handed down to them by their fathers."

A very memorable convention, of the people was that which met in the hall of the House of Representatives on the evening of January 8. Never before had the little city of Montgomery been so thronged with distinguished visitors. The Bishops, of the Southern Dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church, were there; assembled to organize the most complete University of America, already with an endowment fund exceeding $500,000 and rapidly increasing, to which was given a government and constitution of broad and splendid foundations, unsurpassed in any land-the University of the South. Legislators and eminent counsellors of the Supreme Court bar, leading politicians, Bishops and many fair women came to the meeting. Mr. Yancey took a seat in the throng. It may be safely said, that at no time in his career was he ever found in attendance on a political meeting that a general outcry did not arise from it demanding a speech from him. In response to such a demand now, he delivered a thoroughly considered address, which was an example of determining oratory, unsurpassed in any era by any orator. As period followed period, his countenance ablaze with that peculiar halo which was wont to surround it in his most earnest efforts, the great audience a compact mass of entranced persons, Bishop Polk whispered, as if in soliloquy, magnificent!" Bishop Elliott responded, "grand!" For eight years, he said, he had fed on the bitter herbs of party displeas ure. None could say in truth, that he had ever given aid or comfort, in all that season, to the enemies of his party. Party

46

absolutism, fancying itself secure from the conscience of the people, had proscribed him. But truth had revealed itself at last. The contempt of the people had trampled down the subterfuges of the politicians. Events had vindicated him. In the past he had warned the people of the things they now saw plainly. "As for my humble self (was the closing sentence) I know not that the Creator has endowed me with virtue to do right, though the heavens fall, but I thank God that I have had the courage to obey the dictates of my reason and to abide by the restraint of my conscience, even at the sacrifice of the favors of the Democratic party!"

While the Convention sat, the already long and bitter struggle, in the federal House of Representatives, to choose a speaker proceeded. After two months of unrivalled sectional conflict on the floor, Nathaniel P. Banks, from Massachusetts, received the office. He was an aggressive Abolitionist acting with the American party. With the organization of the House, began the contest between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery delegate from Kansas for the seat allowed to the Territory. Finally a committee was sent to investigate the rights of the two claimants. A volume of eleven hundred pages was submitted, containing the report of the proslavery members for Whitfield and the report of the antislavery members against him. The evidence for Whitfield was so conclusive and the alleged evidence against him so absurd, that, even the House, dominated by Abolitionists, yielded and he was seated, at a cost to the country of many thousands of dollars devoted to agitation by the Republicans. The reports of the committee sent to Kansas, exposed the fury of the civil strife raging there; the debates in the House, over the report, fomented the partisan conflict throughout the country, and the entire proceeding was pre-conceived to assist in giving impulse to the pending Presidential campaign.

Mr. Douglas had long contemplated his own candidature for the nomination, for the Presidency, in 1856, with a sincere desire to unite the West and the South, and thus to save the free States from the inevitable revolution impending the possible ascendancy of the Republican party. The substance of Mr. Yancey's argument, before the convention of January