THE BALTIMORE NOMINATIONS
Though the compact voting body of the South had retired from the
Charleston Convention, her animating spirit yet remained in the
numbers and determination of the anti-Douglas delegates. When on
Tuesday morning, May 1, the eighth day, the convention once more met,
the Douglas men, with a view to making the most of the dilemma,
resolved to force the nomination of their favorite. But there was a
lion in the path. Usage and tradition had consecrated the two-thirds
rule. Charles E. Stuart, of Michigan, tried vainly to obtain the
liberal interpretation, that this meant "two-thirds of the votes
given," but Chairman Cushing ruled remorselessly against him, and at
the instance of John B. Howard, of Tennessee, the convention voted
(141 to 112) that no person should be declared nominated who did not
receive two-thirds of all the votes the full convention was entitled
to cast.
This sealed the fate of Douglas. The Electoral College numbered 303;
202 votes therefore were necessary to a choice. Voting for candidates
was begun, and continued throughout all the next day (Wednesday, May
2). Fifty-seven ballots were taken in all; Douglas received 145-1/2 on
the first, and on several subsequent ballots his strength rose to
152-1/2. The other votes were scattered among eight different
candidates with no near approach to agreement.[1]
The dead-lock having become unmistakable and irremediable, and the
nomination of Douglas under existing conditions impossible, all
parties finally consented to an adjournment, especially as it was
evident that unless this were done the sessions would come to an end
by mere disintegration. Therefore, on the tenth day (May 3), the
Charleston Convention formally adjourned, having previously resolved
to reassemble on the 18th of June, in the city of Baltimore, with a
recommendation that the several States make provision to fill the
vacancies in their delegations.
Mr. Yancey and his seceders had meanwhile organized another convention
in St. Andrew's Hall. Their business was of course to report
substantially the platform rejected by the Douglas men, and for the
rejection of which they had retired. Mr. Yancey then explained to them
that the adoption of this platform was all the action they proposed to
take until the "rump democracy" should make their nomination, when, he
said, "it may be our privilege to indorse the nominee, or our duty to
proceed to make a nomination." Other seceders were more impatient, and
desired that something be done forthwith; but as the sessions were
continued to the second and third day, their overflowing zeal found a
safety-valve in their speeches. Mr. Yancey's programme prevailed, and
they also adjourned to meet again in Richmond on the 11th of June.
At the time of the disruption, rumors were current in Charleston that
the movement, if not prompted, was at least encouraged and sustained
by telegrams from leading Senators and Representatives then at their
Congressional duties in Washington. As the day for reassembling in
Baltimore drew near, the main fact was abundantly proved by the
publication of an address, signed by Jefferson Davis, Toombs, Iverson,
Slidell, Benjamin, Mason, and some fourteen others, in which they
undertook to point out a path to union and harmony in the Democratic
party. They recited the withdrawal of eight States at Charleston, and
indorsed the step without qualification. "We cannot refrain," said the
address, "from expressing our admiration and approval of this lofty
manifestation of adherence to principle, rising superior to all
considerations of expediency, to all trammels of party, and looking
with an eye single to the defense of the constitutional rights of the
States." They then alleged that the other Democratic States remained
in the convention only to make a further effort to secure "some
satisfactory recognition of sound principles," declaring, however,
their determination also to withdraw if their just expectation should
be disappointed. The address then urged that the seceders should defer
their meeting at Richmond, but that they should come to Baltimore and
endeavor to effect "a reconciliation of differences on a basis of
principle." If the Baltimore Convention should adopt "a satisfactory
platform of principles,"--and their votes might help secure it,--then
cause of dissension would have ceased. "On the other hand," continued
the address, "if the convention, on reassembling at Baltimore, shall
disappoint the just expectations of the remaining Democratic States,
their delegations cannot fail to withdraw and unite with the eight
States which have adjourned to Richmond." The address, in another
paragraph, explained that the seventeen Democratic States which had
voted at Charleston for the seceders' platform, "united with
Pennsylvania alone, comprise a majority of the entire electoral vote
of the United States, able to elect the Democratic nominees against
the combined opposition of all the remaining States."
This was a shrewd and crafty appeal. Under an apparent plea for
harmony lurked an insidious invitation to Delaware, Virginia, North
Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, California, Oregon, and
Pennsylvania to join the seceders, reconstruct the Democratic party,
cut off all the "popular sovereignty" recusants, and secure perpetual
ascendency in national politics through the consolidated South. The
signers of this address, forgetting their own constant accusation of
"sectionalism" against the Republicans, pretended to see no
impropriety in proposing this purely selfish and sectional alliance.
If it succeeded, their triumph in the Union was irresistible and
permanent; if it failed, it served to unite the South for secession
and a slave confederacy.
If any Democrat harbored a doubt that the proposed reconciliation
meant simply a reunion on the Davis-Yancey platform, the doubt was
soon removed. In the Senate of the United States, Jefferson Davis was
pressing to a vote his caucus resolutions, submitted in February, to
serve as a model for the Charleston platform; and this brought on a
final discussion between himself and Douglas.
[Sidenote] "Globe," May 7, 1860, p. 1940.
[Sidenote] Appendix. "Globe," May 15 and 16, 1860, pp. 312, 313,
and 316.
[Sidenote] "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2151.
[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 2153.
[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 2155.
Davis had begun the debate on the 7th of May by a savage onslaught on
"Squatter Sovereignty"--a fallacy, he said, fraught with mischief
more deadly than the fatal upas, because it spread its poison over the
whole Union. Douglas took up the gauntlet, and, replying on May 15 and
16, said he could not recognize the right of a caucus of the Senate or
the House to prescribe new tests for the Democratic party. Senators
were not chosen for the purpose of making platforms. That was the duty
of the Charleston Convention, and it had decided in his favor,
platform, organization, and least of all the individual, by giving him
a majority of fifty votes over all the other candidates combined. He
reprobated the Yancey movement as leading to dissolution and a
Southern confederacy. The party rejected this caucus platform. Should
the majority, he asked, surrender to the minority? Davis, replying on
the 17th, contended that Douglas had, on the Kansas policy of the
Administration, put himself outside the Democratic organization. He
desired no divided flag for the party. He preferred that the Senator's
banner should lie in its silken folds to feed the moth; "but if it
impatiently rustles to be unfurled in opposition to ours, we will
plant our own on every hill." Douglas retorted, and again attacked the
caucus dictation. "Why," he asked, "are all the great measures for the
public good made to give place to the emergency of passing some
abstract resolutions on the subject of politics to reverse the
Democratic platform, under the supposition that the representatives of
the people are men of weak nerve who are going to be frightened by the
thunders of the Senate Chamber?" Davis rejoined, that they wanted a
new article in the creed because they could not get an honest
construction of the platform as it stood. "If you have been beaten on
a rickety, double-construed platform, kick it to pieces, and lay one
broad and strong, on which men can stand." "We want nothing more than
a simple declaration that negro slaves are property, and we want the
recognition of the obligation of the Federal Government to protect
that property like all other." A somewhat restrained undertone of
personal temper had been running through the debate, and Jefferson
Davis could not resist an expression of contempt for his opponent.
"The fact is," said he, "I have a declining respect for platforms. I
would sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform that
you could construct, than to have a man I did not trust on the best
platform which could be made."
Douglas promptly called attention to the inconsistency of Davis's
method of forcing his resolutions with one breath and avowing his
indifference to a platform with another, especially as Yancey and his
own followers had seceded on the platform and not on the man; but he
did not press his adversary to the wall, as he might have done, on the
insincerity which Davis's sneer exposed. He was hampered by his own
attitude as a candidate. Douglas, who had received 150 votes at
Charleston, and who expected the whole at Baltimore, could not let his
tongue wag as freely as Davis, who had received only one vote and a
half at Charleston, and could count on none at Baltimore; else he
might have denounced him on the score of patriotism. For Jefferson
Davis, like Yancey, only not so constantly, and like so many others of
that secession coterie, blew hot and cold about disunion as occasion
demanded. This same debate of May 17 furnished an instructive example.
[Sidenote] "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2151.
In the beginning of the day's discussion Davis indulged in a
repetition of the old alarm-cry: "And so, sir, when we declare our
tenacious adherence to the Union, it is the Union of the Constitution.
If the compact between the States is to be trampled into the dust; if
anarchy is to be substituted for the usurpation which threatened the
Government at an earlier period; if the Union is to become powerless
for the purposes for which it was established, and we are vainly to
appeal to it for protection--then, sir, conscious of the rectitude of
our course, and self-reliant within ourselves, we look beyond the
confines of the Union for the maintenance of our rights."
[Sidenote] "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2156.
But after Douglas had made a damaging exposure of Yancey's disunion
intrigues, which had come to light, and had charged their animus on
the Charleston seceders, Davis changed his tone. He said there were
not more than seventy-five men in the lodges of the Southern Leagues.
He did not think the Union was in danger from them. "I have great
confidence," said he, "in the strength of the Union. Every now and
then I hear that it is about to tumble to pieces; that somebody is
going to introduce a new plank into the platform, and if he does, the
Union must tumble down; until at last I begin to think it is such a
rickety old platform that it is impossible to prop it up. But then I
bring my own judgment to bear, instead of relying on witnesses, and I
come to the conclusion that the Union is strong and safe--strong in
its power as well as in the affections of the people."
The debate made it very plain that it was not reconciliation but
domination which the South wanted. So in due time (May 25) the
Jefferson Davis resolutions, affirming the "property" theory and the
"protection" doctrine, were passed by a large majority of the
Democratic Senators.
[Sidenote] June 18, 1860.
When the Charleston Convention proper reassembled at Baltimore, it was
seen that the programme laid out by Jefferson Davis and others in their
published address had been adopted. The seceders had met at Richmond,
taken a recess, and now appeared at Baltimore making application for
readmission. But some of the States that withdrew at Charleston had
sent contesting delegations, and it resolved itself into tangled
rivalry and quarrel of platforms, candidates, and delegations all
combined. For four days a furious debate raged in the convention during
the day, while rival mass-meetings in the streets at night called each
other "disorganizes," "bolters," "traitors," "disunionists," and
"abolitionists." When Douglas, before a test-vote was reached, sent a
dispatch suggesting that the party and the country might be saved by
dropping his name and uniting upon some other candidate, his followers
suppressed the dispatch.
On the fifth day at Baltimore the Democratic National Convention
underwent its second "crisis," and suffered its second disruption.
This time the secession was somewhat broadened; Chairman Cushing
resigned his seat, and Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Delaware,
Maryland, Kentucky, and California withdrew wholly or in part to join
the States which had gone out at Charleston.
For the time the disunion extremists were keeping their scheme too
well masked for us to establish clearly its historical record. But
the signs and footprints of their underplot are evident. Here at
Baltimore, as at Charleston, and as on every critical occasion, Mr.
Yancey was conspicuously present. Here, as elsewhere, he was no doubt
persistently intriguing for disunion in secret while ostentatiously
denying disunion purposes in public.
[Sidenote] Halstead, "Conventions of 1860."
But little remained to do after the disruption at Baltimore, and that
little was quickly done. The fragments of the original convention
continued their session in the Front-street Theater, where they had
met, and on the first ballot nominated Stephen A. Douglas for
President by an almost unanimous vote. The seceders organized, under
the chairmanship of Caleb Cushing, in Maryland Institute Hall, and
also by a nearly unanimous ballot nominated as their candidate for
President, John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. Then Mr. Yancey, who in
a street mass-meeting had declared that he was neither for the Union
_per se_ nor for disunion _per se_, but for the Constitution, announced
that the Democracy, the Constitution, and, through them, the were yet
safe.
A month prior to the reassembling of the Charleston "Rumps" above
described, Baltimore had already witnessed another Presidential
convention and nomination, calling itself peculiarly "National," in
contradistinction to the "sectional" character which it charged upon
the Democratic and Republican parties alike. This was a third party,
made up mainly of former Whigs whose long-cherished party antagonisms
kept them aloof from the Democrats in the South and the Republicans in
the North. In the South, they had been men whose moderate anti-slavery
feelings were outraged by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and
the Lecompton trick. In the North, they were those whose traditions and
affiliations revolted at the extreme utterances of avowed abolitionists.
In both regions many of them had embraced Know-Nothingism, more as an
alternative than from original choice. The Whig party was dissolved;
Know-Nothingism had utterly failed--their only resource was to form a
new party.
In the various States they had, since the defeat of Fillmore in 1856,
held together a minority 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 other hand,
Mr. Everett and most of the Northern members, together with many noble
exceptions in the border slave-States, like Mr. Crittenden, of
Kentucky, kept the faith announced in their platform, and with
patriotic devotion supported the Government in the war to maintain the
Union.
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[1] The first ballot stood: Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, 145-1/2;
James Guthrie, of Kentucky, 35-1/2; Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York,
7; R.M.T. Hunter, of Virginia, 42; Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, 12;
Joseph Lane, of Oregon, 6; Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, 1-1/2;
Isaac Toncey, of Connecticut; 2-1/2; Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire,
1.