ible; that his "manifest tendency toward
compromises and temporary expedients of policy" rendered it
undesirable; that Mr. Chase united more of the qualities needed in
a President for the next four years than were combined in any other
available candidate; and that steps should be taken at once to
effect a general organization to promote his nomination.

But the effort met with small response. It aroused no popular
sympathy. Its chief effect indeed was to call forth the always
constant if sometimes latent attachment of the people to Mr. Lincoln,
and to develop an irresistible desire for his re-election. A few
days after the issue of the "Pomeroy circular" the Republican
members of the Ohio Legislature passed a resolution in favor of
Mr. Lincoln's renomination, and Mr. Chase availed himself of this
unmistakable action in his own State to withdraw his name as a
candidate. The signal failure of the movement however did not
entirely arrest the effort to prevent Mr. Lincoln's renomination.
Restless spirits still persisted in an opposition as destitute of
valid reason as it was abortive in result. With the view of promptly
settling the disturbing question of candidates and presenting an
undivided front to the common foe, the Republican National Convention
had been called to meet on the 7th of June. The selection of this
early date, though inspired by the most patriotic motives, was made
an additional pretext for factious warfare. An address was issued
inviting the "radical men of the nation" to meet at Cleveland on
the 31st of May, with the undisguised design of menacing and
constraining the Republican Convention. This call passionately
denounced Mr. Lincoln by implication as prostituting his position
to perpetuate his own power; it virulently assailed the Baltimore
Convention, though not yet held, as resting wholly on patronage;
it challenged the rightful title of that authoritative tribunal of
the party, and declared for the principle of one term. There had
been no election of delegates to this Cleveland assemblage, and it
possessed no representative character. It was simply a mass
convention, and numbered about a hundred and fifty persons claiming
to come from fifteen different States.

The platform adopted by the Convention was brief, and in some
directions extreme. It demanded that the rebellion be suppressed
without compromise, and that the right of _habeas corpus_ and the
privilege of asylum be held invio