cle 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
confin