ns at previous conventions. On
the other hand, the committee on resolutions was opposed to Douglas, and
by a vote of 17 to 16 it reported a platform which was simply a
restatement of the Dred Scott decision, adding only that the Federal
Government was bound by the Constitution to protect slavery in the
Territories. When this report was read in the convention the Douglas
majority rejected it, and accepted the minority report, which was the
"popular sovereignty" of Douglas and the platform of 1856, for which all
the South had stood in the campaign of that year. The convention was
deadlocked, for the South could defeat Douglas for the nomination under
the two-thirds rule, and Douglas could prevent the adoption of any
Southern program or the nomination of any candidate other than himself.
On Sunday, April 30, the clergy and the congregations of the city prayed
as never before for a peaceable solution of the problem before the
country, and every one seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation.
On Monday evening, William L. Yancey, "the fire-eater" of Alabama, after
a most remarkable speech, broke the deadlock by leading a bolt of
practically all the lower Southern States. The Tammany Hall delegation
of New York followed. The bolters held a meeting in another hall and
called a convention of their element of the party in Richmond in June.
The Douglas majority likewise adjourned a day or two later to meet in
Baltimore at the same time.

The historic Jacksonian party had broken into factions. Each faction
nominated a candidate. The Southerners, supported by the Buchanan
Administration, named John C. Breckinridge, a moderate, in the vain hope
of winning some Northern States; the Douglas men offered, of course,
their favorite, and insisted that theirs was the only true Union ticket.
A third convention was called to meet in Baltimore, and its nominees
were John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. This
was the remnant of the Know-Nothings of 1856. They asked for the
maintenance of the Union as it was; but in the ensuing election they
polled three hundred thousand fewer votes than Fillmore had received in
1856.

The Republicans met in Chicago about the middle of May, the advantage of
local sentiment being in Lincoln's favor. The Seward men and their
"rooters" came in trainloads from New York and Boston, and both in
Chicago and Charleston a plentiful supply of whiskey had its share in
the manufacture of en