en Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas
seceded from the convention. The West had won but it had lost the South.
And now in the balloting Douglas could not be nominated. He needed 202
votes, he could only poll 152-1/2. The heat grew intense. The delegates,
trying to accommodate their interests, wandered about the old city
talking seriously and not excitedly. There was little drinking. The
local clergy offered up prayers for the success of the convention, for
peaceful solutions. Balloting and balloting! No choice! The twenty-third
of May arrived and the convention, exhausted and half disgusted,
adjourned to meet in Baltimore, June 18th. Douglas had not been
nominated. His party had split just as the Republicans had anticipated
when they were congratulating themselves on Douglas' success in the
Senatorial contest with Lincoln.

Meantime, the seceders went to another hall, adopted a platform that
suited them on the slavery matter, and nominated John C. Breckenridge.

I did not go up to Baltimore to see the end of this melancholy
business. I followed the proceedings in the press. Delegates from the
state delegations which had seceded appeared there on the scene to gain
admission. They were admitted where pledged to Douglas; upon this
decision a second secession took place. Then they nominated Douglas; but
he was now like a runner who has been tripped along the way, and who
stumbles spent and breathless over the goal. He had conjured the West.
It was strong enough to adopt his principles, but it could not prevent
the convention from dividing. It could nominate him, but could not hold
to him the states he needed in this, his greatest trial. And among his
bitterest enemies was that Jefferson Davis whom I had seen in the
Mexican War and who was now Senator from Mississippi. My hatred of the
South nearly reached self-contempt for the way in which my life had been
united to its feeling. All my thinking of the country and the terrible
events which followed the monumental folly of not giving Douglas a
united nomination dates from these days.

On my way west I read in the press of the verbal clash between this
Jefferson Davis and Douglas in the Senate. With an insulting inflection
Davis had said: "I have a declining respect for platforms. I would
sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform you could
construct than to have a man I did not trust, on the best platform which
could be made.