ou were not to blame. That
was your position, and it was wrong. If you had taken the position
directly that slavery was right ... you would have triumphed. But you
have gone down before the enemy so that they have put their foot upon
your neck; you will go lower and lower still, unless you change front
and change your tactics. When I was a schoolboy in the Northern
States, abolitionists were pelted with rotten eggs. But now this band
of abolitionists has spread and grown into three bands--the black
Republican, the Free-soilers, and squatter sovereignty men--all
representing the common sentiment that slavery is wrong."[523] Against
this extreme Southern demand that Northern Democrats declare slavery
right and its extension legitimate, Senator Pugh of Ohio vigorously
protested. "Gentlemen of the South," he thundered, "you mistake
us--you mistake us! we will not do it."[524]

[Footnote 523: M. Halstead, _National Political Conventions of 1860_,
p. 48.]

[Footnote 524: M. Halstead, _National Political Conventions of 1860_,
p. 50.]

The admission of the Softs and the adoption of a rule allowing
individual delegates from uninstructed States to vote as they pleased
had given the Douglas men an assured majority, and on the seventh day,
when the substitution of the minority for the majority report by a
vote of 165 to 138 threatened to culminate in the South's withdrawal,
the Douglas leaders permitted a division of their report into its
substantive propositions. Under this arrangement, the Cincinnati
platform was reaffirmed by a vote of 237-1/2 to 65. The danger point
had now been reached, and Edward Driggs of Brooklyn, scenting the
brewing mischief, moved to table the balance of the report. Driggs
favoured Douglas, but, in common with his delegation, he favoured a
united party more, and could his motion have been carried at that
moment with a show of unanimity, the subsequent secession might have
been checked if not wholly avoided. The Douglas leaders, however, not
yet sufficiently alarmed, thought the withdrawal of two or three
Southern States might aid rather than hinder the nomination of their
chief, and on this theory Driggs' motion was tabled. But, when
Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi withdrew their votes, and nearly
the entire South refused to express an opinion on the popular
sovereignty plank, the extent of the secession suddenly flashed upon
Richardson, who endeavoured to speak in the din of the wildest
exciteme