se as the guest of the
President, and under his influence, coupled with that of Black, Holt,
and Stanton, Buchanan assumed a more positive tone in dealing with
secession. Heretofore, with the exception of Major Anderson's
movements at Fort Sumter, and Lieutenant Slemmer's daring act at Fort
Pickens, the seizure of federal property had gone on without
opposition or much noise; but now, at last, a prominent New Yorker,
well known to every public man in the State, had flashed a patriotic
order into the heart of the Southern Confederacy, startling the
country into a realising sense of the likelihood of civil war.

In the midst of this excitement, a state convention, called by the
Democratic state committee and composed of four delegates from each
assembly district, representing the party of Douglas, of Breckenridge,
and of Bell and Everett, assembled at Albany on January 31. Tweddle
Hall was scarcely large enough to contain those who longed to be
present at this peace conference. Of the prominent public men of the
Commonwealth belonging to the three parties, the major part seemed to
make up the assemblage, which Greeley pronounced "the strongest and
most imposing ever convened within the State."[650] On the platform
sat Horatio Seymour, Amasa J. Parker, and William Kelley, the Softs'
recent candidate for governor, while half a hundred men flanked them
on either side, who had been chosen to seats in Congress, in the
Legislature, and to other places of honour. "No convention which had
nominations to make, or patronage to dispose of, was ever so
influentially constituted."[651]

[Footnote 650: Horace Greeley, _The American Conflict_, Vol. 1, p.
388.]

[Footnote 651: _Ibid._, p. 388.]

Sanford E. Church of Albion became temporary chairman, and Amasa J.
Parker, president. Parker had passed his day of running for office,
but, still in the prime of life, only fifty-four years old, his
abilities ran with swiftness along many channels of industry. In
stating the object of the convention, the vociferous applause which
greeted his declaration that the people of the State, demanding a
peaceful settlement of the questions leading to disunion, have a right
to insist upon conciliation and compromise, disclosed the almost
unanimous sentiment of the meeting; but the after-discussion developed
differences that anticipated the disruption that was to come to the
Democratic party three months later. One speaker justified Southern
secessio