Vice-Presidents,—At large,—Alfred Macy of Nantucket, Robert T. Davis of Fall River, Ezra W. Taft of Dedham, George Morey of Boston, Samuel Hooper of Boston, Charles W. Upham of Salem, P. J. Stone of Charlestown, B. C. Sargent of Lowell, Ebenezer Torrey of Fitchburg, Joel Hayden of Williamsburg, W. B. C. Pearsons of Holyoke; Suffolk,—Charles Torrey of Boston; Essex,—Henry K. Oliver of Lawrence; Middlesex,—Charles Hudson of Lexington; Worcester,—P. Emory Aldrich of Worcester; Norfolk,—James Ritchie of Roxbury; Bristol,—Samuel O. Dunbar of Taunton; Hampden,—E. B. Gillette of Westfield; Hampshire,—William Hyde of Ware; Franklin,—William B. Washburn of Greenfield; Berkshire,—Walter Laflin of Pittsfield; Plymouth,—Levi Reed of Abington; Barnstable,—James Gifford of Provincetown; Nantucket,—Edward Field of Nantucket; Dukes,—John Vinson of Edgartown.
Secretaries,—George W. McLellan of Cambridge, Andrew Tower of Malden, Philip Cook of Provincetown, A. B. Underwood of Newton, W. C. Sheldon of Ware, W. W. Clapp, Jr., of Boston, Charles H. Spring of Holyoke, Franklin Williams of Roxbury, J. J. Piper of Fitchburg, Edmund Anthony of New Bedford, Thomas G. Kent of Milford, Edwin B. George of Groveland, W. S. George of Adams, J. A. Alden of East Bridgewater, S. S. Eastman of Greenfield, W. A. Brabiner of Brighton.
At this Convention John A. Andrew was for the first time nominated as Governor.
The Convention had more than its annual importance, as it was on the eve of a Presidential election. Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, were the Republican candidates for President and Vice-President; John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon, the Democratic candidates; Stephen H. Douglas, of Illinois, and Herschell V. Johnson, of Georgia, the candidates of a seceding body of Democrats, known as the Douglas party; John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, candidates of old Whigs, called at the time the Bell-Everett party.
On motion of J. D. Baldwin, of Worcester, afterwards Representative in Congress, Mr. Sumner was invited to address the Convention. The report says:—
“Mr. Sumner then came forward, and his appearance upon the platform was hailed with enthusiastic shouts, which testified the esteem and admiration in which the distinguished Senator is held by his fellow-Republicans of the Commonwealth. The cheering was continued some minutes, and when it had subsided, Mr. Sumner proceeded to address the crowded assembly,—the vast hall being filled to overflowing.”
MR. PRESIDENT,—It is now six years since I had the honor of meeting my Republican fellow-citizens of Massachusetts in State Convention, drawn together from all parts of our beloved Commonwealth,—and then also, I remember well, it was at this good city of Worcester. Returning, at last, with restored health, to the activities of public life, I am happy again in this opportunity. It is pleasant to look into the faces of friends, and to feel the sympathy of kindred hearts.
Nor can I disguise the satisfaction which I find at being here in Worcester,—early and constant home of the Republican cause. When other places, even in Massachusetts, were indifferent for Freedom, Worcester was earnest; and when the cause was defeated in other counties, here, under the lead of an eminent citizen, now the ornament of the bench,[168] it triumphed by brilliant majorities; so that Worcester became known, not only throughout Massachusetts, but everywhere, throughout the country, as our impregnable stronghold. Long since, while America was yet an unsettled wilderness, an English poet depicted a county of our motherland as
“That shire which we the heart of England well may call”;[169]
and this ancient verse furnishes a descriptive phrase which has been aptly applied to our Worcester, “the heart,” as it is the central county, of the Commonwealth. But though truly belonging to Worcester on this account, I have always been glad to believe that it only justly depicted her as the “heart” of our cause,—here at least in Massachusetts.