A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

The apparent breaking point at Charleston was the adoption of a platform; at Baltimore it was the readmission of seceding delegates. Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas presented their original delegations, who sought immediate admission; but a resolution, introduced by Sanford E. Church of New York, referred them to the committee on credentials, with the understanding that persons accepting seats were bound in honour to abide the action of the convention. The Douglas men, greeting this resolution with tremendous applause, proposed driving it through without debate; but New York hesitated to order the previous question. Then it asked permission to withdraw for consultation, and when it finally voted in the negative, deeming it unwise to stifle debate, it revealed the fact that its action was decisive on all questions.

An amendment to the Church resolution proposed sending only contested seats to the credentials committee, without conditions as to loyalty, and over this joinder of issues some very remarkable speeches disclosed malignant bitterness rather than choice rhetoric. Richardson, still the recognised spokesman of Douglas, received marked attention as he argued boldly that the amendment admitted delegates not sent there, and decided a controversy without a hearing. "I do not propose," he said, "to sit side by side with delegates who do not represent the people; who are not bound by anything, when I am bound by everything. We are not so hard driven yet as to be compelled to elect delegates from States that do not choose to send any here."[276]

Russell of Virginia responded, declaring that his State intended, in the interest of fair play, to cling to the Democracy of the South. "If we are to be constrained to silence," he vociferated, "I beg gentlemen to consider the silence of Virginia ominous. If we are not gentlemen—if we are such knaves that we cannot trust one another—we had better scatter at once, and cease to make any effort to bind each other."[277] Speaking on similar lines, Ewing of Tennessee asked what was meant. "Have you no enemy in front? Have you any States to spare? We are pursued by a remorseless enemy, and yet from all quarters of this convention come exclamations of bitterness and words that burn, with a view to open the breach in our ranks wider and wider, until at last, Curtius-like, we will be compelled to leap into it to close it up."

But it remained for Montgomery of Pennsylvania, in spite of Cochrane's conciliatory words, to raise the political atmosphere to the temperature at Charleston just before the secession. "For the first time in the history of the Democratic party," he said, "a number of delegations of sovereign States, by a solemn instrument in writing, resigned their places upon the floor of the convention. They went out with a protest, not against a candidate, but against the principles of a party, declaring they did not hold and would not support them. And not only that, but they called a hostile convention, and sat side by side with us, deliberating upon a candidate and the adoption of a platform. Principles hostile to ours were asserted and a nomination hostile to ours was threatened. Our convention was compelled to adjourn in order to have these sovereign States represented. What became of the gentlemen who seceded? They adjourned to meet at Richmond. Now they seek to come back and sit upon this floor with us, and to-day they threaten us if we do not come to their terms. God knows I love the star spangled banner of my country, and it is because I love the Union that I am determined that any man who arrays himself in hostility to it shall not, with my consent, take a seat in this convention. I am opposed to secession either from this Union or from the Democratic convention, and when men declare the principles of the party are not their principles, and that they will neither support them nor stay in a convention that promulgates them, then I say it is high time, if they ask to come back, that they shall declare they have changed their minds."[278]

This swung the door of vituperative debate wide open, and after an adjournment had closed it in the hall, the crowds continued it in the street. At midnight, while Yancey made one of his silver-toned speeches, which appears, by all accounts, to have been a piece of genuine eloquence, the friends of Douglas, on the opposite side of Monument Square, kept the bands playing and crowds cheering.

When the convention assembled on the second day, Church, in the interest of harmony, withdrew the last clause of his resolution, and, without a dissenting voice, all contested seats went to the committee on credentials. Then the convention impatiently waited three days for a report, while the night meetings, growing noisier and more arrogant, served to increase the bitterness. The Douglasites denounced their opponents as "disorganisers and disunionists;" the Southerners retorted by calling them "a species of sneaking abolitionists." Yancey spoke of them as small men, with selfish aims. "They are ostrich-like—their head is in the sand of squatter sovereignty, and they do not know their great, ugly, ragged abolition body is exposed."

On the fourth day, the committee presented two reports, the majority, without argument, admitting the contestants—the minority, in a remarkably strong document of singular skill and great clearness, seating the seceders on the ground that their withdrawal was not a resignation and was not so considered by the convention. A resignation, it argued, must be made to the appointing power. The withdrawing delegates desired the instruction of their constituencies, who authorised them in every case except South Carolina to repair to Baltimore and endeavour once more to unite their party and promote harmony and peace in the great cause of their country.

This report made a profound impression upon the convention, and the motion to substitute it for the majority report at once threw New York into confusion. That delegation had already decided to sustain the majority, but the views of the seceders, so ably and logically presented, had reopened the door of debate, and a resolute minority, combining more than a proportionate share of the talent and worth of the delegation, insisted upon further time. After the convention had grudgingly taken a recess to accommodate the New Yorkers, William H. Ludlow reappeared and apologised for asking more time. This created the impression that Richmond's delegation, at the last moment, proposed to slaughter Douglas[279] as it did at Charleston, and the latter's friends, maddened and disheartened over what they called "New York's dishonest and cowardly procrastination," would gladly have prevented an adjournment. But the Empire State held the key to the situation. Without it Douglas could get nothing and in a hopeless sort of way his backers granted Ludlow's request.[280]

The situation of the New York delegation was undoubtedly most embarrassing. Their admission to the Charleston convention had depended upon the Douglas vote, but their hope of success hinged upon harmony with the cotton States. A formidable minority favoured the readmission of the seceders and the abandonment of Douglas regardless of their obligation. This was not the policy of Dean Richmond, who was the pivotal personage. His plan included the union of the party by admitting the seceders, and the nomination of Horatio Seymour with the consent of the Northwest, after rendering the selection of Douglas impossible. It was a brilliant programme, but the inexorable demand of the Douglas men presented a fatal drawback. Richmond implored and pleaded. He knew the hostility of the Douglasites could make Seymour's nomination impossible, and he knew, also, that a refusal to admit the seceders would lead to a second secession, a second ticket, and a hopelessly divided party. Nevertheless, the Douglas men were remorseless.[281] Even Douglas' letter, sent Richardson on the third day, and his dispatch to Dean Richmond,[282] received on the fifth day, authorising the withdrawal of his name if it could be done without sacrificing the principle of non-intervention, did not relieve the situation. Rule or ruin was now their motto, as much as it was the South's, and between them Richmond's diplomatic resistance,[283] which once seemed of iron, became as clay. Nevertheless, Richmond's control of the New York delegation remained unbroken. The minority tried new arguments, planned new combinations, and racked their brains for new devices, but when Richmond finally gave up the hopeless and thankless task of harmonising the Douglasites and seceders, a vote of 27 to 43 forced the minority of the delegation into submission by the screw of the Syracuse unit rule, and New York finally sustained the majority report.

After this, the convention became the theatre of a dramatic event which made it, for the moment, the centre of interest to the political world. The majority report seated the Douglas faction from Alabama and Louisiana, and then excluded William L. Yancey, a representative seceder, and let in Pierre Soulé, a representative Douglasite. It is sufficient proof of the sensitiveness of the relations between the two factions that an expressed preference for one of these men should again disrupt the convention, but the moving cause was far deeper than the majority's action. Yancey belonged to the daring, resolute, and unscrupulous band of men who, under the unhappy conditions that threatened their defeat, had already decided upon disunion; and, when the convention repudiated him, the lesser lights played their part. Virginia led a new secession, followed by most of the delegates from North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Maryland, and finally by Caleb Cushing himself, the astute presiding officer, whose action anticipated the withdrawal of Massachusetts.