Mr. Van Buren: “I will not give notice, like my friend from the Fourteenth Ward, Mr. Kelly, that if the procedure of the Convention should not please me I would bolt. Perhaps if I did, the Convention on that very account would persist in adopting such measures.” (Laughter.)
The repeated references by the leading opposition members of the Convention to Mr. Kelly’s notice of his determination to retire, if the Seward wing of the party persisted in its factious course, and the concessions which followed, showed that the blow had been sent home. The one strong man had been found to arrest the progress of disunion, and to aid materially in staving off in 1856, the calamity which finally overtook the country in 1860.
Had New York entered the Democratic National Convention of 1856, distracted by intestine feuds, as was the case in 1848, the election of the Republican candidate for President, John C. Fremont, probably would have followed, together with the dreadful appeal to arms which shook the continent four years later. The State ticket placed in the field by the Soft Shell Convention of 1855, was not successful at the polls. The State was carried by the Know-Nothings by decisive majorities. Samuel J. Tilden was the candidate on the Soft Shell ticket of that year for Attorney General. A short time before the election Mr. Tilden received the following letter from Josiah Sutherland, nominee for the same office on the State ticket of the other wing of the party:
New York City, Friday, Oct. 12, 1855.
Samuel J. Tilden, Esq.,
My Dear Sir:—I was nominated for the office of Attorney General of this State, by that portion of the Democratic party of the State called the Hards; you were subsequently nominated for the same office by that portion or section of the Democratic party of the State called the Softs. I look upon the resolutions passed and published by the Convention which put me in nomination (a copy of which I herewith enclose) as truly, emphatically and unequivocally expressing great principles of the National Democracy and of the Constitution. The third resolution, as you will observe, firmly enunciates the great Democratic principle, “That it should be left to the people of the States to determine for themselves all local questions, including the subject of slavery;” it expresses also “an unqualified adherence to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,” and a firm opposition to “any effort to re-establish the Missouri prohibition.”
I approve of these resolutions and have endorsed them, and do now endorse them in letter and spirit. Do you look upon these resolutions as truly and faithfully expressing principles of the National Democracy and of the Constitution? Are you in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and of the great principle of the exclusive constitutional right and liberty of the people of the Territories on the subject of slavery, thereby affirmed?
Do you believe that in the organization of future Territories Congress will have no right or power, under the Constitution as it now is, to prevent the inception, existence or continuance of slavery in such Territories as a domestic or Territorial institution; that the question and subject of slavery as a domestic or Territorial institution, in the absence of any express provision or clause of the Constitution giving such right and power to Congress, will and must of necessity belong exclusively to the people of such Territories—of natural, if not of constitutional right; and that the only constitutional and legitimate way in which a citizen of Massachusetts or of New York can interfere with or act upon that question, is by exercising his undoubted right to move to the territory where the question is pending, and to become a citizen or resident thereof?
Are you opposed to the political, verbal “Black Republican” fanatics and demagogues of the North, who, using words for things, oppose this great principle, and call for a restoration of the “Missouri Compromise line?” Are you opposed to the State ticket lately put in nomination in this State, headed by Preston King, and to the declared principles and grounds upon which that ticket was nominated?
The opinions, propositions, or principles which would be implied in the affirmative answers to the foregoing questions appear to me to be plainly expressed, or necessarily implied in the resolutions of the Convention which put me in nomination, and of which you herewith receive a copy.