Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

Great advantage was expected by the President's supporters from the fact that the convention, as they averred, was so truly "National"—having delegates from every State of the Union. This feature was presented as in hurtful contrast with Republican conventions, whose members came almost entirely from the loyal States. A striking spectacle was attempted by having members from Northern and Southern States enter the great wigwam (which had been specially prepared for the meetings of the convention) arm in arm. To intensify the effect Massachusetts and South Carolina headed the procession, General Couch and ex-Speaker Orr typifying in this display the thorough cordiality of Unionist and Confederate in the return of peace and amicable relations. The danger of all such exhibitions is that they may be made a subject of ridicule. This did not escape. The "wigwam" was parodied by the political wits of the Republican party as "Noah's Ark," into which there went, as described in Genesis, "in two and two," "of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth." The humor which this comparison evoked was of a kind especially adapted to the stump and was used most effectively. Indeed the President's supporters, long before the canvass closed, heartily regretted that they had ever resorted to dramatic scenes as a method of promoting a political cause.

The convention of the President's supporters was followed a fortnight later (September 3rd) in the same city—Philadelphia—by a still more imposing assemblage called by the loyalists of the South, who, desiring to explain their exact situation to co-operating friends, invited delegations from the Northern States to meet them. Prominent Republicans from every loyal Commonwealth responded in full force to these men who were endeavoring to reconstruct their States on an enduring basis of Constitutional liberty. Pennsylvania sent a generous delegation as hosts to those who were to enjoy the hospitalities of the State. Governor Curtin haded the list. Associated with him were General Geary, already named as his successor, General Simon Cameron, at that time a private citizen, Colonel John W. Forney, then editor of the Philadelphia Press, and representatives from every Congressional district in the State. Other States responded with equal cordiality. Senators Morgan and Harris, Horace Greeley, and John Jacob Astor, came from New York. Massachusetts sent her governor, her senators, and all her living ex-governors. It became, indeed, the fashion for the New-England States to send governors and ex-governors, and every State was represented in this way. New Jersey did likewise. The Western States were fully represented by their ablest and most zealous men. Two future Presidents were on the delegation from Ohio, with General Schenck and Stanley Matthews and the influential German editor Frederick Hassaurek. Oliver P. Morton came from Indiana, Lyman Trumbull from Illinois, Fairchild and Howe from Wisconsin, Zachariah Chandler and Carl Schurz (then editor of the Detroit Post) from Michigan. The border slave States sent strong men. N. B. Smithers came from Delaware; Senator Creswell, Francis Thomas, and C. C. Fulton of the Baltimore American, from Maryland; Governor Boreman, A. W. Campbell and Nathan Goff from West Virginia; Robert J. Breckenridge accompanied ex-Attorney-general Speed from Kentucky; while Missouri sent Governor Fletcher, sustained by an able delegation, of whom Van Horn, Finkelnburg and Louis Gottschalk were prominent members. A number of business men, headed by E. W. Fox, came from St. Louis.

Many of the Southern States were somewhat scantily represented. It was not safe in certain sections of the South to hold a convention for the selection of delegates, and yet one or more appeared from every one of the lately rebellious States. Thomas J. Durant and H. C. Warmoth came from Louisiana; D. H. Bingham and M. J. Safford from Alabama; G. W. Ashburn from Georgia; and Governor A. J. Hamilton, Lorenzo Sherwood and George W. Paschal from Texas. Albion W. Tourgee, who has since won a brilliant reputation in literature, came from North Carolina with a strong delegation; J. W. Field and H. W. Davis from Mississippi. Virginia and Tennessee, of the original Confederacy, sent a large number of good men. From the former came John Minor Botts, George W. Somers, Lucius H. Chandler, Daniel H. Hoge, Lewis McKenzie, James M. Stewart, and some hundred and fifty others; the latter was represented by Governor Brownlow, Joseph S. Fowler, Samuel Arnell, A. W. Hawkins, Thomas H. Benton, General John Eaton, Barbour Lewis, and many others whose loyalty had been tested by many forms of personal peril.

These names give a fair indication of the character and weight of the convention. It was intended to be, and was, a representative body of true Union men, of the men who had borne persecution for Loyalty's sake, of the men who, having aided in achieving great victory, were resolved that it should not fail to bear its legitimate fruits. The delegates from all the States first assembled in Independence Square, and after a meeting of congratulation, marked by great enthusiasm, proceeded to form into two conventions,—one containing the loyalists who had called the convention, and the other the Northern delegates who had met to welcome them. Of the Southern Convention Mr. Thomas J. Durant of Louisiana was selected as temporary chairman, and Honorable James Speed of Kentucky as permanent chairman; and of the Northern Convention Governor Curtis of Pennsylvania was both temporary and permanent chairman. The motive for thus separating was to leave the Southern loyalists entirely untrammeled in their proceedings, in order that their voice might have greater weight in the country than if it were apparently directed by a large majority of Northern men assembling in the same body with them.

The Northern Convention concluded its proceedings on the third day with a mass-meeting larger than any that had ever assembled in Philadelphia. The Southern Convention remained in session full five days. The interest was sustained from beginning to end, and besides the delegates present, a vast assemblage of people thronged the streets of Philadelphia during all the sessions of the conventions. In an off year, as partisans call it, there had never been seen so great excitement, enthusiasm and earnestness in any political assemblage. Mr. Durant called the Southern Convention to order with the same gavel that had been used in the Secession Convention in South Carolina. Governor Hamilton of Texas, who presented it for the occasion, reminded his audience that the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, and that it seemed a poetic retribution that a convention of Southern loyalists should be called to order with the same instrument that had rapped the South into disunion and anarchy.

On taking the chair as permanent president of the Southern Convention, Mr. Speed spoke of the Administration, of which for the past few months he had been a reluctant member, with a freedom which, during his connection with it, would have been improper if not impossible. He described the late convention in this place as one with which "we could not act." "Why was that convention here? It was here in part because the great cry came up from the white man of the South,—My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me; and then the cry came up from the black man of the South—My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me. These complaints are utterly antagonistic, the one to the other; and this convention is called to say which is right. Upon that question, if upon the truth as you feel it, speak the truth as you know it, speak the truth as you love permanent peace, as you may hope to establish the institutions of this Government so that our children and our children's children shall enjoy a peace that we have not known. . . . The convention to which I have referred, as I read its history, came here to simply record in abject submission the commands of one man. That convention did his commands. The loyal Congress of the United States had refused to do his commands; and whenever you have a Congress that does not resolutely and firmly refuse, as the present Congress has done, to merely act as the recording secretary of the tyrant at the White House, American liberty is gone forever."

Mr. Speed's language was a complete revelation, more emphatic than had yet been made, of the great differences which had prevailed in the Cabinet of the President with respect to his policy; and his words naturally created a sensation, not alone in the convention, but throughout the country. The fact of his identification with the President, in the closest official intercourse, ever since his accession, added vastly to the weight of Mr. Speed's address and gave to it an influence which he had not, perhaps, anticipated when he delivered it. This influence was doubtless enhanced by the fact that the author of the speech was a native and citizen of the South. It was a stimulus to the patriotic zeal of Northern Republicans to find a man from the South taking advanced ground that possibly involved peril to himself before the angry contest should be finally settled.

—The address agreed upon in the Southern Convention was in the form of an appeal "from the loyal men of the South to their fellow-citizens of the United States." It declared that the representatives of eight millions of American citizens "appeal for protection and justice to their friends and brothers in the States that have been spared the cruelties of the Rebellion and the direct horrors of civil war." "Having," said the address, "lost our champion, we return to you who can make presidents and punish traitors. Our last hope, under God, is in the unity and firmness of the States that elected Abraham Lincoln and defeated Jefferson Davis."

—"We cannot better define at once our wrongs and our wants than by declaring, that since Andrew Johnson affiliated with his early slanderers and our constant enemies, his hand has been laid heavily upon every earnest loyalist of the South."

—"History, the just judgment of the present and the certain confirmation of the future, invites and commands us to declare, that after neglecting his own remedies for restoring the Union, Andrew Johnson has resorted to the weapons of traitors to bruise and beat down patriots."