the issue of a call at once for a National nominating convention. The people of the territories were being murdered for their hostility to slavery extension, and we must come to their relief by speedy and decisive action. This thawed the heart of the convention, and from that moment its future action was certain. It came to do a certain work, and was going to do it boldly and quickly. Giddings was folGiddings was followed by Owen Lovejoy of Illinois. Lovejoy had opened the convention with prayer, and had prayed very fervently that the Lord would remove the then National administration out of the way and thwart all its designs. There was, of course, no uncertainty about his speech. He was more radical than Giddings, and his frank utterances brought out the most rapturous applause. The committee on organization reported in favor of Francis P. Blair, sen., of Maryland, for permanent president, with the usual list of vice-presidents and secretaries. Mr. Blair was received with much kindness, but his speech was after the Greeley pattern and urged caution. He also submitted a long paper, which was received but not acted on, and was a vindication of his position. He was opposed to the extension of slavery, but was fearful of some action that would meddle with slavery in the states. As no such action was contemplated or proposed by anyone, the concern of Mr. Blair lest the convention should go too far or too fast was with out any warrant. Mr. Blair was a venerable looking old gentleman, but was not successful as a presiding officer. He early surrendered the place to one of the vice-presidents. The committee on address not being ready to report, the evening session was given up to speeches, and the convention adjourned to the next day. The speeches of the evening were all good and all of the practical kind. Nothing further was said about following the advice from Washington, and every speech evinced the keenest sympathy with the struggling settlers in Kansas. On the twenty-third there was an address from Charles Reemelin of Cincinnati. He was earnest in his opposition to slavery in the territories, but wanted the convention to go further and take open ground against Knownothingism. It was a very strong, able speech, and was very generally approved; but the convention had but one purpose in view and that was to keep slavery out of the territories, and it was unwilling to take a step in any other direction. The appearance of Mr. Reemelin on the stage was an indication of the accession of a new element to the Republican side. On the night before the convention met a meeting of naturalized Germans was held in this city, composed of men heretofore Democrats, and which appointed two delegates to represent them in the convention. In the subsequent campaign thousands of other Germans followed, both here and at Cleveland and Cincinnati, and although Mr. Reemelin was grievously disappointed at the refusal of the convention to go beyond the immediate purpose for which it was called, he went actively into the campaign for Fremont. He afterwards became a Democrat, but I fancy it was the liquor question rather than the American question that carried him over. The committee on address reported a call for a National convention to nominate candidates for the Presidency and vice-presidency, to be held in Philadelphia June 17, 1856. It also reported a National committee of one from each state, together with two or three terse resolutions and an address, all of which were adopted, and the convention adjourned in the midst of a genuine enthusiasm. The resolutions simply assert the power of congress over slavery in the territories, and demand its immediate exercise to prevent the slaveholders of Missouri from overpowering the free state settlers in Kansas. The address, it was stated by a member of the committee, was not written by any member of that body, but was adopted unanimously by it. It was written, in fact, by Henry J. Raymond of the New York Times. Mr. Raymond was in the city but did not attend the convention or take any other part in its proceedings. The address was a very able one, covering completely the ground occupied by the party on the slavery question, but it was very long and did not, probably for that reason, make a strong impression on the public. This concludes the history of the convention, with the exception that a strong letter was received and read from Cassius M. Clay concurring in the objects of the convention. of a generation upon what was done at this gathering, which put a new party into existence that has had an eventful history since, what was there about it that left the most lasting impression on the mind? I answer for myself that it was the deep earnestness and strong determination which actuated every member of it. There were a few timid brethren at first, and but few, and these few soon overcame their timidity. The feeling of hostility to the domination of the slave power in the politics of the Nation had taken a deep hold on the popular mind, and although this domination was powerful enough to coerce some people in the north to silence, this convention had come together for the purpose of forming a grand National party to prevent the further spread of slavery, and it did its work faithfully and well. The young men of the present day cannot realize how deep and earnest this feeling was, nor how thoroughly the effort to spread slavery into. the National territories had stirred up the conscientious freedom-loving people of the north. None but those who passed through it can fully comprehend it. It was the advent of a new political gospel, and never, as I think, had any political party such a soul-stirring mission as had the men who began and organized and helped to carry out the policy marked out by this convention. An anecdote about some members of the New York legislature, at the time of the anti-Masonic excitement, will serve as an illustration. There were at that time but two hotels in Albany at And now, looking back after the lapse which the members stopped, one on the hill near the capitol, and the Delavan house at the foot of the hill. A member from the country, a Democrat, went to board at the house on the hill, but afterwards moved to the Delavan house. "How does it come," said one of his friends, "that I find you here?" “Oh,” said he, "I could not stand it up there. Too many anti-Masons there, and they are continually drawing their hands across their throats, giving the grand hailing sign of distress, and making themselves obnoxious generally." "But how do you better it down here? Here are Seward and Granger and Spencer, and men of that class, full as many as on the hill." "Ah!" said the country gentleman, "but those fellows up there, they believe in it!" That was the difference, and it makes all the odds in the world when one class believes in it and another class, working with the first, coöperates simply for personal purposes, without the faith that inspires their co-workers. The one thing that distinguished these men of 1856 was that they all believed in it. They all had full faith in the righteousness of their cause and they were all inspired by their faith. They were not Republicans because their fathers were, but because there was a great wrong to be righted and they had found out the way to right it. They were full of zeal in what seemed to them a good cause, and they went to work, like the men of 1776, in deep earnest and inspired by a living faith in a broad principle. And what was true of them was true of all the men who went into that fight. On the stump, the people came gladly to hear them, drinking in great truths as men listening to good news. Never were people so keen or so delighted to hear and never were men more alive to the call of duty than were the Republi cans of that day. They all, from the highest to the lowest, "believed in it " heartily, and it was the strength and directness of their faith that carried them forward to ultimate victory. And what of the men who set this ball in motion? There were not many of them, but they were gathered from all parts of the land. Many were not there who should have been; but the times were perilous, everything in politics was at sixes and sevens, and the new movement did not look promising. It is not given to all men to know, all at once, that the most direct and simple way is ever the best. They soon did learn it, however, and as soon as the new movement was fairly in motion, it drew to itself all those who fairly represented the active conscience of the Nation. Those who led the way at this convention simply felt the impulse sooner than those who so shortly after followed them. Many of the names I have here enrolled were never afterwards heard of; but their heart was in their work, and like those who "die in the Lord," "their works do follow them." There were many notable men present who took but little part, apparently, but afterwards became prominent. Such were Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, William Dennison, jr., of Ohio, E. D. Morgan of New York, E. R. Hoar of Massachusetts, and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. These men were just rising into prominence, but were not as well known then as afterwards. I cannot recall any recollection of the appearance of Governor Morton at that time, but Dennison, Chandler and Morgan were all fine looking, stalwart and presentable men. The doorways to the side rooms of Lafayette hall were made for a smaller race of men, and I remember that two of these gentlemen, in passing through the doorway to a committee room, bumped their heads severely against the top of the doorway, al though bareheaded. They were tall, splendidly formed men, and as big mentally as they looked to be physically. Lovejoy of Illinois was a preacher, and believed, undoubtedly, in the law of love which he preached; yet he had great faith in the law of force, when properly applied. He was in deep earnest when he uttered the prayer that God would remove the then existing National administration out of the way. He felt, as many others then did, a deep distrust and want of faith in that administration, and he had the boldness to speak what he felt. While addressing the convention he seemed to be on fire with the wrongs of the people of Kansas and to be, in reality, a new saint drumming up recruits for a new crusade. The congress elected in 1858 was antiNebraska, but neither the Democrats nor Republicans had an absolute majority. When it assembled in December, 1859, after two ineffectual ballots for speaker the first day, the southern members broke out into impassioned speeches of denunciation of the Republicans. Keitt of South Carolina led off, and his effort seemed to be to show that the Republican movement was directed against slavery itself, and not merely against its spread into the territories. Thaddeus Stevens arose to reply. He was cool and guarded in his utterances, but said something in his usual way that seemed to me perfectly inoffensive, yet it so stirred up one Crawford of Georgia, an insignificant looking man, that he jumped to his feet, danced around through the aisles on the Democratic side in a frenzied way, and finally advanced down the central area of the house as if with intention of making a personal assault upon Stevens. No sooner was this movement noticed than Lovejoy and three or four others on the Republican side, each of whom weighed over two hundred pounds, stepped down to the side of Stevens and formed a semi-circle around him. Whether Crawford intended personal violence or not, I never knew, but the southern men immediately surrounded him and bore him back to his place. The attitude of Lovejoy and his colleagues indicated fight, and the southern men knew it. If Crawford had but laid a hand on Stevens, the men who stood by the latter meant all that their attitude foreshadowed. This shows what was in Lovejoy. He did not seek a collision; but he was always ready for one if it was precipitated. He was a man of action rather than of words. Of Giddings I need not speak. He was a bold, outspoken man, who hated all that looked like indecision. It was the sturdy hostility of such men as Giddings to the double-facedness that char acterized many of the public men of it? That was the burden of Reemelin's that day that challenged public admiration. He was a member, also, of the nominating convention at Philadelphia, in that same year, and he was very decidedly opposed to the nomination of Fremont. He was in favor of some one more thoroughly identified with the Republican movement than Fremont had been. Two other men drew my attention particularly. They were Philip Dorsheimer of Buffalo and Charles Reemelin of Cincinnati. Dorsheimer was not a talker, but he was one of those magnetic men who draw all men unto them, and it was his lead that brought so many of the Germans in New York into the Republican movement. He was to them like a father to his children, and they followed him with an earnestness that words cannot express. Reemelin, on the other hand, was a talker, and a most effective one. After a lapse of thirty-two years his speech at that convention comes back to me almost as fresh as in its first delivery. The progressive Germans were drawn to the Republican movement as to one they had been longing for. They had previously acted with the Democratic party, but were not satisfied with its conservatism and were looking for a party in which they would feel more at home. The party then in process of formation struck them favorably, but they were scared just then by the Knownothing movement. It had been successful in 1854 and had been formidable in 1855; would this new Republican organization take an open and decided stand against speech. He could not see that Knownothingism was even then virtually dead. Perhaps it was not natural that he should be expected to see it, and it had such terrors to him that he paused before joining in forming a party that did not make hostility to such a proscriptive thing as the Americanism of that day a radical part of its creed. He plead with much earnestness and with true eloquence for the right of every man, black and white, foreign and native, to political freedom, and thought. an outspoken denunciation of the proscription of foreigners would come with great force from a party planting itself upon the platform of free soil, free speech and free men. The men who made the new party, however, had no fear of the American party. They knew it was then in the throes of death, and having been called to the performance of a great duty, thought it best to confine themselves to the one great danger that confronted them. Reemelin was greatly disappointed, and he made his disappointment visible; but he submitted and found afterwards that his fears were without any real foundation. Of the other men that took part, as well as those I have mentioned, nearly all have passed away. But few now remain on the scene of present action, and those who are dead carried with them into the eternal world a consciousness that they had but done their duty in the part taken by them in forming the Republican party in 1856. RUSSELL ERRETT. |