The Democratic national convention had met
at Cincinnati on June 2, and nominated James Buchanan for President and
John C. Breckinridge for Vice-President. Its work presented two points
of noteworthy interest, namely: that the South, in an arrogant
pro-slavery dictatorship, relentlessly cast aside the claims of Douglas
and Pierce, who had effected the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and
nominated Buchanan, in apparently sure confidence of that
super-serviceable zeal in behalf of slavery which he so obediently
rendered; also, that in a platform of intolerable length there was such
a cunning ambiguity of word and concealment of sense, such a double
dealing of phrase and meaning, as to render it possible that the
pro-slavery Democrats of the South and some antislavery Democrats of the
North might join for the last time to elect a "Northern man with
Southern principles."
Again, in this campaign, as in several former presidential elections,
Mr. Lincoln was placed upon the electoral ticket of Illinois, and he
made over fifty speeches in his own and adjoining States in behalf of
Fremont and Dayton. Not one of these speeches was reported in full, but
the few fragments which have been preserved show that he occupied no
doubtful ground on the pending issues. Already the Democrats were
raising the potent alarm cry that the Republican party was sectional,
and that its success would dissolve the Union.
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