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Authors: Bruce Catton
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in June. Caleb Cushing spoke a brief swan song, assuring everyone that he had tried hard “in the midst of circumstances always arduous and in some respects of peculiar embarrassment” to behave as an impartial chairman should. Then, announcing that the convention would meet again on June 18, he brought down his gavel and the delegates scurried back to their hotels to pack up and look for the quickest way out of town.
This left the opposition convention with nothing in particular to do; left it, actually, slightly at a loss. Whatever Yancey and Rhett may have hoped, the dominant idea with most of the delegates whohad walked out on the original convention had been the expectation that Douglas would eventually withdraw (whether voluntarily, for the good of the party, or in frank recognition of defeat) and that an acceptable compromise candidate would then be named. It had been supposed, also, that the act of withdrawal and the organization of a separate convention would help to bring all of this to pass; then the cotton-state delegates could return to the convention and a reunited party could get on with the presidential campaign, with a candidate who would interpret whatever the platform happened to say in a manner acceptable to everybody.
Now none of this had happened, and those who had withdrawn were as nonplussed as the Douglas men themselves, who had thought that Douglas could be nominated promptly once the die-hards had left the hall. Nobody, apparently (unless it was Yancey himself), had calculated accurately. The secessionist convention could do no more now than agree to meet again, in Richmond on June 11, and then adjourn. The galleries were emptied; Charleston no longer had a convention. 4
The delegates were not the only ones who failed to see what the split in the party would finally mean. Editorializing on the matter, the Republican New York
Times
mused that a great step forward had been taken; political power now would pass to the North, which henceforth would be united just as the South had been united. Enthusiastically, the
Times
editorial writer continued: “The Democratic party is the last of the great national organizations to yield to the ‘irrepressible conflict’ which slavery and freedom have been waging for control of the Federal government.… The Northern section of the party has asserted its power, and with new and unlooked-for firmness has maintained its position. If it stands still in its present attitude, the sectional contest is over.” 5
In Richmond, the
Dispatch
professed the hope that “the apparent split is more superficial than radical,” and that the Democratic party was not yet sectionalized. The real fight, the
Dispatch
felt, had been over a man, not over a platform: “After all, the public have not much faith in any platforms, except such as Gov. Wise constructed for John Brown and those other distinguished members of the Republican party who called a Convention and nominated a ticket in Virginia last fall.” 6
Actually, this man whose platform the
Dispatch
editorialist commended so warmly had seen the trouble coming long before he ever saw John Brown. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia from 1856 through 1860, had indeed seen to it that the John Brown uprising was stamped out (this with the help of Robert E. Lee and a handful of United States Marines) and that Brown and co-workers were properly hanged. But back in 1858 he had anticipated what was going to happen in Charleston in 1860, and he had not liked it very much. Tall, lean, lantern-jawed, and outspoken, Governor Wise was a strong pro-slavery man who still believed that the South should fight for its rights within the Union, and in 1858 he had taken a pessimistic look into the future. Writing then to a friend, he had warned that the South contained “an organized, active and dangerous faction” which hoped to disrupt the Union and wanted to create a United South rather than a united Nation. This faction, Wise wrote,
This left the opposition convention with nothing in particular to do; left it, actually, slightly at a loss. Whatever Yancey and Rhett may have hoped, the dominant idea with most of the delegates whohad walked out on the original convention had been the expectation that Douglas would eventually withdraw (whether voluntarily, for the good of the party, or in frank recognition of defeat) and that an acceptable compromise candidate would then be named. It had been supposed, also, that the act of withdrawal and the organization of a separate convention would help to bring all of this to pass; then the cotton-state delegates could return to the convention and a reunited party could get on with the presidential campaign, with a candidate who would interpret whatever the platform happened to say in a manner acceptable to everybody.
Now none of this had happened, and those who had withdrawn were as nonplussed as the Douglas men themselves, who had thought that Douglas could be nominated promptly once the die-hards had left the hall. Nobody, apparently (unless it was Yancey himself), had calculated accurately. The secessionist convention could do no more now than agree to meet again, in Richmond on June 11, and then adjourn. The galleries were emptied; Charleston no longer had a convention. 4
The delegates were not the only ones who failed to see what the split in the party would finally mean. Editorializing on the matter, the Republican New York
Times
mused that a great step forward had been taken; political power now would pass to the North, which henceforth would be united just as the South had been united. Enthusiastically, the
Times
editorial writer continued: “The Democratic party is the last of the great national organizations to yield to the ‘irrepressible conflict’ which slavery and freedom have been waging for control of the Federal government.… The Northern section of the party has asserted its power, and with new and unlooked-for firmness has maintained its position. If it stands still in its present attitude, the sectional contest is over.” 5
In Richmond, the
Dispatch
professed the hope that “the apparent split is more superficial than radical,” and that the Democratic party was not yet sectionalized. The real fight, the
Dispatch
felt, had been over a man, not over a platform: “After all, the public have not much faith in any platforms, except such as Gov. Wise constructed for John Brown and those other distinguished members of the Republican party who called a Convention and nominated a ticket in Virginia last fall.” 6
Actually, this man whose platform the
Dispatch
editorialist commended so warmly had seen the trouble coming long before he ever saw John Brown. Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia from 1856 through 1860, had indeed seen to it that the John Brown uprising was stamped out (this with the help of Robert E. Lee and a handful of United States Marines) and that Brown and co-workers were properly hanged. But back in 1858 he had anticipated what was going to happen in Charleston in 1860, and he had not liked it very much. Tall, lean, lantern-jawed, and outspoken, Governor Wise was a strong pro-slavery man who still believed that the South should fight for its rights within the Union, and in 1858 he had taken a pessimistic look into the future. Writing then to a friend, he had warned that the South contained “an organized, active and dangerous faction” which hoped to disrupt the Union and wanted to create a United South rather than a united Nation. This faction, Wise wrote,
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