In June, 1856, a National Democratic Convention was held at Cincinnati, when James Buchanan was nominated for President of the United States. A platform was then framed, composed of many resolutions and involved declarations of principles, drawn by the hand of Benjamin F. Hallet, of Boston. These embodied the substance of resolutions on the subject of Slavery, drawn up by Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts (afterwards a major-general in the armies of the Republic), and adopted by the Democratic Convention of that State. On the topic of Slavery and State supremacy, the resolutions were clear and explicit. They recognized the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty as “embodying the only sound and safe solution of the Slavery question, upon which the great national idea of the people of this whole country can repose in its determined conservation of the Union, and non-interference of Congress with Slavery in the Territories or in the District of Columbia.” This doctrine harmonized with the spirit of popular government; and the platform, of which it was an essential part, was accepted by the Democratic party throughout the Union, as a true exposition of their principles and policy. With this understanding, Mr. Butler, now a member of the Committee on Resolutions sitting in Masonic Hall, on that warm April evening in 1860, proposed as a platform for the Convention and the party the one constructed at Cincinnati four years before, without addition or alteration. He offered a resolution to that effect, when, to the surprise of the representatives of the Free-labor States, the proposition was rejected by a vote of seventeen States (only two of them free) against fifteen States. Recently created Oregon gave the casting vote against it, and, with California, was arrayed on the side of the Slave-labor States.
The majority now proposed an affirmance of the Cincinnati platform, but with additional resolutions, the most vital of which declared that Congress had no power to abolish Slavery in the Territories, and that Territorial Legislatures had no power to abolish Slavery in any Territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of Slavery therein, nor to exclude Slavery therefrom, or to impair or destroy the right of property in slaves by any legislation whatever. This resolution was a positive rejection of the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. The minority of the committee, composed wholly of delegates from the Free-labor States, and representing a majority of the Presidential electors (one hundred and seventy-two against one hundred and twenty-seven), were amazed because of the bad faith and arrogant assumptions of their Southern brethren. It was clearly seen that the latter were united, evidently by preconcert, in a determination to demand from the people of the Free-labor States further and most offensive concessions to their greed for political domination.
The manhood of the minority was evoked, and they resolved that the limit of concession was reached, and that they would yield to no further
