good; but with them, it was Douglas or nothing, and hence the result the convention broken up, the party divided, and all for a candidate who cannot probably get a single electoral vote. The Democratic party, under such rule, is like the serpent in the fable, which gave up the lead for a time to the tail instead of the head, to prevent its clamor; and, in attempting to go tail foremost, stuck fast and thus remained, the tail refusing to give up the right to act as head. And thus will the Democratic party remain, until it sheds its tapering extremity, which insists on being honored with command.

For the purpose of turning attention from the weakness and absurdity of their own position, and their responsibility for the mad and selfish prostration of the Democratic party; to alarm the fears of the timid, shake the knees of the weak, and minister to the morbid cravings of a lingering and dormant abolitionism; they proclaim that the National Democracy are the advocates of a slave code for the Territories. This ideal bantling was begotten by design upon ignorance, and is supported by empty noise and brazen clamor. The platform asked for and insisted upon by Southern States was just what the Constitution entitles them to, as construed by the Supreme Court, and nothing more. It is the same nonintervention which every true Democrat has advocated, and gives effect to the decision of the Court, and that is all. Let every Democrat read it with unclouded vision, and not through the smoked glass of incipient abolitionism; let him analyze it carefully, and then tell us in what section, or sentence, or syllable, this terrific slave code reposes; and when read and weighed and understood, let any one who cannot subscribe to the great principles of personal and State equality there enunciated, as established and guaranteed by the Constitution and authorized and vindicated by the Supreme Court of the United States, remember that he has taken the first lesson in abolition Republicanism, and is already on his way to that organization in his sympathy with a sectional bigoted creed and a narrow political belief.

But when all other expedients fail, we are reminded that the nomination of Douglas and Johnson is entitled to support for its regularity; and I have observed that several gentlemen who were regular members of the speckled Buffalo convention

of 1848 are most emphatic in swearing allegiance to regularity. The Convention which made this nomination had no sign, show, nor shadow of regularity. The delegated Convention at Charleston had no power to adjourn to Baltimore, a distance of hundreds of miles, in another State, and nearly two months after the time appointed. No such thing was ever contem. plated; no such power or discretion was delegated even by the most far-fetched implications. A good nomination at Baltimore would have been entitled to support, but not on the score of regularity, for it had not even the semblance of it. The regular delegations for a large number of States were rejected, and bogus contestants, some of them without a pretence of regularity or delegated authority, were admitted in their places; while regular delegations from numerous other States, because of this outrage, withdrew, and this pretended regular Convention was a mere fraction of one, partly, but not wholly, filled up with unauthorized persons from the outside. It acted in violation of the uniform rule of Democratic National Conventions, which it had itself adopted, requiring two thirds to nominate, and then disregarded it in making the nominations; for at no time, spurious delegates included, did the vote reach near a two thirds vote. Its nominee for Vice-President was Mr. Fitzpatrick, who declined to accept such a nomination; and the regularity of Mr. Johnson, who now runs as Vice-President with Mr. Douglas, consists in the request of some half dozen individuals, after the adjournment, that he would run-in which request, it seems, he cordially united. The regular president of the Convention, General Cushing, left the chair and went away, and presided over the Convention which nominated Breckinridge and Lane; so that the regularity of the nomination of Douglas and Johnson may be summed up in this :-that Mr. Johnson was not and has not yet been nominated by any convention; that Mr. Douglas was nominated by an irregular, fractional, broken-up convention, without a head, without a democratic body, but a mere skeleton, half soft, half Republican State delegations, and a bogus tail. No one pretends that the nominations of Breckinridge and Lane have the authority of a regular National Convention, according to the usages of the party; but they are much more regular than the other. This Convention had a head in the

president of the whole Convention. It had a Democratic body in the regular delegations from all the sure Democratic States -a majority of the States of the Union; it had no spurious extremity, and it had a platform of manly principles upon which every true Democrat of the whole Union can stand together.

The question recurs, what shall we do? Do! Why, stand resolutely by principle, and let the storm rage on; there is sunshine beyond the clouds. Shun all entangling alliances of every name and kind. The readiest, surest, speediest, most honoraable way to success is to repudiate all fusions, all factions, all patchwork, all devices, all expedients, all attempts to mend the break, as old ladies mend broken crockery with Spaulding's prepared glue-all efforts to be upon both sides-and stand by our candidates and our creed. We shall then commence to deserve success; and if we persevere in the path of Constitutional rectitude, we shall preserve our self-respect, command the respect of others, and our efforts will be crowned with triumph for our party and our principles, the good influences of which will last when party managers and tricksters and their vile schemes are forgotten, or remembered only to be hated and execrated.

SPEECH

DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF A SERENADE, AT THE KIRK

WOOD HOUSE, WASHINGTON CITY, August 1, 1860.

[On a casual visit to the National Capital in the summer of 1860, Mr. Dickinson met a most cordial and enthusiastic reception, and among other demonstrations was tendered the compliment of a serenade at his Hotel by the Democracy of the District. He was introduced to the assemblage by Gov. Stevens of Washington Territory, Chairman of the National Democratic Committee, who, in the great and deadly struggle which followed, sealed his devotion to the cause of the Union with his life, on the ill-starred plains of Manassas.

GOV. STEVENS: Fellow-citizens of the City of Washington, this is a most important occasion; an important crisis in the history of our country. At this time I have a most agreeable duty to perform. On the 18th of July we heard the sound of the trumpet from the city of New York; that sound reached the remotest limits of this broad Confederacy; a sound so pure, so clear, reaching to the skies, extending in every direction, that aroused the heart of every citizen of our land. But the voice which came to you through the press on the telegraph you have here to-night. That voice has been heard in this city before, in your Congressional halls. It has been a voice always standing on the immutable and invincible right. It has been a voice which in every political crisis in our country's history has stood by the equal rights of the sovereign States of the Union! Without detaining you any longer from the great treat that is before you, I now introduce to you that veteran, that clear-headed Democrat, that whole-souled, that warm-hearted patriot, Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York.]

Ir is always gratifying and pleasant, my fellow-citizens, to be thus greeted and thus remembered personally; to be thus remembered for services to the country, or to the great Democratic party of the nation; to be thus greeted with soul-stirring music; to be thus introduced by complimentary eloquence, by so distinguished a gentleman as he who has addressed you, to

so numerous and respectable an auditory as the present. The only return I can make you, my fellow-citizens-the only return I can make to the committee and its organ, is the tribute of a grateful heart; and that is freely tendered.

The lines of the American people, my friends, have been cast in pleasant places. Heaven's warm and golden sunshine bathes all God's children within the vast area of this Republic. The tree of liberty, planted by the fathers of the Revolution, though but a slender shoot, watered by the tears of its daughters and nurtured by the blood of its sons, has, under the fostering care of the democratic party of the nation, grown to be great and mighty. Its roots have sunk deep into the fertile earth; its vast trunk stretches upward to the very heavens, and its mighty branches reach to the frozen regions of the North, down to where they are fanned by the tropical breezes of the South; to the broad Atlantic, and across to the far off Pacific. It invites not only the children of America, but the children of liberty everywhere, the down-trodden and oppressed of all the nations of the earth, to come and sit down under the shadow of its protecting branches and subsist upon its fruits. And throughout this vast country, with its fertile soil, its grand mountains, its pleasant vales, its heaving oceans, its winding rivers and its murmuring streamlets, under such institutions as the sun never shone upon before, every interest is protected, every industry rewarded, and the great and sacred principle of equality crowns the moral beauty of the whole.

But in all this prosperity, amidst all these benefits, under all these mighty blessings that are vouchsafed to us, one canker gnaws at the root of our domestic peace. One subject alone, like a wild and fevered dream, disturbs our land, and causes consternation, care, anxiety, and deep solicitude for our political safety. It is not, my fellow-citizens, merely that one of those great periodical struggles approaches for the election of a Chief Magistrate; for amidst all the stirring conflicts of the times (and they are many), we have an Administration that guides the ship of state in a manner that gives confidence to the American people that it will be brought over a prosperous ocean to a harbor of safety and peace.

It is not, my fellow-citizens, that political parties are in the field; for that has been before. It is not that political weap