shortness of his term to energize his disaffection; but he would not consent. Another fruitless attempt was made to enlist the candidacy of Bentley of Montrose. None of the men who had tried to effect Wilmot's removal from the bench cared to take the issue to the people. At last, but a few days before the election, H. W. Patrick, of Athens, was put in nomination. The immediate persuasion was exercised by a committee of "old line whigs" but the suggestion and the underlying motive power was that of the Buchanan leaders, through the agency of Bull. In order to fill out a ticket, the names of several candidates for county offices were entered without consulting the men at all. The vote, however, was light-probably because there had been little open campaigning, but rather a struggle of politicians working under cover and in the dark. Wilmot carried his own county by 4,633 to 1,131 over his "old line whig" competitor, a majority about equal to that given the republican candidate for supreme judge, on the State ticket, or to Galusha A. Grow for reëlection to Congress. In the judicial district he received 7,687 votes against Patrick's 3,057 -considerably more than a two-thirds majority.

So ran the answer of the people to the charges of Wilmot's would-be "impeachers"-the verdict of the district in "the first election in Pennsylvania since the full development of the proslavery policy of Buchanan's administration, since the open abandonment of the pledges and doctrines of his inaugural address." At large, in the State, it bore out Wilmot's belief that the forlorn hope of the gubernatorial race would be the forerunner of victory-the means of building up a triumphant republican party strong enough to sweep everything before it. Packer's majority over Wilmot, in 1857, was more than 42,000. In 1858, the change for which Wilmot was striving. had advanced so far that the republicans carried the State offices supreme judge and canal commissioner-by 26,000. The democrats elected but 32 members to the Pennsylvania house of representatives out of 100, and held the senate only by 17 to 16. Revulsion against the proslavery policies of the

Buchanan régime was undeniably the great cause of the reversal of political power there; the same phenomenon was repeated in New York, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts; but Wilmot's campaign had exposed and emphasized the issue-had led his constituents to recognize it and acknowledge it, to watch it and to act upon it. Pennsylvania and New York were foremost in entering and in forcing the battle; in both States, but most of all in his own, Wilmot was one of the earliest and most insistent prophets to awaken the souls, and of leaders to guide the hands, of his countrymen.

Giddings, writing to the Ashtabula Sentinel on the day of the adjournment of the House of Representatives, expressed the opinion that the Thirty-fifth Congress would be the last democratic congress to assemble in the United States. This was a true forecast of the following sixteen years. But the opposition had not yet fully found itself. It still, in many places, thought of itself only in terms of opposition, rather than of initiation and construction. It still conceived of the issues that divided the old parties as incidental and temporary, rather than fundamental and final. It regarded the situation as an emergency instead of an irretraceable step in a political evolution. It preferred to compromise its nature by calling itself the "People's party," rather than recognize its destiny by seizing and giving a new significance to the term "Republican party." And it was against this dimness and uncertainty of vision that Wilmot and those who thought most closely with him must continue, and did continue, to work.1

1 It is a relief from the serious and straining atmosphere of politics to find Wilmot just about this time, May, 1859, heading the list of an informal delegation of Towandians who joined to invite Dr. John Macintosh, on the completion of a successful lecture tour, to meet with them as old friends and let them enjoy an evening in listening to his delineation of Scotch life, and his talk on Burns and his poetry-an invitation which the doctor gratefully accepted.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE CONVENTION THAT NOMINATED LINCOLN

THE accessible records do not offer any evidence of Wilmot's participation in public political affairs for more than a year after the October elections of 1858. There was, in fact, no campaign of importance, either local or national, to call him out; and the activities of the new party organization at that particular epoch were probably internal rather than external. The first forehint of a new movement was suggested by the announcement in the Bradford Reporter, of January 5, 1860,

that:

Hon. Preston King, senator from New York, and Hon. K. S. Bingham, senator from Michigan, were in this place [Towanda] last week, paying a visit to Hon. David Wilmot. These gentlemen were all members of the House when the Wilmot Proviso phalanx numbered but eight members, and stood shoulder to shoulder through the contest. Now the friends of Freedom number enough within four votes to elect a Speaker.

It is more than possible, however, that the conference in the Poplar Street house, where Wilmot was then living, was concerned with plans for the future rather than with reminiscences; for another presidential election was but nine months away, and a campaign was to be developed which would carry the positions lost in 1856, and with these secured, place a republican Executive in the White House.1 Barely six weeks later, in fact, the opening move was made in Pennsylvania.

1 Buchanan had been elected, in 1856, by the vote of every slave State, plus New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and California. The problem of the republican managers, in 1860, was to select a candidate who could certainly carry enough of these States to assure a majority in the electoral college.

February 22, 1860, the "People's State Convention" met in the hall of the house at Harrisburg (the various antidemocratic movements had not then consolidated into the single "Republican party"); and after rather a sharp struggle and the exhibition of some feeling, Simon Cameron was declared to be the choice of the State of Pennsylvania for the presidency, by a vote of 89 to 39. Andrew G. Curtin was named as candidate for the governorship, not unanimously, but with less disagreeGreater importance was attached to this nomination than to the recorded preference for the presidenial candidate, for the opinion was generally held and expressed that "as goes the State at the October election, so will it go in the National contest in November." This sense of the imperative political necessity of winning the preliminary gubernatorial race was destined to become the first great deciding influence in the nomination at Chicago.

ment.

Four delegates were assigned by the Harrisburg convention to each congressional district-in some cases named by the convention, in others referred to the people for selection-and eight delegates at large for the State were chosen by the convention, David Wilmot heading the list. Col. A. K. McClure was made chairman of the state central committee of the people's party of Pennsylvania.

Wilmot, after opening the May term of court at Towanda, May 7, went to Chicago in time for the opening of the national convention in the Wigwam, on May 16. Governor Morgan, of New York, chairman of the National Republican Committee, called the meeting to order, and named Wilmot as temporary president of the convention, the nomination being "carried unanimously, with immense applause." "When he presented the historic name of David Wilmot of Pennsylvania" (say Nicolay and Hay)," "the faith of the audience in the judgment of the managers was won spontaneous applause, arising at some one point, grew and rolled from side to side and corner

2 Abraham Lincoln: A History, Vol. II, pp. 265, 266,

to corner of the immense building, brightening the eye and quickening the breath of every inmate."

Judge Marshall, of Maryland, and Governor Cleveland, of Connecticut, were designated a committee to conduct the temporary chairman to his seat, and Cleveland introduced him as "the man who dared to do right regardless of consequences; with such a man there is no such word as fail." "Confidence of victory was in the air. Charleston had shown a great party in the ebb tide of disintegration, tainted by the spirit of disunion. Chicago exhibited a great party springing to life and power, every motive and force compelling coöperation and growth." a In such an atmosphere Wilmot delivered his inaugural :

I have no words in which to express properly my sense of the honor-and the undeserved honor, I think it is-of being called upon to preside temporarily over the deliberations of this Convention.

I shall not attempt a task which I feel inadequate to perform. Be sure, gentlemen, that I am not insensible to this high and undeserved honor. I shall carry the recollection of it, and of your manifestation of partiality, with me until the day of my death.

It is not necessary for me, fellow citizens, gentlemen, delegates, to remind you of the importance of the occasion that has called this assemblage together; nor of the high duties which devolve upon you. A great sectional and aristocratic party, or interest, has for years dominated with a high hand over the political affairs of this country. That interest has wrested, and is now wresting, all the great powers of this government to the one object of the extension of slavery. It is our purpose, gentlemen-it is the mission of the Republican party and the basis of its organization, to resist this policy of a sectional interest. It is our mission to restore this Government to its original policy, and place it again in that rank upon which our fathers organized and brought it into existence. It is our purpose and our policy to resist these new constitutional dogmas, that slavery exists by virtue of the Constitution wherever the banner of this Union floats.

3 Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, Vol. II, p. 265.