Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/330

292 of the new party affiliation were: resistance to the fugitive slave law, the non-extension of the Missouri Compromise line, with opposition to its repeal, rescue of Kansas from the slave power, and the general overthrow of the haughty domination of the South. The movement could not include any specific national policy, was necessarily sectional, and its promoters looked only to the Northern people for support. No Southern State could join it; none was expected to do so and none did. By a cool calculation of political influences and resources, it was considered that the more numerous and richer North could attain a settled ascendancy, if the proposed combination could be secured. Good practical politicians like Giddings, Seward, Chase, Hale, Sumner, Banks, Weed—all men of eminent abilities, long used to political strategy—saw an opportunity to regain the governmental influence which they had lost since 1850. They were warned by Northern leaders that this movement portended disunion, and by the alarmed South that it pre-destinated secession, but they felt no fright, and at least would risk the issue.

Committees appointed by eight Northern States issued in 1855 a call for a general convention, which assembled at Pittsburg, February 22, 1856, and erected a party platform in which aggressive war was declared against the general policy of Pierce, and definitely in favor of all measures that would confine slavery within the limits of the slave-holding States. Upon this basis of agreement the convention ordered an election of delegates from the States to a party convention to assemble at Philadelphia, June 17, 1856. The convention thus called assembled, nominated Fremont, of California, for the presidency, and Dayton, of Ohio, for the vice-presidency—both from the North, thus violating the custom unbroken to this time to divide these offices between the North and the South. The single avowed purpose of the new association was to aim at and look for the extinction of what