the slave labor States deliberately prepared to create one, which, they knew, would be powerful. At that time they were in full alliance with the Democratic party of the North, which was then in power.
If it should remain a unit and the fraternal relations with the Southern wing of the party should continue undisturbed, there might be a chance for of the coalition awhile the supremacy  already Ioner. But there were omens of a speedy dismemberment of the Democratic party, for the Fugitive-Slave Law and the attempt to nationalize slavery had produced wide spread defection in their ranks.
A large portion of that party, led by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, showed a proclivity toward independent action, and even of affiliation with the Republican party on the subject of slavery and the hopes of the friends of that system, of the undivided support of the Northern Democracy, vanished.
In view of this impending crisis, the Southern politicians deemed it expedient to destroy absolutely all unity in the Democratic party and make it powerless, when the Republicans might elect their candidate for the Presidency in the fall of 1860. Then would appear the pretext for a revolution the election of a sectional President. Then the plausible war cry might be raised "No sectional President! No Northern domination! Down with the Abolitionists!" This would appeal to the hearts and interests of the Southern people, especially to the slave holding class, "fire the Southern heart, " and produce, as they believed, a "solid South" in favor of breaking up the old Republic and forming an empire whose "cornerstone should be slavery." With this end in view, leading politicians in the South, who afterward appeared conspicuous among the confederated enemies of the National Government during the Civil War, entered the Democratic National Convention assembled at Charleston, South Carolina, on the 23d of April, 1860 for the purpose of nominating a candidate for the Presidency of the United States and setting forth an embodiment of political principles.
On the appointed day, almost six hundred chosen representatives of the Democratic party assembled in Convention in the hall of the South Carolina Institute, in Charleston, and chose Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, their chairman. It was evident from the first hour after the organization of the Convention that the spirit of Mischief was there enthroned and observing ones soon discovered omens of an impending tempest which might topple from its foundations the organization known as the Democratic party. The choice of Mr. Cushing as chairman was very  satisfactory to the friends of the slave system in the Convention. He was a statesman of great experience, and then sixty years of age a scholar of wide and varied culture, and a sagacious observer of men. Because he had joined the Democratic party at the time of Mr. Tyler's defection had been a conspicuous advocate of the war with Mexico and other measures for the extension and perpetuation of the system of slavery, he was regarded by the Southern men in the Convention as their fast political friend and coadjutor but when they made war upon the unity of the Republic the next year, he gave his influence in support of the National Government. Mr. Cushing, in his address on taking the chair in the Convention, declared it to be the mission of the Democratic party "to reconcile popular freedom with constituted order" and to maintain "the sacred reserved rights of the sovereign States." He declared that the Republicans were "laboring to overthrow the Constitution" and "aiming to produce in this
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