mocratic party. (Applause and laughter.) Yes, sir, the destruction of the Democratic party, consummated by assassins now grinning upon this floor. (Loud cries of "order," " order," " put him out," and great confusion.) DELAWARE WITHDRAWS. Mr. Saulsbury did not desire to occupy the attention of the Convention but for a moment. The delegates from his State had done all in their power to promote the harmony and unity of this Convention, and it was their purpose to continue to do so. I am, however, instructed by the delegation to announce that they desire to be excused from voting on any further ballots or votes, unless circumstances should alter this determination. It is our desire to be left free to act or not act, their desire being to leave the question open for the consideration of their constituents after their return home. Mr. Steele, of North Carolina, briefly addressed the Convention, stating that he, for the present, at least, should not retire. After explanations and debate, the motion "Shall the main question be now put," (to go into nomination of candidates for President and Vice-President) was carried, and the Convention adjourned. KENTUCKY WITHDRAWS IN PART. On Saturday (23d), Mr. Caldwell, of Kentucky, in behalf of the delegation from that State, said: The circumstances in which we (the Kentucky Delegation) are placed are exceedingly embarrassing, and we have not therefore been enabled to come to an entirely harmonious conclusion. The result is, however, that nine of the delegates of Kentucky remain in the Convention. (applause.) There are ten delegates who withdraw from a the Convention. The exact character of their withdrawal is set forth in single paragraph, with their names appended, which I desire the Secretary to read before I sit down. There are five others-completing the delegation-who desire for the present to suspend their connection with the action of this Convention. I will add here, that there may be no misunderstanding, that I myself am one of those five, and we have also signed a short paper, which I shall also ask the Secretary to read to the Convention. I am requested by those who withdraw from the Convention, and by those who suspend their action for the present with the Convention, to say that it is their wish that their seats in this Convention shall not be filled or occupied by any others; and that no one shall claim the right to cast their votes. The right of those remaining in the Convention to cast their individual vote, is not by us questioned in any degree. But we enter our protest against any one casting our vote. I will ask the Secretary to read the papers I have indicated, and also one which a gentleman of our delegation has handed me, which he desires to be read. I ask that the three papers be read. The first paper read was signed James G. Leach, the writer of which animadverted in rather strong terms upon the action of the Convention, in the matter of the admission and rejection of delegates from certain States. The communication was regarded as disrespectful to the Convention, and, on motion of Mr. Payne, of Ohio, it was returned to the writer. The Secretary then read the other two communications from the Kentucky delegation as follows: To the Hon. Caleb Cushing, President of the National Democratic Convention, assembled in the city of Baltimore: The Democratic Convention for the State of Kentucky, held in the city of Frankfort, on the 9th day of January, 1860, among others, adopted the following resolution: Resolved, That we pledge the Democracy of Kentucky to an honest and industrious support of the nominee of the Charleston Convention, Since the adoption of this resolution, and the assembling of this Convention, events have transpired not then contemplated, notwithstanding which we have labored diligently to preserve the harmony and unity of said Convention; but discord and disintegration have prevailed to such an extent that we feel that our efforts cannot accomplish this end. Therefore, without intending to vacate our seats, or to join or participate in any other Convention or organization in this city, and with the intention of again cooperating with this Convention, should its unity and harmony be restored by any future event, we now de Mr. Reed, of Ky., spoke briefly in defense of the course of the nine delegates from that State, who remained with the Convention. MISSOURI DEFINES HER POSITION. Mr. Clark, of Missouri, announced as the result of a consultation of a portion of the Missouri delegation, that two of that delegation had decided to withdraw from the Convention. Mr. Hill, of N. C., who had refused to retire with his colleagues on the previous day, now announced his intention of withdrawing. Mr. Cessna, of Pennsylvania, called for the vote upon his resolution to proceed to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President. MR. CUSHING RESIGNS THE CHAIR. Mr. Cushing resigned his post as presiding officer, in a brief speech, and left the chair. Gov. Tod, of Ohio, immediately assumed the chair, and was greeted with enthusiastic and hearty cheers. After order was restored, he said: As the present presiding officer of this Convention by common consent of my brother Vice-Presidents, with great diffidence I assume the chair. When I announce to you that for thirty-four years I have stood up in that district so long misrepresented by Joshua R. Giddings, with the Democratic banner in my hand (applause), 1 know that I shall receive the good wishes of this Convention, at least, for the discharge of the duties of the chair. If there are no privileged questions intervening, the Secretary will proceed with the call of the States. MASSACHUSETTS DESIRES A HEARING. Mr. Butler, of Mass., addressed the chair, and desired to present a protest. Objection was made by Mr. Cavanaugh, of Minnesota, and the States were called on the question of proceeding to a vote for President. When Massachusetts was called, Mr. Butler said: Mr. President, I have the instruction of a majority of the delegation from Massachusetts to present a written protest. I will send it to the Chair to have it read. (Calls to order.) And further, with your leave, I desire to say what I think will be pleasant to this Convention. First, that, while a majority of the delegation from Massachusetts do not purpose further to participate in the doings of this Convention, we desire to part, if we may, to meet you as friends and Democrats again. We desire to part in the same spirit of manly courtesy with which we came together. Therefore, if you will allow me, instead of reading to you a long document, I will state, within parliamentary usage, exactly the reasons why we take the step we do. Thanking the Convention for their courtesy, allow me to say that though we have protested against the action of this body excluding the delegates, although we are not satisfied with that action We have not discussed the question, Mr. President, whether the action of the Convention, in excluding certain delegates, could be any reason for withdrawal We now put our withdrawal before you, upon the simple ground, among others, that there has been a withdrawal in part of a majority of the States, and further (and that, perhaps, more personal to myself), upon the ground that I will not sit in a Convention where the African slave tion of the Cincinnati Platform, teens, during the e of the Territorial Governments, the measure of tion, whatever it may be, imposed by the Federa tution on the power of the Territorial Legislature subject of the domestic relations, as the same has shall hereafter be, finally determined by the Suprem of the United States, should be respected by all g zens, and enforced with promptness and fidelity b branch of the General Government. Mr. Payne, of Ohio, moved the previou tion, and this resolution was adopted, wit two dissenting votes. THE SECEDERS' CONVENTION. The delegates who had withdrawn fro Convention at the Front-Street Theate gether with the delegations from Louisian Alabama, who were refused admission t Convention, met at the Maryland Instit Saturday the 28th of June. Twenty-one were represented either by full or partia gations. The States not represented were Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New-Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Wisco The Hon. Caleb Cushing, of Massachu was chosen to preside, assisted by vic sidents and secretaries. The Convention adopted a rule requir vote of two-thirds of all the delegates pr to nominate candidates for President and President; also that each delegate cast the to which he is entitled, and that each State only the number of votes to which it is en by its actual representation in the Convent The delegates from South Carolina Florida accredited to the Richmond Cor tion, were invited to take seats in this. A committee of five, of which Mr. C Cushing was chairman, was appointed to dress the Democracy of the Union upor principles which have governed the Conver in making the nominations, and in vindica of the principles of the party. The Conver also decided that the next Democ National Convention be held at Philadelph Mr. Avery, of N. C., chairman of Comm on Resolutions, reported, with the unanir sanction of the Committee, the Platform ported by the majority of the Platform C mittee at Charleston, and rejected by the C vention, (see page 30) which was unanimo adopted. The Convention adopted a resolution structing the National Committee not to i tickets of admission to their next National C vention in any case where there is a bona The Convention then proceeded to ballot a candidate for President; and John C. Brec ridge, of Ky., received the unanimous vote the delegates present as follows : Vermont...... | Florida.... Massachusetts. 8 Alabama.. New-York 2 Louisiana. For Vice-President Gen. Joseph Lane, Oregon, received the unanimous vote of Convention (105), on the first ballot. A then, after listening to a speech from Mr. Yan Resolved, That in its accordance with the interpreta | the Convention adjourned sine die. A HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SLAVERY EXTENSION OR RESTRICTION. MAINLY BY DOCUMENTS. re a nt e te st d a e SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES. LUST of gold and power was the main impulse of Spanish migration to the regions beyond the Atlantic. And the soft and timid Aborigines of tropical America, especially of its islands, were first compelled to surrender whatever they possessed of the precious metals to the imperious and grasping strangers; next forced to disclose to those strangers the sources whence they were most readily obtained; and finally driven to toil and delve for more, wherever power and greed supposed they might most readily be obtained. From this point, the transition to general enslavement was ready and rapid. The gentle and indolent natives, unac and the whole continent, North and South of the tropics, became a Slave-mart before the close of the sixteenth century. Holland, a comparatively new and Protestant State, unable to shelter itself from the reproaches of conscience and humanity behind a Papal bull, entered upon the new traffic more tardily; but its profits soon overbore all scruples, and British merchants were not proof against the glittering evidences of their success. But the first slave ship that ever entered a North American port for the sale of its human merchandise, was a Dutch trading-vessel which landed twenty negro bondmen at Jamestown, the nucleus of Virginia, almost simultaneously with the landing of the Pilgrims of the May customed to rugged, persistent toil, and revolt- flower on Plymouth Rock, December 22d, 1620. ing at the harsh and brutal severity of their A humane and observant priest (Las Casas,) The Dutch slaver had chosen his market with sagacity. Virginia was settled by CAVALIERSgentlemen-adventurers aspiring to live by their own wits and other men's labor-with the necessary complement of followers and servitors. Few of her pioneers cherished any earnest liking for downright, persistent, muscular exertion; yet some exertion was urgently required to clear away the heavy forest which all but covered the soil of the infant colony, and grow the tobacco which early became its staple export, by means of which nearly everything required by its people but food was to be paid for in England. The slaves, therefore, found ready purchasers at satisfactory prices, and the success of the first venture induced others; until not only Virginia but every part of British America was supplied with African slaves. This traffic, with the bondage it involved, had no justification in British nor in the early colonial laws; but it proceeded, nevertheless, much as an importation of dromedaries to replace with presumed economy our horses and oxen might now do. Georgia was the first among the colonies to resist and condemn it in her original charter under the lead of her noble founder-governor, General Oglethorpe; but The sanction of the Pope having been ob- the evil was too formidable and inveterate for tained for the African Slave-trade by represen- local extirpation, and a few years saw it estabtations which invested it with a look of philan- lished, even in Georgia; first evading or defythropy, Spanish and Portuguese mercantile ing, and at length molding and transforming the avarice was readily enlisted in its prosecution, law. 1 It is very common at this day to speak of our | tions on emancipation: Maryland ado revolutionary struggle as commenced and hur- of these in 1783. North-Carolina, in ried forward by a union of Free and Slaveclared the introduction of slaves into colonies; but such is not the fact. However "of evil consequence, and highly in slender and dubious its legal basis, Slavery ex- and imposed a duty of £5 per head isted in each and all of the colonies that united New-York and New-Jersey followed the to declare and maintain their independence. of Virginia and Maryland, including th Slaves were proportionately more numerous in certain portions of the South; but they were held with impunity throughout the North, advertised like dogs or horses, and sold at auction, or otherwise, as chattels. Vermont, then a territory in dispute between New-Hampshire and New-York, and with very few civilized inhabitants, mainly on its Southern and Eastern borders, is probably the only portion of the revolutionary confederation never polluted by the tread of a slave. The spirit of liberty, aroused or intensified by the protracted struggle of the colonists against usurped and abused power in the mother country, soon found itself engaged in natural antagonism against the current form of domestic despotism. "How shall we complain of arbitrary or unlimited power exerted over us, while we exert a still more despotic and inexcusable power over a dependent and benighted race?" was very fairly asked. Several suits were brought in Massachusetts-where the fires of liberty burnt earliest and brightest to test the legal right of slave-holding; and the leading Whigs gave their money and their legal services to support these actions, which were generally, on one ground or another, successful. Efforts for an express law of emancipation, however, failed even in Massachusetts; the Legislature, doubtless, apprehending that such a measure, by alienating the slave-holders, would increase the number and power of the Tories; but in 1777, a privateer having brought a lot of captured slaves into Jamaica, and advertised them for sale, the General Court, as the Legislative Assembly was called, interfered and had them set at liberty. The first Continental Congress which resolved to resist the usurpations and oppressions of Great Britain by force, had already declared that our struggle would be "for the rights of human nature," which the Congress of 1776, under the lead of Thomas Jefferson, expanded into the noble affirmation of the right of "all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," contained in the immortal preamble to the Declaration of Independence. A like averment that "all men are born free tic in the same interdict with the fore trade. Neither of these States, hov clared a general emancipation until ma thereafter, and Slavery did not wholly New-York until about 1830, nor in Ne till a much later date. The distinction and Slave States, with the kindred as of a natural antagonism between the N South, was utterly unknown to the me Revolution. Before the Declaration of Independe during the intense ferment which pre and distracted public attention from ev else, Lord Mansfield had rendered his j from the King's Bench, which expelled from England, and ought to have dest in the colonies as well. The plaintifi famous case was James Somerset, a r Africa, carried to Virginia as a slave thence by his master to England, and t cited to resist the claim of his maste services, and assert his right to liberty. first recorded case, involving the leg modern Slavery in England, it was held that negroes, "being usually bought a among merchants as merchandise, a being infidels, there might be a property sufficient to maintain trover." But t overruled by Chief Justice Holt from the Bench (1697,) ruling that "so soon as lands in England, he is free;" and again that "there is no such thing as a slave law of England." This judgment prov ceedingly troublesome to planters an chants from slave-holding colonies visit mother countrywith their servants, the me concerned in the American trade, in 172 cured from Yorke and Talbot, the A General and Solicitor General of the Cr written opinion that negroes, legally en elsewhere, might be held as slaves in En and that even baptism was no bar to th ter's claim. This opinion was, in 1749, be sound law by Yorke (now Lord Hard sitting as judge, on the ground that, if t trary ruling of Lord Holt were upheld, it abolish Slavery in Jamaica or Virginia each. Thus the law stood until Lord Ma in Somerset's case, reversed it with evid luctance, and after having vainly endeav bring about an accommodation betwe parties. When delay would serve no L and a judgment must be rendered, Ma declared it in these memorable words: "We cannot direct the law: the law must di The state of Slavery is of such a nature t incapable of being introduced on any reasons, n political, but only by positive law, which prese force long after the reasons, occasion, and tim whence it was created, is erased from the memor so odious that nothing can be sufficient to suppor positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefor follow from the decision, I cannot say that this allowed or approved by the law of England, and slaves; and in 1782, removed all legal restric-fore the black must be discharged." The natural, if not necessary, effect of this decision on Slavery in these colonies had their connection with the mother country been continued, is sufficiently obvious. SLAVERY UNDER THE CONFEDERATION. The disposition or management of unpeopled States, early became a subject of solicitude same territory being included within the limits of two or more The IXth Continental Congress, under the Ar- The report of the committee was in the following words: THE JEFFERSONIAN ORDINANCE, 1784. Resolved, That the territory ceded, or to be ceded by individual States to the United States, whensoever the same shall have been purchased of the Indian inhabitants and offered for sale by the United States, shall be formed into additional States, bounded in the following manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit: to say, northwardly and southwardly by parallels of latitude, so that each State shall comprehend from south to north, two degrees of latitude, beginning to count from the completion of thirty-one degrees north of the equator; the then southern boundary of the U. S.] but any territory northwardly of the forty-seventh degree shall make part of the State next below. And eastwardly and westwardly they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi, by that river on one side, and the meridian of the lowest point of the rapids of the Ohio on the other; and those adjoining on the east, by the same meridian on their western side, and on their eastern by the meridian of the western cape of the mouth of the Great Kanawha. And the territory eastward of this last meridian, between the Ohio, Lake Erie, and Pennsylvania, shall be one State. That the settlers within the territory so to be purchased and offered for sale shall, either on their own petition or on the order of Congress, receive authority from them, with appointments of time and place, for their free males of full age to meet together for the purpose of establishing a temporary government, to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of these States, so that such laws nevertheless shall be subject to alteration by their ordinary Legislature, and to erect, subject to a like alteration, counties or townships for the election of members for their Legislature. That such temporary government shall only continue in force in any State until it shall have acquired twenty thousand free inhabitants, when, giving due proof thereof to Congress, they shall receive from them authority, with appointments of time and place, to call a convention of representatives to establish a permanent constitution and government for themselves: Provided, That both the temporary and permanent governments be established on these principles as their basis: 1. That they shall forever remain a part of the United States of America. 2. That in their persons, property, and territory, they shall be subject to the Government of the United States in Congress assembled, and to the Articles of Confederation in all those cases in which the original States shall be so subject. 3. That they shall be subject to pay a part of the Federal debts, contracted or to be contracted, to be apportioned on them by Congress, according to the same common rule and measure by which apportionments thereof shall be made on the other States. 4. That their respective governments shall be in republican forms, and shall admit no person to be a citizen who holds a hereditary title. State shall be admitted, by its Delegates, into the Con 5. That after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have convicted to have been personally guilty. of cession to the Confederation of her claims to That whenever any of the said States shall have, of territory northwest of the Ohio River. New. free inhabitants, as many as shall then be in any one of York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had al- the least numerous of the thirteen original States, such ready made similar concessions to the Confede- gress of the United States, on an equal footing with the ration of their respective claims to territory westward of their present limits. Congress hereupon appointed Messrs. Jefferson of Virginia, Chase of Maryland, and Howell of Rhode Island, a Select Committee to report a Plan of Government for the Western Territory. This plan, drawn up by Thomas Jefferson, provided for the government of all the Western territory, including that portion which had not yet been, but which, it was reasonably expected, would be, surrendered to the Confederation by the States of North Carolina and Georgia (and which now forms the States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi), as well as that which had already been conceded by the more northern States. said original States; after which the assent of two-thirds of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be requisite in all those cases wherein, by the Confederation, the assent of nine States is now required, provided the consent of nine States to such admission may be obtained according to the eleventh of the Articles of Confederation. Until such admission by their Delegates into Congress, any of the said States, after the establishment of their temporary government, shall have authority to keep a sitting member in Congress, with a right of debating, but not of voting. That the territory northward of the forty-fifth degree, that is to say, of the completion of forty-five degrees from the equator, and extending to the Lake of the Woods, shall be called Sylvania; that of the territory under the forty-fifth and forty-fourth degress, that which lies westward of Lake Michigan, shall be called Michigania; and that which is eastward thereof, within the peninsula formed by the lakes and waters of Michigan, Huron, St. Clair, and Erie, shall be called Chersonesus, and shall include any part of the peninsula which may |