PRESIDENTIAL; THE BALTIMORE CONVENTION; DOUGLAS CERTAIN TO BE NOMINATED (6/23/1860)

Special Dispatch to the New-York Times. BALTIMORE, Friday Evening. A good part of this, the fifth day of the Convention, has been spent in parliamentary manoeuverings, intended to gain time. When they finally got to work, the minority report was rejected, first as a whole, and then piecemeal, the Georgia case alone forming an exception. The majority report was then adopted, and the decks were cleared for action. All interest was concentrated upon the active members of the New-York delegation, who retired four times for consultation, each resulting in a diminution of Douglas strength. A mysterious announcement on the part of the Virginians, looking towards an impending revolt, evidently affected many of the weaker members. At the commencement of the evening session DOUGLAS had in the New-York delegation only eight majority. The report that he had written a letter to DEAN RICHMOND, authorizing the withdrawal of his name, rather than permit it to be the means of hopelessly dividing the Democratic Party, produced a decided sensation. It will be used as an excuse by those who meditate treachery, though it is thought that its magnanimity may increase the chances of his nomination.

Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, Harper’s Ferry, the election of 1860, secession – all the events leading up to the Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts

First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.

Posting history, in reverse order

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Link to previous New York Times thread

[rustbucket: Good Heavens! The 1860 article below about Representative John Covode could have been written last year with changes of only a few words including Covode, Buchanan, Republican, and Bell wherever they appear. This brings to mind Santayana's famous statement:"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."]

June 22, 1860. Bedford Gazette, Bedford, PA

The Covode Committee falling into Contempt. (Column 4)

The effort made by the self-righteous Covode to bring the Administration of President Buchanan into disrepute, through the instrumentality of a one-sided, partizan Committee, under the modus operandi of which, the said Covode was suffered to be prosecutor, witness, attorney, judge and part of the jury, has excited nothing but the contempt of all intelligent and liberal minded men. Many of the Opposition newspapers regard Covode as an arrant hypocrite and deprecate his bare-faced attempt to make party capital at the expense of the honor and character of our government.

The following from the Philadelphia Evening Journal, the organ of the Bell party in Philadelphia, we commend to the admirers of the immaculate Covode:

"The fact is, as every unprejudiced and/discerning man must see, that the present "Republican" majority in the House of Representatives, have employed their power during this session of Congress, chiefly in ex parte inquisitions into the conduct of the President and his Cabinet, in which the inquisitorial committees were packed with the enemies of the accused parties, whose action was so shaped as to elicit every fact that was likely to discredit the Administration, while every fact that would have been exculpatory, was suppressed. And all this was done, too, with the foreknowledge that whatever the result of the inquest might be, the parties originating it had the power, by a final vote in the House, to pass and record a sentence of condemnation, and with a foregone purpose to give the whole proceedings that damning issue.

The event, as exhibited in the resolutions passed yesterday, in censure of the President and the Secretary of the Navy, has consummated the design of the conspirators, and the journals of Congress are again disgraced with a denunciatory judgment, pronounced against the Executive of the nation, by a partisan majority in one branch of the Legislature, against every principle of constitutional right and power, and every rule of ordinary judicial propriety and justice.

Comment on this shameful abuse of the power of a majority in a single chamber of Congress is unnecessary. It is a striking example of abuse in those who have set themselves up as the special reformers of abuses. Those who will audaciously transgress all established limitations of legislative jurisdiction, and usurp functions denied to them by the fundamental law of the Government, for the purpose of exercising a malignant and dishonorable censorship over a co-ordinate department of the Administration, are not fit to be trusted with too much power. Moreover, the people will doubtless see that the whole aim of the "Covode," and other like has been to bring the President and his Constitutional advisers into public contempt, merely to provoke a counter current of feeling in favor of the "Republican" party, and, perceiving this fact, we trust that the only and real purpose of a shameful scheme of persecution will fail of realization.”

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And Wikipedia says the following about John Covode, the guy who created the above kind of attack on a President (Link):

"Covode is most famous for chairing a committee to investigate the possibility of impeaching President James Buchanan during the spring and summer of 1860."

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