Very few Northern men were
present, and the body in fact represented the Southern wing of the
Democracy. Having, like its competitor, the merit of knowing its own
mind, it promptly nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky and Joseph
Lane of Oregon, and adopted the radical platform which had been reported
at Charleston.
These doings opened, so that it could never be closed, that seam of
which the thread had long been visible athwart the surface of the old
Democratic party. The great record of discipline and of triumph, which
the party had made when united beneath the dominion of imperious
leaders, was over, and forever. Those questions which Lincoln
obstinately and against advice had insisted upon pushing in 1858 had
forced this disastrous development of irreconcilable differences. The
answers, which Douglas could not shirk, had alienated the most
implacable of men, the dictators of the Southern Democracy. His
"looking-both-ways" theory would not fit with their policy, and their
policy was and must be immutable; modification was in itself defeat. On
the other hand, what he said constituted the doctrine to which the mass
of the Northern Democracy firmly held. So now, although Republicans
admitted that it was "morally certain" that the Democratic party,
holding together, could carry the election,[98] yet these men from the
Cotton States could not take victory and Douglas together.
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