Brothers: Recalling to your minds the solemn obligations which you have severally taken in this and the preceding degrees, I now pronounce you entitled to all the privileges of membership in this organization, and take pleasure in informing you that you are now members of the order of (_the American Union_.) American, Whig, Republican and Democratic Nominations of 1856. The American convention met the next day after the session of the National Council of the Order, on the 22d February, 1856. It was composed of 227 delegates; all the States being represented except Maine, Vermont, Georgia and South Carolina. Hon. Millard Fillmore was nominated for President, and Andrew J. Donelson for Vice-President. The Whig Convention met at Baltimore, September 17, 1856, and endorsed the nominations made by the American party, and in its platform declared that “without adopting or referring to the peculiar doctrines of the party which has already selected Mr. Fillmore as a candidate” * * * Resolved, that in the present exigency of political affairs, we are not called upon to discuss the subordinate questions of the administration in the exercising of the constitutional powers of the government. It is enough to know that civil war is raging, and that the Union is in peril; and proclaim the conviction that the restoration of Mr. Fillmore to the Presidency will furnish the best if not the only means of restoring peace. The first National Convention of the new Republican party met at Philadelphia, June 18, 1856, and nominated John C. Fremont for President, and William L. Dayton for Vice-President. Since the previous Presidential election, a new party consisting of the disaffected former adherents of the other parties—Native and Independent Democrats, Abolitionists, and Whigs opposed to slavery—had sprung into existence, and was called by its adherents and friends, the Republican party. This convention of delegates assembled in pursuance of a call addressed to the people of the United States, without regard to past political differences or divisions, who were opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. To the policy of President Pierce’s administration: To the extension of slavery into free territory: In favor of the admission of Kansas as a free State: Of restoring the action of the federal government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson.