Although Van Buren had accepted the first nomination, it was deemed wise as the campaign progressed to have a much more representative national body to make him the candidate, and a largely attended mass convention met at Buffalo on the 9th of August, over which Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, presided, and which had representatives from seventeen States. On the formal ballot for President, Van Buren had 159 votes to 129 for John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, who had already been nominated by the Abolitionists, and Charles Francis Adams was nominated by acclamation for Vice-President. After this convention had made its nominations and declared its platform, Mr. Hale, the Abolition candidate, retired from the contest, and he and his followers gave a cordial support to Van Buren. The following was the Van Buren platform as declared by the Buffalo convention: _Whereas_, We have assembled in convention, as a union of freemen, for the sake of freedom, forgetting all past political differences, in common resolve to maintain the rights of free labor against the aggressions of the slave power, and to secure free soil for a free people; and _Whereas_, The political conventions recently assembled at Baltimore and Philadelphia, the one stifling the voice of a great constituency, entitled to be heard in its deliberations, and the other abandoning its distinctive principles for mere availability, have dissolved the national party organizations heretofore existing by nominating for the chief magistracy of the United States, under the slaveholding dictation, candidates, neither of whom can be supported by the opponents of slavery extension without a sacrifice of consistency, duty, and self-respect; and _Whereas_, These nominations so made furnish the occasion and demonstrate the necessity of the union of the people under the banner of free democracy, in a solemn and formal declaration of their independence of the slave power, and of their fixed determination to rescue the Federal Government from its control: _Resolved_, Therefore, that we, the people here assembled, remembering the example of our fathers in the days of the first Declaration of Independence, putting our trust in God for the triumph of our cause, and invoking His guidance in our endeavors to advance it, do now plant ourselves upon the national platform of freedom, in opposition to the sectional platform of slavery. _Resolved_, That slavery in the several States of this Union which recognize its existence depends upon State laws alone, which cannot be repealed or modified by the Federal Government, and for which laws that Government is not responsible. We therefore propose no interference by Congress with slavery within the limits of any State.