enthusiastically applauded when they denounced Know-Nothingism as a mischievous side issue in our politics, which the new movement should openly repudiate. The convention was in session two days, and was singularly harmonious throughout. Its resolutions and address to the people did not fitly echo the feeling and purpose of its members, but this was a preliminary movement, and it was evident that nothing could stay the progress of the cause. As chairman of the committee on organization, I had the honor to report the plan of action through which the new party took life, providing for the appointment of a National Executive Committee, the holding of a National Convention in Philadelphia on the 17th of June, for the nomination of candidates for President and Vice President, and the organization of the party in counties and districts throughout the States. The Philadelphia convention was very large, and marked by unbounded enthusiasm. The spirit of liberty was up, and side issues forgotten. If Know-Nothingism was present, it prudently accepted an attitude of subordination. The platform reasserted the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, and denied that Congress, the people of a Territory, or any other authority, could give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States. It asserted the sovereign power of Congress over the Territories, and its right and duty to prohibit it therein. Know-Nothingism received no recognition, and the double-faced issue of the restoration of the Missouri compromise was disowned, while the freedom of Kansas was dealt with as a mere incident of the conflict between liberty and slavery. On this broad platform John C. Fremont was nominated for President on the first ballot, and Wm. L. Dayton was unanimously nominated for Vice-President. The National Republican party was thus splendidly launched, and nothing seemed to stand in the way of its triumph but the mischievous action of the Know-Nothing party, and a surviving faction of pro-slavery Whigs. The former party met in National Convention in Philadelphia, on the twenty-second of February, and nominated Millard Fillmore for President and Andrew J. Donelson for Vice President. Some bolters from this convention subsequently nominated Nathaniel P. Banks and William F. Johnson as their candidates, and a remnant of the Whig party held a convention at Baltimore on the seventeenth of September, and endorsed Fillmore and Donelson; but a dissatisfied portion of the convention afterward nominated Commodore Stockton and Kenneth Raynor. All these factions were destined soon to political extinction, but in a hand-to-hand fight with the slave power they yet formed a considerable obstacle to that union and harmony in the free States which were necessary to success.