In the last three national conventions of his party preceding his death, he was presented by the Illinois delegation to be named for the great office. The last of these--the Charleston convention of 1860--is now historic. It assembled amid intense party passion, and after a turbulent session that seemed the omen of its approaching doom, adjourned to a later day to Baltimore. Senator Douglas there received the almost solid vote of the Northern, and a portion of that of the Border States, but the hostility of the extreme Southern leaders to his candidacy was implacable to the end. What had seemed inevitable from the beginning at length occurred, and the great historical party--which had administered the Government with brief intermissions from the inauguration of Jefferson--was hopelessly rent asunder. This startling event--and what it might portend-- gave pause to thoughtful men of all parties. It was not a mere incident, but an epoch in history. Mr. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years of Congress," says: "The situation was the cause of solicitude and even grief with thousands to whom the old party was peculiarly endeared. The traditions of Jefferson, of Madison, of Jackson, were devoutly treasured; and the splendid achievements of the American Democracy were recounted with the pride which attaches to an honorable family inheritance. The fact was recalled that the Republic had grown to its imperial dimensions under Democratic statesmanship. It was remembered that Louisiana had been acquired from France, Florida from Spain, the independent Republic of Texas annexed, and California, with its vast dependencies, and its myriad millions of treasure, ceded by Mexico, all under Democratic administrations, and in spite of the resistance of their opponents. That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro in a country where his labor was not wanted, was to many of its members as incomprehensible as it was sorrowful and exasperating. They might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest, the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle subordinated to passion, with judgment displaced by a desire for revenge."