General Jackson was, in truth, the father and founder of the Democratic party. Prior to his first nomination in 1823, in the election of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, the parties were known as Federal and Republican. In the fall of 1823, I united with a few friends in calling, at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the FIRST _Democratic_ meeting, by which General Jackson was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I offered the resolutions in his favor adopted by that meeting, calling the Democratic State Convention of Pennsylvania which confirmed that nomination in March, 1824. I attended that Convention, as a delegate from Pittsburg, and wrote the address of the Convention to the Democracy of the State and of the Union on that momentous occasion. I supported General Jackson for the Presidency in 1823 (my first vote), 1824, 1828, and 1832, and uniformly adhered to the Democratic party until after the rebellion of 1861. During the great nullification and secession question of South Carolina, on the first Monday of January, 1833, at Natchez, Mississippi, I made the opening speech, then published, against nullification and secession, in favor of "_war_," if necessary to maintain the Union--in favor of "_coercion_" to put down rebellion in any State. The Legislature of Mississippi indorsed that speech, and passed resolutions declaring nullification and _secession_ to be _treason_, and, upon THAT ISSUE, I was elected by the Legislature to the Senate of the United States. If Mississippi, under the influence of Jefferson Davis, and other traitor leaders, has since that period abandoned those principles, she cannot expect me to follow her, and thereby surrender opinions which I have uniformly maintained and advocated throughout my life, but more especially from 1833 until the present period. Mississippi (whose prosperity I would restore by bringing her back to the Union) indorsed those opinions when she elected me to the Senate of the United States over an avowed and distinguished secessionist (George Poindexter), after a contest of unexampled violence, personal and political, extending from January, 1833, to January, 1836.