Mr. Walbridge was a prominent merchant of Central Michigan, and an exceedingly active and earnest Whig. He had already served several terms in the Legislature and was afterward a Republican Congressman for four years from Michigan. His selection as president of the convention was a wise recognition of the important Whig element in its membership. The great throng next separated into representatives of the four congressional districts, and chose the following committee on resolutions: Jacob M. Howard, Austin Blair, Donald McIntyre, John Hilsendegen, Charles Noble, Alfred R. Metcalf, John W. Turner, Levi Baxter, Marsh Giddings, E. Hussey, A. Williams, John McKinney, Chas. Draper, M. L. Higgins, J. E. Simmonds, Z. B. Knight. The chairmanship of this important committee naturally fell to Jacob M. Howard, of Detroit, a lawyer of eminence and rare powers, the first Whig Congressman from Michigan, and a man of deservedly high reputation for intellectual vigor and personal integrity. He was afterward for nine years a Republican Senator, and at Washington earned national distinction as the author of the Thirteenth Amendment and by much able and laborious public service. Mr. Howard had prepared a draft of a platform in advance of the convention, and the committee met to consider it under a clump of trees on the outskirts of the grove (at the present intersection of Franklin and Second streets in the city of Jackson). No material modifications were made in the document, which was adopted substantially as written by Mr. Howard, except that Austin Blair proposed to add two resolutions relating to State affairs purely. As to the expediency of this action there was some difference of opinion, and finally Mr. Blair submitted his propositions as a minority report, and the convention adopted and thus added them to the main platform. Over the resolution formally christening the new party "Republican," there was no especial discussion. There had already been suggestions made throughout the country that, for the new organization evidently about to be born, it might be expedient to revive "the name of that wise conservative party, whose aim and purpose were the welfare of the whole Union and the stainless honor of the American name."[4] The history of this resolution in the Howard platform has been thus given with undoubted correctness by Mr. Joseph Warren in a published letter: "The honor of having named and christened the party the writer has always claimed and now insists belongs jointly to Jacob M. Howard, Horace Greeley and himself. Soon after the writer began to advocate, through the columns of the _Tribune_, the organization of all opponents of slavery into a single party, Horace Greeley voluntarily opened a correspondence with him in regard to this movement, in which he frankly communicated his views and gave him many valuable suggestions as to the wisest course to be pursued. This correspondence was necessarily very