Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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I say we are invited here by the ward and county committee to ratify these nominations, and we do ratify them with our whole heart. And we pledge our most earnest efforts at the polls to give success to these nominations. That call is comprehensive; it is addressed not only to Democrats, but to all national men, and so it should be. We know full well that there are multitudes of men in this Commonwealth who oppose the Democratic party, but who are yet impelled toward us by sympathy for the principles we profess, and by the repulsion they have toward the opinions and purposes of the leaders of the Republican party. They sympathize with our principles, and we invite them to cooperate with us in the maintenance of the principles of the Constitution and in the vindication of the Commonwealth—all national men, whatsoever may have been their past party affinities. But, while we do so, we declare that it is our belief that the Democratic party is now recognized as that only existing national party in the United States—the only constitutional party—the only party which by its present principles is competent to govern these United States, whose principles are based upon the Constitution—the only party with a platform coextensive with this great Union—this is the great Democratic party. I have heard again and again, remonstrances have been addressed to me more than once, because of the condemnation which Democratic speakers so continually utter about the unnationality as well as the unconstitutionality of the Republican party.

Let us reflect a moment; let us recall to mind that the honor of the existing organization of this Federal Administration was by the votes of the people of these United States sustained when James Buchanan was nominated for the Presidency, and that he is a worthy representative of the Democratic party. Let us reflect also that John C. Fremont was nominated as the candidate of the Republican party. I pray you, gentlemen, to reflect upon the different methods by which these nominations were presented to the people of the United States. On the one hand, there assembled at the Democratic Convention, at Cincinnati, the delegates of every one of the States in the Union. That Convention was national in its constitution, national in its character, national in its purpose, and cordially presented to the suffrages of the people of the United States a national candidate, a candidate of the whole United States; and that candidate was elected not by the votes of one section of the Union alone, or another section of the Union alone, but by the concurrent votes of the South and the North.

How was it on the other side? On the other side there assembled a convention which, by the very tenor of its call, was confined to sixteen of the thirty-one States of the Union, which, by the very tenor of its call, excluded from its councils fifteen of the thirty-one States of the Union, a convention in which appeared the representatives of only sixteen of the States of the Union—nay, I mistake—as to the remaining fifteen States of the Union, in their name, pretendedly in their name and their behalf, there appeared one man—one man only—and he a self-appointed delegate by pretension from the State of Maryland. That was the Convention which presented John C. Fremont to the people of the United States. I say that was a sectional Convention, a sectional nomination, a sectional party; and no reasoning, no remonstrances, no protestations, can discharge the Republican party from the ineffaceable stigma of that sectional Convention, that sectional nomination, and that sectional candidate for the suffrages of the United States.