The first day’s session (May 16) demonstrated the successful adaptation of the structure to its uses.  Participants and spectators alike were delighted with the ease of ingress and egress, the comfortable division of space, the perfection of its acoustic qualities.  Every celebrity could be seen, every speech could be heard.  The routine of organization, the choice of officers and committees, and the presentation of credentials were full of variety and zest.  Governor Edwin D. Morgan, of New York, as Chairman of the National Republican Committee, called the convention to order; and when he presented the historic name of David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, for temporary chairman, the faith of the audience in the judgment of the managers was already won.  The report of the committee on organization in the afternoon made George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, a most skillful parliamentarian ready in decision and felicitous in his phrases, the permanent presiding officer.  One thing was immediately and specially manifest:  an overflowing heartiness and deep feeling pervaded the whole house.  No need of a claque, no room for sham demonstration here!  The galleries were as watchful and earnest as the platform.  There was something genuine, elemental, uncontrollable in the moods and manifestations of the vast audience.  Seats and standing-room were always packed in advance, and, as the delegates entered by their own separate doors, the crowd easily distinguished the chief actors.  Blair, Giddings, Greeley, Evarts, Kelley, Wilmot, Schurz, and others were greeted with spontaneous applause, which, rising at some one point, grew and rolled from side to side and corner to corner of the immense building, brightening the eyes and quickening the breath of every inmate.[4]

With the second day’s proceedings the interest of delegates and spectators was visibly increased, first by some sharp-shooting speeches about credentials, and secondly by the main event of the day—­the report from the platform committee.  Much difficulty was expected on this score, but a little time had smoothed the way with almost magical effect.  The great outpouring of delegates and people, the self-evident success of the gathering, the harmonious, almost joyous, beginning of the deliberations in the first day’s session, were more convincing than logic in solidifying the party.  These were the premonitions of success; before such signs of victory all spirit of faction was fused into a generous glow of emulation.

The eager convention would have accepted a weak or defective platform; the committee, on the contrary, reported one framed with remarkable skill.  It is only needful to recapitulate its chief points.  It denounced disunion, Lecomptonism, the property theory, the dogma that the Constitution carries slavery to Territories, the reopening of the slave-trade, the popular sovereignty and non-intervention fallacies, and denied “the authority of Congress, of a Territorial