was effected; but provision was made for a second convention in December, to nominate presidential electors.[47] Among the delegates from Morgan County in this December convention was Douglas, burning with zeal for the consolidation of his party.  Signs were not wanting that he was in league with other zealots to execute a sort of coup d’etat within the party.  Early in the session, one Ebenezer Peck, recently from Canada, boldly proposed that the convention should proceed to nominate not only presidential electors but candidates for State offices as well.  A storm of protests broke upon his head, and for the moment he was silenced; but on the second day, he and his confidants succeeded in precipitating a general discussion of the convention system.  Peck—­contemptuously styled “the Canadian” by his enemies—­secured the floor and launched upon a vigorous defense of the nominating convention as a piece of party machinery.  He thought it absurd to talk of a man’s having a right to become a candidate for office without the indorsement of his party.  He believed it equally irrational to allow members of the party to consult personal preferences in voting.  The members of the party must submit to discipline, if they expected to secure control of office.  Confusion again reigned.  The presiding officer left the chair precipitately, denouncing the notions of Peck as anti-republican.[48]

In the exciting wrangle that followed, Douglas was understood to say that he had seen the workings of the nominating convention in New York, and he knew it to be the only way to manage elections successfully.  The opposition had overthrown the great DeWitt Clinton only by organizing and adopting the convention system.  Gentlemen were mistaken who feared that the people of the West had enjoyed their own opinions too long to submit quietly to the wise regulations of a convention.  He knew them better:  he had himself had the honor of introducing the nominating convention into Morgan County, where it had already prostrated one individual high in office.  These wise admonitions from a mere stripling failed to mollify the conservatives.  The meeting broke up in disorder, leaving the party with divided counsels.[49]

Successful county and district conventions did much to break down the resistance to the system.  During the following months, Morgan County, and the congressional district to which it belonged, became a political experiment station.  A convention at Jacksonville in April not only succeeded in nominating one candidate for each elective office, but also in securing the support of the disappointed aspirants for office, which under the circumstances was in itself a triumph.[50] Taking their cue from the enemy, the Whigs of Morgan County also united upon a ticket for the State offices, at the head of which was John J. Hardin, a formidable campaigner.  When the canvass was fairly under way, not a man could be found on the Democratic ticket to hold his own with Hardin on the hustings.