But of the whole thirty-three states, seventeen were against him.  The West fought the South and fought for Douglas.  The South made a common cause of opposition to the North and the West.  But the new Giant put through the Douglas principles in the platform.

Then Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas seceded from the convention.  The West had won but it had lost the South.  And now in the balloting Douglas could not be nominated.  He needed 202 votes, he could only poll 152-1/2.  The heat grew intense.  The delegates, trying to accommodate their interests, wandered about the old city talking seriously and not excitedly.  There was little drinking.  The local clergy offered up prayers for the success of the convention, for peaceful solutions.  Balloting and balloting!  No choice!  The twenty-third of May arrived and the convention, exhausted and half disgusted, adjourned to meet in Baltimore, June 18th.  Douglas had not been nominated.  His party had split just as the Republicans had anticipated when they were congratulating themselves on Douglas’ success in the Senatorial contest with Lincoln.

Meantime, the seceders went to another hall, adopted a platform that suited them on the slavery matter, and nominated John C. Breckenridge.

I did not go up to Baltimore to see the end of this melancholy business.  I followed the proceedings in the press.  Delegates from the state delegations which had seceded appeared there on the scene to gain admission.  They were admitted where pledged to Douglas; upon this decision a second secession took place.  Then they nominated Douglas; but he was now like a runner who has been tripped along the way, and who stumbles spent and breathless over the goal.  He had conjured the West.  It was strong enough to adopt his principles, but it could not prevent the convention from dividing.  It could nominate him, but could not hold to him the states he needed in this, his greatest trial.  And among his bitterest enemies was that Jefferson Davis whom I had seen in the Mexican War and who was now Senator from Mississippi.  My hatred of the South nearly reached self-contempt for the way in which my life had been united to its feeling.  All my thinking of the country and the terrible events which followed the monumental folly of not giving Douglas a united nomination dates from these days.

On my way west I read in the press of the verbal clash between this Jefferson Davis and Douglas in the Senate.  With an insulting inflection Davis had said:  “I have a declining respect for platforms.  I would sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform you could construct than to have a man I did not trust, on the best platform which could be made.”

Douglas had retorted with telling effect:  “If the platform is not a matter of much consequence, why press that question to the disruption of the party?”

Why?  But the South had done it.  And Davis had done it.