as a party, they elected a new State Committee, placing me at its head as chairman. In the meantime the Detroit Tribune had, about the time of the Detroit meetings, come out fairly and squarely in favor of the plan of that meeting, and many of the Whig papers in the interior had done the same. The Detroit Advertiser (Whig) had held aloof and denounced the movement for some weeks after the Jackson convention; but finding the masses of its party had gone zealously into the new movement, also followed suit. Prior to the meeting of the mass-convention at Jackson on July 6, these calls had been so numerously signed by the leading Whigs and Free-Soilers, and by so many of the leading and most influential Democrats, (about 10,000 names being attached to the calls returned to the convention besides nearly as many not returned) that the whole convention saw and felt that victory had been organized and that we already had the State. Horace Greeley had been watching this movement and fully approving the manner in which it had been initiated, had great confidence in its success, and in a letter to a prominent member of the Jackson convention suggested that the new party take the name of "Republican," which was unanimously approved by the convention. At the meeting of the mass-convention at Jackson, an understanding was had among the leading members of the Free-Soil party that they should remain in the background and not be pressed for prominent positions either as officers of the convention, or as candidates for nomination; but that these should be taken mainly from those who had left the Democratic and Whig parties to join in our movement. It became my duty, as chairman of the Free-Soil (or FreeDemocratic) Committee to announce, before adjournment, as I did from the stand, the dissolution of the Free-Soil party and its absorption into the Republican party, composed of men from all the old parties, but now no longer Democrats, Whigs or Free-Soilers, but Republicans all, animated by a common and patriotic purpose to check the further advance of the slave power, and to make freedom instead of slavery national, by every means permitted by the federal Constitution. 1 Greeley wrote to Jacob M. Howard that he had been advised that Wisconein would adopt the name Republican on July 13, and urged Michigan to anticipate her sister State on the 6th, which was done. This letter was shown to Mr. Christiancy, Zach. Chandler and others on the day of the convention and is abundant proof of the correctness of the assumption that A. E. Bovay suggested the name to Greeley. The State ticket nominated by that convention was triumphantly elected. I need not follow the history of the Republican party. It has made its own history, which can never be obliterated. And though, like all other parties composed of men, and therefore subject to the infirmities of human nature, it has yet accomplished more for the enfranchisement of the enslaved and oppressed, and more to make of discordant elements a homogeneous nation, than any other party known to the history of the world. I still cling to it as the ark of our national safety. I await the result with patience and an unswerving reliance upon that Providence which shapes all our ends well. I am very truly yours, I. P. CHRISTIANCY. The call drafted by Mr. Christiancy, is as follows, with a few of the names attached to it before publication in Detroit: To the People of Michigan: A great wrong has been perpetrated. The slave power of this country has triumphed. Liberty is trampled under foot. The Missouri Compromise, a solemn compact entered into by our fathers, has been violated, and a vast territory dedicated to freedom has been opened to slavery. This act, so unjust to the North, has been perpetrated under circumstances which deepen its perfidy. An administration placed in power by Northern votes has brought to bear all the resources of executive corruption in its support. Northern Senators and Representatives, in the face of the overwhelming public sentiment of the North, expressed in the proceedings of public meetings and solemn remonstrances, without a single petition in its favor on their table, and not daring to submit this great question to the people, have yielded to the seductions of executive patronage, and, Judaslike, betrayed the cause of liberty; while the South, inspired by a dominant and grasping ambition, has, without distinction of party, and with a unanimity almost entire, deliberately trampled under foot the solemn compact entered into in the midst of a crisis threatening to the peace of the Union, sanctioned by the greatest names of our history, and the binding force of which has, for a period of more than thirty years, been recognized and declared by numerous acts of legislation. Such an outrage upon liberty, such a violation of plighted faith, can not be submitted to. This great wrong must be righted, or there will be no longer a North in the councils of the nation. The extension of slavery, under the folds of the American flag, is a stigma upon liberty. The indefinite increase of slave representation in Congress is destructive to that equality among freemen which is essential to the permanency of the Union. The safety of the Union-the rights of the North-the interests of free labor-the destiny of a vast territory and its untold millions for all coming time-and finally, the high aspirations of humanity for universal freedom, ALL are involved in the issue forced upon the country by the slave power and its plastic Northern tools. In view, therefore, of the recent action of Congress upon the subject, and the evident designs of the slave power to attempt still further aggressions upon freedom-we invite all our fellow-citizens, without reference to former political associations, who think that the time has arrived for a UNION at the North to protect LIBERTY from being overthrown and down-trodden, to assemble in Mass-Convention on Thursday, the 6th of July next, at 1 P. M., át Jackson, there to take such measures as shall be thought best to concentrate the popular sentiment of this State against the aggression of the slave power. Jno. J. Bagley, Z. Chandler, G. Custer, N. Maniates, and a great number of others. In response to these calls the largest convention ever known in Michigan, assembled "under the oaks" at Jackson. After music and prayer the following officers were chosen: President D. S. Walbridge, Kalamazoo. Vice-Presidents-F. C. Beaman, Lenawee; Oliver Johnson, Monroe; Rudolph Diepenbeck, Wayne; Thomas Curtis, Oakland; C. T. Gorham, Calhoun; Pliny Power, Wayne; Emanuel Mann, Washtenaw; Chas. Draper, Oakland; Geo. Winslow, Kalamazoo; Norman Little, Saginaw; John McKinney, Van Buren; W. W. Murphy, Hillsdale. |