ACCEPTS THE NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 457

should enter upon the execution of its duties with a single-hearted determination to promote the good of the whole country, and to direct solely to this end all the power of the government, irrespective of party issues and regardless of sectional strifes. The declaration of principles embodied in the resolves of your Convention expresses the sentiments in which I have been educated, and which have been ripened into convictions by personal observation and experience. With this declaration and avowal, I think it necessary to revert to only two of the subjects embraced in the resolutions, and to those only because events have surrounded them with grave and critical circumstances, and given to them especial importance.

"I concur in the views of the Convention deprecating the foreign policy to which it adverts. The assumption that we have the right to take from another nation its domains because we want them, is an abandonment of the honest character which our country has acquired. To provoke hostilities by unjust assumptions would be to sacrifice the peace and character of the country, when all its interests might be more certainly secured and its objects attained by just and healing counsels, involving no loss of reputation.

“International embarrassments are mainly the results of a secret diplomacy, which aims to keep from the knowledge of the people the operations of the government. This system is inconsistent with the character of our institutions, and is itself yielding gradually to a more enlightened public opinion, and to the power of a free press, which, by its broad dissemination of political intelligence, secures in advance to the side of justice, the judgment of the civilized world. An honest, firm and open policy in our foreign relations would command the united support of the nation, whose deliberate opinions it would necessarily reflect.

"Nothing is clearer in the history of our institutions than the design of the nation in asserting its own independence and freedom, to avoid giving countenance to the extension of slavery. The influence of the small but compact and powerful class of men interested in slavery, who command one section of the country, and wield a vast political control as a consequence in the other, is now directed to turn this impulse of the Revolution and reverse its principles. The extension of slavery across the continent is the object of the power which now rules the government; and from this spirit has sprung those kindred wrongs in Kansas so truly por

trayed in one of your resolutions, which prove that the elements of the most arbitrary governments have not been vanquished by the just theory of our own

"It would be out of place here to pledge myself to any particular policy that may be suggested to terminate the sectional controversy engendered by political animosities, operating on a powerful class, banded together by a common interest. A practical remedy is the admission of Kansas into the Union as a free State. The South should, in my judgment, earnestly desire such consummation. It would vindicate the good faith-it would correct the mistake of the repeal; and the North, having practically the benefit of the agreement between the two sections, would be satisfied, and good feeling be restored. The measure is perfectly consistent with the honor of the South, and vital to its interests.

"That fatal act which gave birth to this purely sectional strife, originating in the scheme to take from free labor the country secured to it by a solemn covenant cannot be too soon disarmed of its pernicious force. The only genial region of the middle latitudes left to the emigrants of the northern States for homes, cannot be conquered from the free laborers, who have long considered it as set apart for them in our inheritance, without provoking a desperate struggle. Whatever may be the persistence of the particular class which seems ready to hazard everything for the success of the unjust scheme it has partially effected, I firmly believe that the great heart of the nation, which throbs with the patriotism of the freemen of both sections, will have power to overcome it. They will look to the rights secured to them by the Constitution of the Union as their best safeguard from the oppression of the class, which, by a monopoly of the soil and of slave-labor to till it, might in time reduce them to the extremity of laboring upon the same terms with the slaves. The great body of non-slaveholding freemen, including those of the South, upon whose welfare slavery is an oppression, will discover that the power of the general government over the public lands may be beneficially exerted to advance their interests and secure their independence. Knowing this, their suffrages will not be wan Union which is absolutely e liberties, and which has mor

to maintain that authority in the tial to the maintenance of their own han once indicated the purpose of

disposing of the public lands in such a way as would make every settler upon them a freeholder.

"If the people intrust to me the administration of the government, the laws of Congress in relation to the territories will be faithfully executed. All its authority will be exerted in aid of the national will to re-establish the peace of the country on the just principles which have heretofore received the sanction of the federal government, of the States, and of the people of both sections. Such a policy would leave no aliment to that sectional party which seeks its aggrandizernent by appropriating the new territories to capital in the form of slavery, but would inevitably result in the triumph of free labor-the natural capital which constitutes the real wealth of this great country, and creates that intelligent power in the masses alone to be relied on as the bulwark of free institutions.

Trusting that I have a heart capable of comprehending our whole country, with its varied interests, and confident that patriotism exists in all parts of the Union, I accept the nomination of your Convention, in the hope that I may be enabled to serve usefully its cause, which I consider the cause of constitutional freedom.

66

'Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"J. C. FREMONT.

"To Messrs. H. S. Lane, President of the Convention; James M Ashley, Anthony J. Bleecker, Joseph C. Hornblower, E. R Hoar, Thaddeus Stevens, Kingsley S. Bingham, John A. Wills, C. F. Cleveland, Cyrus Aldrich, Committee, &c."

Soon after the nominations were made in Philadelphia, a "National American" convention, then in session in New York, tendered the support of that party also to Colonel Fremont, who acknowledged the letter announcing their determination in the following terms:

"NEW YORK, June 30, 1856.

"GENTLEMEN: I received with deep sensibility your communication, informing me that a convention of my fellow-citizens, recently assembled in this city, have nominated me their candidate for the highest office in the gift of the American People; and I desire, through you, to offer to the members of that body, and to their respective constituencies, my grateful acknowledgment for this disinguished expression of confidence. In common with all who are interested in the welfare of the country, I had been strongly

impressed by the generous spirit of conciliation which influenced the action of your assembly and characterizes your note. A disposition to avoid all special questions tending to defeat unanimity in the great cause, for the sake of which it was conceded that differences of opinion on less eventful questions should be held in abeyance, was evinced alike in the proceedings of your convention in reference to me, and in the manner by which you have communicated the result. In this course, no sacrifice of opinion on any side becomes necessary.

"I shall, in a few days, be able to transmit you a paper,* designed for all parties engaged in our cause, in which I present to the country my views of the leading subjects which are now put in issue in the contest for the presidency. My confidence in the success of our cause is greatly strengthened by the belief that these views will meet the approbation of your constituents.

"Trusting that the national and patriotic feelings evinced by the tender of your co-operation in the work of regenerating the government, may increase the glow of enthusiasm which pervades the country, and harmonize all elements in our truly great and common cause, I accept the nomination with which you have honored me, and am, gentlemen, very respectfully,

"Your fellow-citizen,

"J. C. FREMONT."

Messrs. Thomas H. Ford, Ambrose Stephens, W. A. Howard, Stephen M. Allen, Simon P. Kase, Thomas Shankland, J. E. Dunham, M. C. Geer-a Committee of the National American party.

Since his nomination, more than half of the political journals of the free States have advocated his election, and public meetings throughout the country indicate a degree of enthusiasm in his support which, taking all the circumstances into consideration, is without a parallel in the history of American politics. His friends confidently predict his election by a nearly unanimous vote of the free States, and the developments of each succeeding day render them more and more sanguine.

* Letter of July 8, p. 456 et seq.

CHAPTER XIX.

CONCLUSION.

COL. FREMONT is now but forty-three years of age. Though in the prime of life, he is already eminent. Before he was thirty he had enrolled his name among the most eminent explorers and geographers, and had given it to the rivers and the mountains and the productions of the soil, which he was the first to explore. Before he was thirty-five, he had emancipated an empire from Mexican tyranny, and was unanimously elected its governor by those whom he had delivered. When but thirty-seven, he was elected to the highest legislative dignity in the American republic; and within the last year, his earlier distinctions have been thrown into comparative obscurity by his selection as the national champion of freedom and civilization in the approaching Presidential election. His nomination at Philadelphia on the 19th of June, gave symmetry and completeness to a career which is more commended by its results to the American people than that of any man, at his years, whom the country has produced.

Col. Fremont is about five feet nine inches high, slight and sinewy in his structure, but gracefully proportioned and eminently prepossessing in his personal appearance. His eyes are blue and very large, his nose aquiline, his