"
Some four months afterward, in Philadelphia, the Republicans held
their first national convention. Only a few years previous its
members had called themselves by various names--Democrats,
Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, Whigs. The old hostilities of these
different groups had not yet died out. Consequently, though
Seward was far and away the most eminent member of the new party,
he was not nominated for President. That dangerous honor was
bestowed upon a dashing soldier and explorer of the Rocky
Mountains and the Far West, John C. Fremont.*
*For an account of Fremont, see Stewart Edward White, "The
Forty-Niners" (in "The Chronicles of America"), Chapter II.
The key to the political situation in the North, during that
momentous year, was to be found in the great number of able Whigs
who, seeing that their own party was lost but refusing to be
sidetracked by the make-believe issue of the Know-Nothings, were
now hesitating what to do. Though the ordinary politicians among
the Republicans doubtless wished to conciliate these unattached
Whigs, the astuteness of the leaders was too great to allow them
to succumb to that temptation. They seem to have feared the
possible effect of immediately incorporating in their ranks,
while their new organization was still so plastic, the bulk of
those conservative classes which were, after all, the backbone of
this irreducible Whig minimum.
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