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The three 1860 Democratic National Conventions were crucial events in the lead-up to the American Civil War. The first Democratic national convention adjourned in deadlock without choosing candidates for President and Vice President. A second official convention nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for President and former Senator Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice President. A third, "rump," convention, primarily Southerners, nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge for President and Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon for Vice President. ==Charleston convention== The 1860 Democratic National Convention convened at South Carolina Institute Hall (destroyed in the Great Fire of 1861) in Charleston, South Carolina on 23 April 1860. Charleston was probably the most pro-slavery city in the U.S. at the time, and the galleries at the convention were packed with pro-slavery spectators.〔 〕 The front-runner for the nomination was Douglas. Douglas was considered a moderate on the slavery issue. With the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, he advanced the doctrine of popular sovereignty: allowing settlers in each Territory to decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed - a change from the flat prohibition of slavery in most Territories under the Missouri Compromise, which the South had welcomed. But then the Supreme Court's 1857 ''Dred Scott'' decision declared that the Constitution protected slavery in all Territories. Douglas was challenged for his Senate seat by Abraham Lincoln in 1858, and narrowly won re-election by professing the Freeport Doctrine, a ''de facto'' rejection of '' Dred Scott''. Now militant Southern "Fire-eaters", such as William Yancey of Alabama, opposed him as a traitor. Many of them openly predicted a split in the party, and the election of Republican front-runner William H. Seward.〔 Urged by Yancey, the delegations from seven Deep South states (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Florida) met in a separate caucus before the convention. They reached a tentative consensus to "stop Douglas" by imposing a pro-slavery party platform which he could not run on if nominated.〔Heidler, David S. ''Pulling the Temple Down: The Fire-Eaters and the Destruction of the Union'' ISBN 0-8117-0634-6, p. 149. Jefferson Davis, a relative moderate, saw this coalition of the Deep South with Douglas's enemies in the Buchanan administration as potentially dangerous, and called for abandoning a platform as the Whigs had in 1840, just settling on an agreed-to candidate. The moderates, principally found in Alabama and Georgia, were outvoted in caucus.〕 The "Fire-eater" majority on the convention's platform committee produced an explicitly pro-slavery document, endorsing ''Dred Scott'' and Congressional legislation protecting slavery in the territories. Northern Democrats refused to acquiesce. ''Dred Scott'' was extremely unpopular in the North, and the Northerners said they could not carry a single state with that platform. On 30 April, the convention by a vote of 165 to 138 adopted the minority (Northern) platform, which omitted these planks. 50 Southern delegates then left the convention in protest,〔 including the Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas delegations, three of the four delegates from Arkansas, and one of the three delegates from Delaware. The departed delegates gathered at St. Andrews Hall on Broad Street, declared themselves the real convention, and awaited conciliatory action by the Institute Hall convention. That didn't happen. Instead, the Institute Hall convention proceeded to nominations. The dominant Douglas forces believed their path was now clear.〔 Six major candidates were nominated at the convention: Douglas, former Treasury Secretary James Guthrie of Kentucky, Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon, former Senator Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, and Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. Douglas led on the first ballot, with 145½ of 253 votes cast. However, the convention rules required a two-thirds vote to approve a nomination. Furthermore, convention chairman Caleb Cushing ruled that two-thirds of the convention's whole membership was required, not just two-thirds of those actually present and voting. Douglas thus needed 56½ more votes, or a total of 202, from the 253 delegates still present. The convention held 57 ballots, and though Douglas led on all of them, he never got more than 152 votes. On the 57th ballot, Douglas got 151½ votes, still 50½ votes short of the nomination, though far ahead of Guthrie, who was second with 65½. In desperation, on 3 May the delegates voted to adjourn the convention, and reconvene in Baltimore six weeks later. Candidates receiving votes for president at the Charleston convention: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1860 Democratic National Conventions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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