Note 209 — Chapter XVII · THE FIRST REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR 1856

Horatio Seymour used the same argument with great effect. "Another tie which has heretofore held our country together has been disbanded, and from its ruins has sprung a political organisation trusting for its success to sectional prejudices. It excludes from its councils the people of nearly one-half of the Union; it seeks a triumph over one-half our country. The battle-fields of Yorktown, of Camden, of New Orleans, are unrepresented in their conventions; and no delegates speak for the States where rest the remains of Washington, Jefferson, Marion, Sumter, or Morgan, or of the later hero, Jackson. They cherish more bitter hatred of their own countrymen than they have ever shown towards the enemies of our land. If the language they hold this day had been used eighty years since, we should not have thrown off the British yoke; our national constitution would not have been formed; and if their spirit of hatred continues, our Constitution and Government will cease to exist."—Seymour at Springfield, Mass., July 4, 1856. Cook and Knox, Public Record of Horatio Seymour, p. 2.

"John A. Dix supported the Democratic candidates in the canvass of 1856; he did not, however, take an active part in the contest."—Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John A. Dix, Vol. 1, p. 319.