solves 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 back 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 portrayed in one of your resolutions, which prove that the elements of the most arbitrary governments have 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 a consummation. It would vindicate its 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 free men 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-slave

holding 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 wanting to maintain that authority in the Union, which is absolutely essential to the maintenance of their own liberties, and which has more than 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 entrust 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 aggrandisement 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.

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

J. C. FREMONT.

To Henry S. Lane, President of the Convention.

JUDGE DAYTON'S LETTER OF ACCEPT

ANCE.

TRENTON, N. J., July 7, 1856.

Gentlemen-I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter informing me that, at a Convention of Delegates, recently assembled in Philadelphia, I was unanimously nominated as their candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States, and requesting my acceptance of such nomination.

For the distinguished honor thus conferred, be pleased to accept for yourselves and in behalf of the Convention you represent, my sincere thanks.