The Republican party had meanwhile been organizing and consolidating. During the years 1854 and 1855 it had acquired control of the governments in a majority of the free States, and it promptly called a national convention to meet in Philadelphia in June, 1856. The Democracy saw at once that a new and dangerous opponent was in the field,--an opponent that stood upon principle and shunned expediency, that brought to its standard a great host of young men, and that won to its service a very large proportion of the talent, the courage, and the eloquence of the North. The convention met for a purpose and it spoke boldly. It accepted the issue as presented by the men of the South, and it offered no compromise. In its ranks were all shades of anti-slavery opinion,--the patient Abolitionist, the Free-Soiler of the Buffalo platform, the Democrats who had supported the Wilmot Proviso, the Whigs who had followed Seward.
There was no strife about candidates. Mr. Seward was the recognized head of the party, but he did not desire the nomination. He agreed with his faithful mentor, Thurlow Weed, that his time had not come, and that his sphere of duty was still in the Senate. Salmon P. Chase was Governor of Ohio, waiting re-election to the Senate, and, like Seward, not anxious for a nomination where election was regarded as improbable if not impossible. The more conservative and timid section of the party advocated the nomination of Judge McLean of the Supreme Court, who for many years had enjoyed a shadowy mention for the Presidency in Whig journals of a certain type. But Judge McLean was old and the Republican party was young. He belonged to the past, the party was looking to the future. It demanded a more energetic and attractive candidate, and John C. Frémont was chosen on the first ballot. He was forty-three years of age, with a creditable record in the Regular Army, and wide fame as a scientific explorer in the Western mountain ranges, then the _terra incognita_ of the continent. He was a native of South Carolina, and had married the brilliant and accomplished daughter of Colonel Benton. Always a member of the Democratic party, he was so closely identified with the early settlement of California that he was elected one of her first senators. To the tinge of romance in his history were added the attractions of a winning address and an auspicious name.