Richmond Semi-weekly Examiner, June 1, 1860

From the general tone of the Democratic press, and the proceedings of numerous public meetings throughout the country, there is manifested the most earnest and patriotic desire for the re-establishment of harmony in the ranks of the Democracy. This is as it should be, and, to hopeful minds, is a sure augury that the great party which has so long battled successfully for the Constitution and for State Rights will not now disband in face of danger more threatening to the true principles of republican government, and to the future peace of the Confederacy, than it has heretofore encountered. Under whatever specious disguise, or artful concealment of their real designs, the Black Republicans have taken the field in the approaching Presidential contest, it is obvious from their newspapers, their platforms at various times, and the speeches of their representative men, that their policy is as subversive of the true character of the Government, as the style of their speeches and writings is insulting to the people of the South, upon whose rights and feelings it is their special mission to make war. With such an enemy in front, already marshalled for the struggle which is to be decisive of the fate of the sacred compact of Union, and perhaps also of the Union itself, it would be nothing less than a national calamity for the Democratic party to break up and scatter its forces. How the opposing elements into which the Charleston Convention dissolved are to be reconciled, is a question of difficult solution. How they cannot be, seems to us obvious enough, and the present crisis in the fortunes of the Democracy imposes a most serious responsibility upon the Convention of seceders which assembles in Richmond on the 11th.

Harmony cannot be restored if that Convention should insist upon engrafting the doctrine of Congressional intervention in Territorial matters upon the national platform; nor if it should proceed to nominate a ticket (without regard to the probable action of the adjourned Convention to meet in Baltimore on the 18th) embodying the extreme views of Mr. YANCEY and his followers; much less, should it also sympathize with that gentleman's known hostility to the Union, and with the policy of re-opening the African slave trade. We go as far as the farthest in asserting the constitutional rights of the South on all proper occasions, and whenever a reasonable prospect appears of doing so successfully. But we are not willing, at a time when there is no absolute necessity therefor, and no practical good to result therefrom, to take a position that, however just, is for the time untenable, except at a cost greater than the value of the thing sought to be attained. We are equally averse to proclaim as an indispensable condition to future cooperation with the Northern Democracy, the present assertion in the party platform of principles which can have no application to the existing state of affairs. The all sufficient reason for this position on our part is, that if the opposite be taken, consistency would compel us to maintain it not only to the irreparable disruption of the Democratic party, in case the demands were rejected, but pursuing principles to their ultimate consequences, even to a dissolution of the Union, should the occasion arise for their application and the government failed to make it. We trust, therefore, that a spirit of wise moderation will rule the counsels of the Richmond Convention-that they will studiously abstain from every act and declaration calculated to widen the breach between themselves and the non-seceding portion of the Charleston Convention-and as one step in the right direction, that they will not nominate a ticket until after the Baltimore Convention shall have met and acted. We, moreover, respectfully suggest that all those whose official connection with the National Convention at Charleston was not dissolved by their acting under instructions from their State Conventions, adjourn from Richmond to Baltimore, and unite with the delegates there in restoring harmony, by forbearing to press extreme measures upon the Convention, and by patriotically sacrificing personal predilections and prejudices to the one great end of preserving the national character of the Democratic party, and bringing out a ticket that can beat the Black Republicans.