The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1860-04-12
The Subsidence or Candidates-What Il
Expected Of tho Charleston Convention.

| The Subsidence or Candidates-What fs
Expected OF the Charleston Convention.
The candidates before the Charleston Con-
vention are rapidly diminishing in numbers,
through the operation of natural principles as
simple as that involved in the proposition that
| two negatives make an affirmative.
Wherever State has presented two fayorite
candidates, these have performed the remarka-
BILE feat of jumping down each others throat,
and thus multiplying both as available candi-
dates This was the operation witnessed with
Cobb and Stephens of Georgia, Breckenridge
and Guthrie Of Kentucky, and Seymour and
Dickinson of New York ; and now it has been
performed by Hunter and Wise of Virginia.
An article from the Richmond Enquirer, which
we publish in another column to-day, shows
conclusively that Mr.. Hunter is not the choice
| of Virginia, and in doing so it shows just as
conclusively that Mr.. Wise does not occupy
that coveted position, The same arguments
that are used against Hunter apply with equal
force against Wise, and, so far as the local &C
ceptance of the respective candidates bears
upon the Convention at Charleston and the
opinion of the country at large, the result is
| to nullify the claims of both.
The great fact that this mutual destruction
of State favorites reveals is, that none of them
possess broad and national reputation as states
men, but have attained local influence only
through the arts of minor politics AS natu-
raj consequence, no one of them fills the desires
and hopes of his own State, and much less of
the whole country, at an emergency like that
rising before us, when the public expectation
requires that statesman and not politician
shall be put in nomination. Already the reac-
ton in the popular feeling has commenced. Al
ready the tide of conservative impulse is rising
in the country, and the recent elections in Con-
necticut and Rhode Island demonstrate with
mathematical precision the desires and the In
tentions Of the people. In the political canvass
which these two States have just gone through,
| the black republicans brought out vote which
exhibited popular loss of 5l3 on the 81, 1872
cast for Fremont, while the conservative
interest brought to the democratic candi-
dates gain Of 1924 on the Al ,675 cast for
| Buchanan in 1856. Similar and even greater
| Central and Northern States. They contain
! nearly million of conservative voters, who
! rarely can be brought to the polls, but who, in
the coming campaign, will come out to put
down the revolutionary and destructive theo-
ries of the abolition fanatics and black repub-
lican demagogues.
1t is this rising feeling of conservatism that
the Charleston Convention must conciliate if it
desires that its nominee shall be elected by the
people. That body holds vantage ground in
the opening campaign which, if it knows how
to secure it, will give them the victory in No.
vember. The power of party drill will bring
together there delegates from every State, and
from this fact alone that Convention will pos
sess a national character which is not conferred
upon it by any unity Of principle advocated by
It's cliques aud sections. If, therefore, it dis
cards clique influences and the claims of caudi
dates based upon hair splitting differences with
ambiguous tendencies, and takes broad, IA