By the first of December, the Democrats of both Mis-
sissippi and Alabama had issued calls for Democratic
state conventions to consider the matter of representa-
tion in the national convention at Baltimore and a pre-
liminary convention had already been held in Georgia
to make provision for the summons of a later body to
appoint delegates. Henceforth their work proceeded
with comparative smoothness.

Many Whigs also saw a necessity for such reorgan-
ization within their own ranks with the glaring de-
ficiencies that they evidenced. The Richmond Whig
appealed to party men to remember that even if old
issues had lost much of their influence, still the prin-
ciples upon which the Whig party was founded re-
mained "consecrated in the bosoms of American free-
men". ² Many were sure that with the slavery issue
excluded from politics party politics would settle down
in the South on its old basis. ³

But in Alabama and the adjacent states on the east
and west the Whigs refused to give up their connection
with the Union movement even after they saw the
Democrats gradually abandoning it. They insisted
that the Union party was stronger than either the
Democratic or Whig parties and that any attempts to
split up the Union party for sectional or selfish purposes
would be a signal for failure. Union men in the
whole South were urged "to dictate terms", by a con-
cert of action, "to the political parties and the political
demagogues of this section and of the North in the
National Conventions, and thus preserve the Union,

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