The explosion was near, but still delayed, and the delegates of the Cotton States sat sullenly through a tangle of routine voting.  Finally, the question was renewed on Butler’s proposition to adopt the Cincinnati platform pure and simple.  This was the red flag to the mad bull.  Mississippi declared that the Cincinnati platform was a great political swindle on one half the States of the Union; and from that time on the Cotton States ceased to act as a part of the convention.  As soon as a lull in the proceedings permitted, Mr. Yancey put in execution his programme of demand, disruption, disunion, and rebellion, labored for through long years, and announced by himself, with minute distinctness, nine months before.[7] Led by the Alabama delegation, the Cotton States,—­Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas,—­with protests and speeches, with all the formality and “solemnity” which the occasion allowed, seceded from the Charleston Convention, and withdrew from the deliberations in Institute Hall.

That same Monday night the city of Charleston expressed its satisfaction by a grand jubilee.  Music, bonfires, and extravagant declamation held an excited crowd in Court-house Square till a late hour; and in a high-wrought peroration Yancey prophesied, with all the confidence and exultation of a triumphant conspirator, that “perhaps even now the pen of the historian is nibbed to write the story of a new revolution.”

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[1] MAJORITY REPORT.

“Resolved, That the platform adopted at Cincinnati be affirmed, with the following resolutions: 

“Resolved, That the Democracy of the United States hold these cardinal principles on the subject of slavery in the Territories:  First.  That Congress has no power to abolish slavery in the Territories.  Second.  That the Territorial Legislature has no power to abolish slavery in any Territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of slaves therein, nor any power to exclude slavery therefrom, nor any power to destroy or impair the right of property in slaves “by any legislation whatever....

“Resolved, That it is the duty of the Federal Government to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and property on the high seas, in the Territories, or wherever else its constitutional authority extends.”

[2] MINORITY REPORT.

“Resolved, That we, the Democracy of the Union, in convention assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolutions unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles by the Democratic Convention at Cincinnati in the year 1856, believing that Democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature when applied to the same subject-matters; and we recommend, as the only further resolutions, the following: 

“Resolved, That all questions in regard to the rights of property in States or Territories arising under the Constitution of the United States are judicial in their character, and the Democratic party is pledged to abide by and faithfully carry out such determination of these questions as has been, or may be made by the Supreme Court of the United States.”