The Formative Period
Soilers, "Know Nothings" and others, all now fully merged into the Republican party and called by no other name. The permanent chairman was Francis P. Blair of Missouri, a former Democrat who had been one of the close friends of Andrew Jackson. An address to the nation was drafted by Henry J. Raymond and adopted by the convention, and a committee of which George W. Julian was chairman prepared and issued a call for a national nominating convention to be held at Philadelphia on June 17, 1856, the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
This first national nominating convention of the Republican party was singularly spontaneous and informal. No fixed rule for the representation of the various states was followed, but each state sent as many delegates as it considered its fair quota. Delegates were present from every northern state, and also from the three border states of Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky. The gathering was called to order by Edwin D. Morgan of New York, afterward Governor of the state and United States Senator. Robert Emmet, a nephew of the famous Irish patriot of that name, was made temporary chairman. Later in the day Henry S. Lane of Indiana was made permanent chairman. An informal ballot was taken for a candidate for President of the United States with the very decisive result that General John C. Fremont, the "Pathfinder of the Rocky Mountains" and the first United States Senator from California, received 359 votes, John McLean of Ohio, 196; Charles Sumner, United States Senator from Massachusetts, 2; and William H. Seward, Senator from New York, 1. A formal ballot resulted still more strongly in Fremont's favor and his nomination
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