The Davenport Gazette

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DISSOLVED.

John Van Buren, the mischief-making "youth," in referring to his former declaration of a dissolution of the Locofoco party, made the following remarks in the Barnburners Convention held recently at Rome, N. Y.:

"I had occasion to say elsewhere that the national Democratic party of the Union was dissolved--not that it was defeated or annihilated in the States in which it existed. I said they had succeeded in some of the States in electing nearly their entire delegation to Congress. I said that, while the resolutions stood unrepealed in the southern States, declaring that under no political necessity would they support a man in the Union who was not a thorough pro-slavery man, there could be no national Democratic party, unless we were at once prepared to stand on the same platform, and make that a test of Democracy. [Applause.] I had the highest authority for this remark. I did not pretend to dissolve the party, but stated merely an humble fact. [Laughter.] It was dissolved by the South long ago. What constitutes a national party? One with a single broad national organization; with members of it in the southern States who will vote the regular Democratic ticket, no matter what becomes of slavery. There is no such party, for they have resolved at the South to support no man unless he agrees in opinion with them, and in opposition to the notorious convictions, as conceded by the committee of the other convention, of the entire North on this subject. I had before me, also, the fact that a Democrat in Oregon, in Vermont, or in Pennsylvania, would be rejected as an abolitionist in Alabama, if, indeed, he did not suffer serious personal injury if he went there. They would regard him as a kind of heathen. How, then, can we talk of a national party? We had also the declaration of what was, by some, considered the Democratic organ, at the seat of the Federal Government-the Washington Union-that this was right- that it was not necessary to have a national creed--that their friends in the various States could confine their differences to those States themselves, and that the Democrats of no State had a right to complain of the action of those of another. We are to have thirty little platforms, then, one in each State. And was I to blame, a boy like me, [laughter,] if I took my slate to go home, when the old schoolmarm told us we were dismissed?[Increased laughter.]- Our situation now is entirely different.- Nobody pretends that we can stand upon the southern platform-and nobody pretends that there is any necessity for our making any national platform. You can stand, if you choose, with the North-with Wisconsin, Vermont, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Maine. With any of those States you can stand-or you can do what is better, and much more to the honor of the Democracy of this State— you can stand alone!" [Applause.]