The Radicals and the Philadelphia Convention

Radicals are feeling threatened by the National Convention, and are criticized for trying to exclude Democrats from the occasion and include blacks.

Their tariff bill in danger, their constitutional amendment treated with contempt even in Tennessee, and their tenure of office seeming to be threatened by the Philadelphia Convention, the Radicals act as if they had read their doom, and are greatly troubled as to their future movements. The last plan for counteracting the effects of the Philadelphia Convention ls that of organizing a convention of Hamiltons, Wardwells, Bottses, Underwoods, and negroes. The National Intelligencer of yesterday Informs us that, "farcical as the whole thing may appear, it is seriously contemplated. The distinction of color is the only difficulty to be overcome. If the men put forward initiate this movement coll convention of only white southern loyalists, they stultify themselves, and practically give the lie to all the negro-suffrage speeches they have made for the benefit of the New England Radical Revolutionists. If they should embrace in their call the colored loyalists of the South they will render themselves and their convention ridiculous. This is their dilemma. By all means let us have the September convention."

“The Radicals and the Philadelphia Convention,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed June 1, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/253.