In the fevered atmosphere of 1860, Charleston was the worst possible place for the convention.27 Douglas delegates felt like aliens in a hostile land. Fire-eating orators held forth outdoors each evening. Inside the convention hall, northerners had a three-fifths majority because delegates were apportioned in the same way as electoral votes rather than by party strength. Douglas’s supporters were as determined to block a slave-code plank as southerners were to adopt one.
