Soft Shells are also called Shedders,—this
being the fisherman's synonym for soft-shelled
crabs and lobsters. In New York, where
oysters are more largely consumed than
anywhere else in the world, they are cooked and
served in a great variety of forms. One of
these is called, Roasted on the half shell.
Some one, favouring a compromise and union
of the factions of hard and soft, was set down
as a Half Shell. An Adamantine is a radical,
or ultra Hard Shell.

Of the same sort are the words Hunker,
Barn-burner, Silver-grey, Woolly head, Fogie,
Bentonite, and Anti-Bentonite, Pierce-Democrat,
Buchanan-Democrat, Seward-Republican,
Fremont Republican, North American, South
American. Hunker is derived from a popular
nickname for a self-satisfied, wilful, surly rich
man; a descendant of Old Hunks in fact.
Barn-burner, probably from a charge of
incendiarism having been resorted to by one
faction for the purpose of preventing a meeting
of its rivals. Silver-grey (a term applied
to a certain coloured horse) politically
means a worshipper of the past,—a hoary-
headed conservative. Woolly-head is the
retort; referring to sympathy with the negro-
slave. Fogie means a man who is befogged
with regard to the demands of the present
time, and who stupidly holds fast to old
traditions and dead issues. It is the
corresponding term, in one party, to Silver-grey
in another.

The national parties are organised or
reorganised once in four years by National
Conventions. The delegates to these
conventions are generally appointed in state
conventions; the members of the state
conventions by county conventions; the
members of the county conventions at township,
ward or school-district "Primary Meetings"
of all who avow or profess themselves
friendly to what are generally understood to
be the purposes of the party. The primary
meetings are also called Caucuses, which
word is supposed to have had its origin in
such meetings having been once held in a
caulker's loft.

At the national conventions, candidates for
the Presidency and Vice-presidency are agreed
upon, and a series of resolutions is adopted
setting forth the views and purposes of the
party, and designating the line of public
policy proposed. This series of resolutions
is what is called the "platform" of the
party; meaning the ground on which it
stands, and which its candidates will maintain.
Each subject of the platform is spoken
of as one of its planks; thus we read of "the
slavery plank," "the tariff plank," "the
annexation plank." These conventions meet at
places and times previously appointed by
special committees, usually from five to seven
months before the presidential election. The
period between their session and the election
is termed "the presidential campaign." The
different conventions are referred to under
the title of the town in which they
meet; as the Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh, or
Philadelphia convention. If two conventions
meet simultaneously in the same town
they are distinguished by the names of
the halls in which they assemble. Thus we
now read of the Apollo convention, which
met lately in a music-hall of that name in
New York. The Times speaks of the
Cincinnati convention, as a convention of the
citizens of Cincinnati; but this was the national
convention of the administration party, meeting
at Cincinnati, but probably, with no more
than one citizen of Cincinnati taking part in
its proceedings.

Until quite recently the question of the
extension of slavery had never been a direct or
main one between the great national parties.
Moderate men of both parties and of all
parts of the union had always laboured to
prevent its becoming so; and, whenever
the danger of it seemed imminent, had
always succeeded in arranging some
compromise by which the grand issue was
deferred and a truce obtained, until a new
attempt to extend the territory of slavery
was made.

For some time before the presidential
campaign of eighteen hundred and fifty-two,
the leading democrats in several of the
southern states refused to act with the
national democratic party, and threatened—
unless it adapted itself to their purposes—to
withdraw from it a large number of southern
votes. The state of South Carolina—in
which the ultra-slavery school of politicians
is strongest, was unrepresented in the convention
which nominated General Pierce for the
presidency. The leading minds of that convention
believing that it was absolutely necessary
to the success of the party that it should obtain
the active co-operation of this school, introduced
into their platform several unprecedentedly
strong pro-slavery planks, or anti-free-soil
resolutions, daubed over, to hide their
purpose of courting the nullifiers and
secessionists, with expressions of pure
attachment to the Union. The result vindicated
their sagacity as politicians. Every Englishman
will understand why, who remembers
how easily the manufacturing class acquired
a conviction of the inexpediency of the
Corn Laws, and how impossible it was
to get a farmer to see them in the same
light. No one at the North finds his
income immediately and perceptibly reduced
by the extension of slavery; and to secure a
vote against it, it is necessary to convince a
man of its immorality, and to get him to act
on that conviction, and perhaps that
conviction alone. But every slaveholder, and
every man dependent directly or indirectly
on slaveholding, knows that any annexation
of slave territory, any extension of the
field of slave-labour, at once puts money
into his pocket, whatever may be its ultimate
consequence to the nation. General