Bell throughout the 1850s had pondered forming a third party to attract moderates from both the North and South. By 1859, the Know Nothing movement had collapsed, but Tennessee's Whigs had organized themselves into the Opposition Party, which had won several of the state's congressional seats. Several of this party's supporters, among them Knoxville Whig editor William Brownlow, former vice presidential candidate Andrew Jackson Donelson, and California attorney Balie Peyton urged Bell to run for president on a third party ticket. In May 1860, disgruntled ex-Whigs and disenchanted moderates from across the country convened in Baltimore, where they formed the Constitutional Union Party. The party's platform was very broad and made no mention of slavery. While there were several candidates for the party's presidential nomination, the two frontrunners were Bell and Sam Houston. On May 9, Bell led the initial round of balloting with 68 votes to Houston's 59, with more than a dozen other candidates splitting the remainder. Houston's military endeavors had brought him national renown, but he reminded the convention's Clay Whigs of their old foe Andrew Jackson. On May 10, Bell received 138 votes to Houston's 69, and was declared the candidate. Edward Everett received the vice presidential nomination. While Bell had supporters throughout the Northern states and the border states, most of his Northern allies had thrown their support behind Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln or Democratic candidate Stephen A. Douglas. He had little support south of the border states, where Southern Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge was the clear frontrunner. Southern Democratic newspapers slammed him as a friend of abolitionists and Republicans. The Nashville Union, referring to the Constitutional Union Party's noncommitted platform, derided Bell as "Nobody's man," who "stands on nobody's platform." Bell also struggled with the youth vote, being more than a decade older than the next oldest candidate, Lincoln. Seeing little chance of winning the election outright, Bell hoped that none of the three other candidates would get the required number of electoral votes and that the election would be sent to the House of Representatives, where he was convinced he would be chosen as a compromise since he was the only non-sectional candidate. Neither he nor Everett campaigned extensively. However, Bell and his supporters knew they still needed to finish in the top three in the electoral college to be eligible for the contingent election as per the provisions of the Twelfth