Pedro Hermión of Jefferson.
The Henrytown Convention was a political convention of the Jefferson state Continentalist Party organization which took place in Henrytown, Jefferson from 5 to 7 May 1843.
In his keynote address on the first day of the convention, the convention's chairman, Senator Peter O'Gorman, spoke of Jefferson's growing economic problems. The price of cotton, the state's staple crop, had fallen after the Panic of 1836, and despite the subsequent economic recovery, the market price of cotton had remained depressed. Furthermore, the economic center of the United States of Mexico had shifted west to California in the wake of the California Gold Rush, leaving Jefferson as a political as well as economic backwater. O'Gorman ended his address by saying, "Our land is leeched of its vitality, and our people of their soul."
The next day, Homer Brown, who had served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Cabinet of the late President Andrew Jackson, made an unconvincing speech in which he predicted a rise in cotton prices. Sobel notes that Brown's speech only served to remind the convention delegates of better days prior to the gold rush.
The members of the convention were still in a state of despair on the third day when O'Gorman was approached by Pedro Hermión, a Hispano Assemblyman from Lafayette, who said he wished to address the convention "on the problems of my people from Lafayette." O'Gorman agreed, feeling that such an address could do no harm, and also conscious that he running short of speakers.
Instead of speaking about Lafayett's Hispano community, Hermión gave a fire-and-brimstone speech excoriating the delegates for leading the party astray and challenging them to step up to the threat represented by the rising power of the Confederation of North America. Hermión's speech won over the convention delegates, and made him the new leader of the Continentalist Party.
The Henrytown Convention does not have an entry in Sobel's index. The convention appears on pp. 118-20 of For Want of a Nail ....