CHAPTER X.
THE CLIMAX OF 1880.
The fathers of the Republic had no suspicion of the form which American politics has assumed. The thing which we know as a political party is new under the sun. No other country or age ever had any thing like what America understands by the word party. When we speak of a party, we do not have in mind a mere sect, or class, distinguished by peculiar opinions, and composed of individuals whose only bond of union is their harmony of opinion, passion, or prejudice. We do not mean a caste, nor a peculiar section of American society, nor a portion of the masses, whose birth, condition, and surroundings predestine them to take a traditional sort of a view of political affairs, which they hold in common with their parents and their fellows. This was what Rome, in the days of her Republic, understood by the name of party. Patrician and plebeian stood not merely for opinion, but for more—for birth, heritage, and station. When there was an election, it was a rout, a rabble, without organization, work, or object. Rich and poor were arrayed against each other; the public offices were the glittering prize. But they were captured more by seditions, revolts, coups d’état, than by the insinuating arts of the wire-puller. The same thing is largely true of England and France, although less so lately than formerly.
But in America by a political party, we mean an organism, of which the life is, in the beginning at least, an opinion or set of opinions. We mean an institution as perfectly organized as the government itself; and taking hold of the people much more intimately. We mean an organization so powerful that the government is in its hands but a toy; so despotic that it has but one penalty for treason—political death; so much beloved, that while a few men in a few widely separated generations make glorious and awful sacrifices for their country, nearly all the men of every generation lend themselves, heart and soul, to the cause of party. A political party raises, once in four years, drilled armies, more numerous than any war ever called forth. If the battalions wear no uniform but red shirt and cap, and carry no more deadly weapon than the flaming torch, they are, nevertheless, as numerous, as well drilled, and as powerful as the glistening ranks of Gettysburg or Chickamauga. They, too, fight for the government—or against it. A political party has its official chief, its national legislature or “committee,” its state, county, township, ward, and precinct organizations. It is stupendous. The local organization has in its secret rooms lists containing the name of every voter, with an analysis of his political views; if they are wavering, a few significant remarks on how he can be “reached.” The county and state organizations have their treasuries, their system of taxation and revenue, their fields of expenditure, and their cries of robbery, reform, and retrenchment. In the secret committee rooms are laid deep and sagacious plans for carrying the election. In some States, the old, crude ways of sedition, driving away of voters, and stuffing the poll are still followed; but in most of the States prevail arts and methods so mysterious, so secret, that none but the expert politician knows what they are.
A political party has other than financial resources. It owns newspapers—manufacturers of public sentiment. It makes the men that make it. It controls offices, and places of trust and profit. It has all the powers of centralization. One man in a State is at the head of the organism. He is an autocrat, a czar, a sultan. At the crack of his finger the political head of his grand vizier falls under the headsman’s ax. The party has in its service the most plausible writers, the most eloquent orators, the most ingenious statisticians, and the most graphic artists. In its service are all the brilliant and historic names and reputations. Military glory, statesmanship, diplomacy, are alike appropriated to itself. Wealth, genius, love, and beauty, alike lay their treasures at its feet.
A party as well as the nation has its laws. Its delegates and committeemen are as certain to be elected, and those elections are required to occur at times and places as definitely settled by party rule as those for Congressmen or President.
The thing which we have been describing did not begin with the Republic. It is substantially a growth of the last fifty years. Its beginning was marked by the rise of the convention, its most public and prominent feature. Formerly, congressional and legislative caucuses nominated the candidates for office. But about 1831 a change began to come about. When the first severe cold of winter begins, every floating straw or particle of dust on the surface of a pond becomes the center of a crystallization around itself. The distances between the nearer and smaller, then the more isolated and larger, centers, are gradually bridged until the icy floor is built. So in the rise of party organism in the Republic. The local organizations, the town clubs, the township conventions for the nomination of trustee and road master, became the initial centers of a process of crystallization which was to go on until the icy floor of party organization and platforms covered the thousand little waves and ripples of individual opinions from shore to shore.
The delegate and the convention, the permanent committee and the caucus, became the methods by which the organization grew. Stronger and stronger have they grown, twining themselves like monster vines around the central trunk of the Republic. Every Presidential election has doubled the power, unity, centralization and resources of the monsters. The surplus genius and energy of the American people for organizing, being unexhausted and unsatisfied by the simple forms of the Republic, has spent itself in the political party.
With the rise of the party as an independent, self-sustaining organism, which, like the government, derives its powers from the consent of the people, two facts have become more and more prominent: first, the struggle for the delegateships to the conventions; second, the struggle to control delegates by instructions after they were elected. While these are both called struggles, the word has a widely different meaning in the two places. In the first it stands for the contest between candidates. Not only did the party become a nationalized organism for a campaign against the enemy, but the candidacies within the party for its nomination for a national office also became nationalized. But, in the second place, the word struggle stands for a contest, not between men, but between principles. In every phase of this long conflict the underlying struggle was between two opposite tendencies. The one was toward stronger and stronger party organization, greater centralization, increased powers of the caucus, the absolute tyranny of the majority, in short, the subordination of the individual to the machine, in the name of party discipline. The other tendency was toward less organization, less centralization, less binding powers for the caucus on its members, the representation of minorities, the subordination of the machine to the individual.
The struggle between these tendencies, of which the unit rule or the control of the vote of solid delegations, by instructions or by the voice of the majority of the delegation, was but a single aspect, reached its highest point so far, in the Republican National Convention which assembled in Chicago, June 2d, 1880. As will be seen, the contests of that convention must make it absolutely unique. The tremendous tide toward organization received a strong check. The events of that convention are far more significant of the political life-tendencies of the American people than the election of the following November.
All other ages and countries have distrusted the people, have concentrated power in the hands of the few, and perpetuated it by the rigid forms of despotic government. In America that tendency was defeated. But the same instincts are still present in the hearts of men. It is not impossible that in the struggles toward organization, discipline, party centralization and the machine aspect of politics, we see the same devilish forces of the past at work in a new field. It is not impossible that in party “bosses,” and the tyranny of the machine, we are really looking in the face of the ancient foe of mankind, whose sole aim was to concentrate and perpetuate power in the hands of the few.
When, after General Grant returned from his trip around the world, he consented to become a candidate for the Presidency, he had a perfect right to do so. It was the privilege of his countrymen to bring forward and support for that position the great Captain of the nineteenth century. The three men who were instrumental in bringing about his candidacy, and who managed the campaign for him, were Roscoe Conkling, of New York; Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Republican National Committee; and John A. Logan, of Illinois. The history of the canvass for the nomination of General Grant shows an ability so remarkable that his defeat must still be a matter of wonder. The New York member of the triumvirate caused a resolution to be passed in his State convention instructing the delegates to vote solidly for Grant. Cameron achieved the same thing in Pennsylvania. In Illinois, Logan, fearing or foreseeing that instructions were a feeble reliance, attempted the more heroic method of electing a solid Grant delegation by a majority of votes in the State convention. The minority, to protect itself, held meetings by congressional districts and selected contesting delegates. Over the right to instruct and the right to elect solid delegations the battle was fought. It was unquestioned that with three solid delegations from the three most populous States in the Union, and his other strong support, Grant’s nomination was overwhelmingly assured. The country, in the few days preceding the convention was wrought up to a pitch of feverish excitement.
The three principal candidates for the Presidency, whose names were openly before the convention, were: Ulysses S. Grant, of Illinois; James G. Blaine, of Maine; and John Sherman, of Ohio.
General Grant is the best known living American. His wonderful career is familiar throughout the civilized world. Rising from the trade of a tanner in an Illinois village, he became the commander of the armies of the Republic, the greatest soldier of the age, President of the United States for two terms, and the most distinguished citizen of the Union. The foundation of his fame is his military achievements. Taciturn, self-poised, alike unmoved by victory or defeat, grim, immovable, bent only on achieving the thing which lay before him, of deadly earnestness, equal to every emergency, Grant must be admitted to be a man of solitary and sublime genius. For practical resources, the age has not produced his equal.
Grant’s candidacy at Chicago, which seemed so singular to many, was really the result of underlying forces, greater than any of the men who were borne onward by the tide. First, was the fact of his personal candidacy.
On one side was the Republican party closing its quarter of a century—a Long Parliament of counsels, deeds, and changes; and, on the other, the tried Cromwell of the Commonwealth, backed by his victories, and asking the party to recognize him again. The party seemed almost destined to make the choice. In asking again for the Presidency, it was natural that he should look toward organization, discipline, and studied strategy as the instrumentalities of his canvass. His career as a soldier, his mental constitution, and his political training and experience during the arbitrary and tempestuous times of the civil war and the epoch of reconstruction, his military habit of relying on his subordinate generals, all were antecedents of the memorable struggle at Chicago, and helped to give it its character.
But if Grant, in his personal canvass, naturally reached for the party organization to make up his line of battle, the underlying tendency toward organization in politics, of which we have spoken heretofore, seeking for its strongest personal representative, inevitably selected Grant. On the one side was his individual will turning toward the Machine. On the other was the far more powerful but impersonal force, in its struggle to grasp and subordinate American politics, embodying itself in its chosen representative. It will be remembered that in popular opinion Grant became a candidate as much at the request of his friends as from any personal wish. The distinguished gentlemen who thus urged him were animated not merely by personal affection and preference, but by the invincible tendency toward organization, structure, and machinery in politics. In the organism the man found his support; in the man, the organic force found its strongest representative.
But what of the opposite tendency, the counter-current, which set against organization, party discipline, unit rules, the tyranny of majorities, and toward the freedom of individual action? Who was its representative? Was it ready to do battle with its gigantic foe? The Chicago Convention must be viewed not as a personal struggle between rival candidates, but as the meeting of two mighty waves in the ocean of American politics, the shock of whose collision was to be felt on the farthest shores. Amid the foam which rose along the line of breaking crests, mere men were for the moment almost lost from view.
In the nature of the case the counter tendency could not embody itself beforehand in a representative. To be sure there was Blaine, the dashing parliamentary leader, the magnetic politician, the brilliant debater. Generous and brave of heart, superb in his attitude before the maligners of his spotless fame, personally beloved by his supporters beyond any man of his political generation, he was too independent to represent the organism, and too much of a candidate, and had too much machinery, too many of the politician’s arts, to fully meet the requirements of the counter tendency in the great crisis. Although Blaine was beyond question running on his personal merits, yet the fact that he was a leading candidate, but without a majority, destined him to fall a prey to his competitors. In the great political arena, when one gladiator is about to triumph over his divided rivals, the latter unite against him, that all may die together, and by giving to an unknown the palm of victory save themselves from the humiliation of a rival’s triumph.
John Sherman, the very opposite of Blaine, cold, cautious, solid, hostile to display, was also a candidate upon personal merits, and was also to fail from the same cause.
It can not be said that there was any other candidate before the convention. Windom, Edmunds, and Washburne, had each a small personal following, but neither sought the nomination, and all were only possible “dark horses.”
On the floor of the convention, Grant was to be represented by the triumvirate of United States Senators, Conkling, Cameron, and Logan. Of these, Cameron, though a superb manipulator, a splendid manager, and a man full of adroitness and resources, was a silent man. His voice was not lifted in debate. His work was in the secret room, planning, and not amid the clash of arms in the open field. Logan, tall and powerful, of coppery complexion, and long, straight, black hair, which told plainly of the Indian blood, was a somewhat miscellaneous but rather powerful debater. His tremendous voice was well fitted for large audiences. That he was a man of great force is shown by his career. While his two colleagues were descended from high-born ancestry,—Cameron’s father having been the son’s predecessor in the United States Senate,—Logan sprang from below.
The leader of the trio, and with one exception the most distinguished person in the convention, was Roscoe Conkling. Tall, perfectly formed, graceful in every movement, with the figure of an athlete, and the head of a statesman, surmounted with a crown of snow-white hair, he was a conspicuous figure in the most brilliant assemblage of the great which could convene on any continent. In speaking, his flute-like tones, modulated by the highest elocutionary art, his intensely dramatic manner, his graceful but studied gesticulation, united to call attention to the speaker as much as to the speech. He was dressed in faultless style, from the tightly-buttoned blue frock coat—the very ne plus ultra of the tailor’s art,—to the exquisite fancy necktie. If it were not for his intellect he would have been called a dandy. In his walk there was a perceptible strut. But the matter of Conkling’s speeches is the best revelation of his character. Every sentence was barbed with irony; every expression touched with scorn. He was the very incarnation of pride. Haughty, reserved, imperious in manner, at every thrust he cut to the quick. His mastery of the subject in hand was always apparently perfect, and not less perfectly apparent. He was called “Lord Roscoe,” “The Superb,” “The Duke,” and other names indicative of his aristocratic bearing. Never for a moment did he cease to carry himself as if he were on the stage. It is said that great actors become so identified with the characters they impersonate, that even in private life they retain the character which they have assumed on the stage. Thus Booth is said to order his fried eggs with the air of a Hamlet. So Conkling never for a moment laid aside the air of high tragedy.
Nevertheless the commanding genius of the man was unquestioned. He was the chief representative in the Chicago Convention of the tendency to more organism, stronger party discipline, a more perfect machine. The problem to which he applied all his abilities, was to strengthen the party structure; and to that end, practically place the power of both his party and his country in the hands of a few. A national party, with the consciences of its individual members in the hands of a few astute politicians, could control the Government forever. But the end is vicious, and the means an abomination to governments of the people, for the people, and by the people.
The companion figure to that of Roscoe Conkling, of New York, was James A. Garfield, of Ohio. He was there as the chief supporter of John Sherman. The contrast between Conkling and Garfield was of the strongest possible kind. In person, Garfield was a taller man than Conkling, but his size and solidity of build made him look shorter. His figure, though less trim, had an air of comfortable friendliness and cheer about it. He, too, had a massive head, but it rested more easily above the broad shoulders. His face lacked the lines of scorn traced on the other, and made a true picture of a benevolent good nature, a generous, kindly heart, and a great and wise intellect. He wore a plain sack coat, and his attire generally though neat, was of an unstudied sort. He had a habit of sitting with his leg swinging over the arm of the chair, and his manners were those of a big, jolly, overgrown boy. In speaking he had a deep, rich voice, with a kindly accent, in marked contrast with the biting tones of the great New York Senator. He was never sarcastic, though often grave. His speeches were conservative but earnest. Socially, his manners were utterly devoid of restraint; he was accessible to every body, and appeared to be on good terms with himself. The dramatic element was completely absent. He believed in Sherman heartily, though he was evidently a stranger to the mysterious arts of the wire-puller and politician. For himself, he was well satisfied looking forward to the seat in the United States Senate, which he was to enter the next December, with joy and gratification.
These were the two chief figures of the Chicago Convention. Each was there as the chief supporter of another. The one was the conscious personification and representative of a tendency which, for fifty years, had been setting more and more strongly toward party organism and permanent structure, having for its aim a perfect power-getting and power-keeping machine. The other was the unconscious personification and representative of the opposite tendency, the current which set toward a flexible rather than rigid party organization, toward new political ideas, and the independence of individual thought. The one was a patrician, the other the child of the people.
When the Chicago Convention met, it was the nature of the organic tendency to have its candidate selected. On the other hand, it was equally the nature of the opposite tendency to have no candidate. But each force was present in the convention working in the hearts and minds of its members. Day after day, the angry white caps rose along the line where the two waves met. As the crisis approached the movement of resistance to the strengthening and increase of party organism, with that instinct which belongs to every subtle underlying tendency in human society, began to look and to feel its way toward a personal representative. Having found the man, the spirit would enter into him and possess him.
Thus it was that when the supreme moment came, personal candidates and preferences, pledges and plans, leaders and followers were suddenly lost from view. The force, which was greater than individuals, rose up, embodied itself in the person of a protesting and awe-stricken man within whose heart may have been some presentiment of the tragic future, and, subordinating all to itself, relentlessly demanding and receiving the sacrifice alike of candidates and of the supporter, defeating for the time being, not so much the silent soldier from Galena, as the political tendency which made him its representative.
Notwithstanding the nomination of Garfield, as the remaining chapters of this story will show, the spirit of party organism was not killed but stunned. Cast out from the most famous citizen of the Republic, it was to enter into a swine. History will say of Guiteau, that he embodied and represented a force stronger than himself.
Let us turn now from the internal philosophy to the external facts of the Chicago Convention.
Chicago is a roomy place and well-suited for the meeting of a large assembly, but its resources were taxed by the Convention of 1880. By Monday preceding the Convention, its hotels were crowded, and thousands upon thousands were pouring in every hour. It was a great gathering of rival clans, which did not wait the order of their generals to advance, but charged upon each other the moment they came upon the field.
There were two battles in progress—the one of the masses, the other of the leaders.
On Monday evening two public meetings of the “Grant” and “anti-Grant” elements, respectively, were held in Dearborn Park and in the Base Ball Park.
The speakers announced for the Grant meeting were Senators Conkling, Logan, Carpenter, Stewart L. Woodford of New York, Leonard Swett, Emory Storrs, Robert T. Lincoln, and Stephen A. Douglas. But the advertised speakers did not all appear; neither Conkling nor Carpenter spoke. They were too busy plotting elsewhere. In fact, this Grant meeting was, so far as any demonstration in favor of the third term was concerned, an acknowledged failure. The speakers, however, managed to throw some spirit into the affair, and aroused some enthusiasm.
But the anti-Grant meeting, as was quite evident, felt and fared better. Though it had been but meagerly advertised, and but few speakers of prominence had been announced, the grounds were densely crowded. At least ten thousand persons were in attendance.
The tone of the meeting was unmistakable. The most radical utterances were the most loudly cheered. The people declared that “they would not submit to boss rule; that they would not have a third term; that they would defeat the villainous attempt to deprive them of their liberties.” People came there determined to be pleased—with every thing or any thing but Grant. But they hissed the third term. They shouted themselves hoarse for Blaine, Washburne, and Edmunds.
Speakers from New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and New Hampshire, declared that those States would be lost to the Republican party by a third-term campaign. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the vast crowds attending the two meetings, the corridors of the hotels and streets were thronged. The utmost interest was manifested, and every report of the work of the managers of the candidates, whether reasonable or unreasonable, was seized and discussed in its bearing upon the candidates. The greatest interest centered about the Palmer House, where a secret meeting of the National Committee was being held.
And what of this secret meeting? The National Committee contained a majority of anti-Grant men. At its very beginning, William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire, took the floor and offered the following resolutions:
“Resolved, That the committee approves and ratifies the call for the approaching Republican National Convention, which was issued by its chairman and secretary, and which invites ‘two delegates from each Congressional district, four delegates at large from each State, two from each Territory, and two from the District of Columbia,’ to compose the convention.
“Resolved, That this committee recognizes the right of each delegate in a Republican National Convention freely to cast and have counted his individual vote therein, according to his own sentiments, if he so decides, against any ‘unit rule’ or other instructions passed by a State convention, which right was conceded without dissent, and was exercised in the conventions of 1860 and 1868, and was, after a full debate, affirmed by the convention of 1876, and has thus become a part of the law of Republican conventions; and until reversed by a convention itself must remain a governing principle.”
The first of these passed unanimously. But not so the second. The “unit rule” was not to die without a struggle. Chairman Cameron promptly declared this resolution out of order.
Then Mr. Chaffee, of Colorado, offered a resolution approving of the decision of the Cincinnati Convention, declaring that each delegate should be allowed to vote on all subjects before the convention. Mr. Gorham, of California, inquired of Mr. Cameron if he intended to entertain these resolutions. Mr. Cameron announced that he would not. This caused great excitement, and Mr. Chaffee appealed from this decision. The next decision of Mr. Cameron caused still greater commotion, this being to the effect that there could be no appeal, as there was no question before the committee. At this Mr. Chaffee renewed his appeal, saying that if the committee submitted to such tyranny it might as well have a king. This was roundly applauded. Mr. Cameron again repeated that there could be no appeal, and he would put none.
Mr. Chandler thereupon, in a vigorous speech, demurred to such ruling, and wound up by also appealing from the decision of the chair. To further aggravate matters, Cameron again refused to entertain the appeal. This brought Frye, of Maine, to his feet, and in a caustic speech he told the chairman that the committee had rights which he (the chairman) was bound to respect.
Mr. Chandler significantly remarked that if the chairman would not pay any respect to the committee, the same power that made him chairman would remove him.
Mr. Forbes, of Massachusetts, then offered a resolution appointing a committee of six to select and present to the committee a candidate to preside at the temporary organization. This was adopted. A recess was then taken till half-past ten o’clock.
It now became certain that the anti-Grant men were ready to depose Cameron at once if they could not control him in any other way.
The committee to select the name of a temporary chairman returned after a recess of fifteen minutes, and reported in favor of Senator George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts. Senator Jones announced that the minority reserved the right to name a candidate in the convention. After some minor matters, Mr. Frye offered one of the resolutions of the caucus, providing, in the case of the absence of the chairman of the committee from sickness or from any cause, that the chairman of the committee of six (Mr. Chandler) should be authorized to call the convention to order, and perform all the duties pertaining to the temporary organization.
Mr. McCormick followed with a second resolution of the caucus, directing that in all questions pertaining to the temporary organization the chairman shall rule that every delegate was at liberty to vote as he chooses, regardless of instructions. Messrs. Gorham, Filley, and others, made great opposition, and Mr. Cameron ruled that this resolution would not be entertained, since it was not in the power of the committee to instruct the chairman as to his rulings.
A warm debate followed as to the rights and powers of the committee. Finally, the meeting attended to some routine business, and adjourned till next day noon.
The battle now grew hotter every hour. Mr. Conkling’s delegation broke in two, and issued the following protest:
“The undersigned, delegates to the Republican National Convention, representing our several Congressional districts in the State of New York, desiring above all the success of the Republican party at the approaching election, and realizing the hazard attending an injudicious nomination, declare our purpose to resist the nomination of General U. S. Grant by all honorable means. We are sincere in the conviction that in New York, at least, his nomination would insure defeat. We have a great battle to fight, and victory is within our reach, but we earnestly protest against entering the contest with a nomination which we regard as unwise and perilous.
“William H. Robertson, 12th Dist.; William B. Woodin, 26th Dist.; Norman M. Allen and Loren B. Sessions, 33d Dist.; Moses D. Stivers and Blake G. Wales, 14th Dist.; Webster Wagner and George West, 20th Dist.; Albert Daggett, 3d Dist.; Simeon S. Hawkins and John Birdsall, 1st Dist.; John P. Douglass and Sidney Sylvester, 22d Dist.; John B. Dutcher, 13th Dist.; Henry R. James and Wells S. Dickinson, 19th Dist.; James W. Husted, 12th Dist.; Ferris Jacobs, Jr., 21st Dist.; Oliver Abell, Jr., 18th Dist.”
A similar protest was published by twenty-two Pennsylvania delegates, headed by Mr. James McManes.
At nine o’clock on the morning of June 1st, an anti-Grant caucus was held, which determined to defeat the “unit rule” at all hazards, even if Mr. Cameron must first be deposed from the chairmanship.
The news of the firm attitude of the caucus had reached Cameron, Gorham, Filley, Arthur, and their associates, and before any movement could be made, the Grant men announced that they had a proposition to make, looking to harmonizing all differences. A recess was taken to allow a committee on the part of Cameron, Conkling, Arthur, and Logan, to state the agreement which they were willing to make. It proved to be as follows:
“That Senator Hoar should be accepted as temporary chairman of the convention, and that no attempt should be made to enforce the unit rule, or have a test vote in the convention, until the committee on credentials had reported, when the unit-rule question should be decided by the convention in its own way.”
This proposition was finally, in the interest of harmony, agreed to by all parties.
On Wednesday, June 2d, after days and nights of caucusing, serenading, speech-making, and cheering by every body, and for nearly every body, the great convention held its first session. As a clever correspondent wrote at the time:
“A more beautiful day in June probably never rose upon a Presidential Convention. The sun, the shade, the trees, the lake, the high façades of business buildings and palace hotels; the air cool, yet temperate; the well-dressed, energetic people, and the signs of prosperous business, uninfluenced even by such a convention, sent a hopeful, cheery feeling to the heart. The rageful features of the past day or two went into their tents at such sunshine and calm godliness of sky.”
The place of meeting was in the Exposition Building, in the south half of which vast structure there is a hall 400 feet long by 150 feet wide, with galleries all round, and so arranged that room for about ten thousand people could be provided.
THE EXPOSITION BUILDING, WHERE GARFIELD WAS NOMINATED.
At eleven o’clock the band stationed on the north gallery began playing national airs, but nearly an hour passed before the delegates took their seats. The Chairman called on the Secretary to read the call, and Secretary Keogh proceeded, in a clear voice, to read the document.
Mr. Cameron then arose, and, in a short address, nominated, as temporary chairman, the Hon. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, who was elected by a unanimous vote. Mr. Hoar was then conducted to the chair; and the preliminary organization was thus peacefully resigned by the disappointed Grant faction, which had expected to control all.
On motion of Eugene Hale, of Maine, the roll of States and Territories was called, and the committees made up. There were four: (1) Permanent Organization; (2) Rules; (3) Credentials; and (4) Resolutions.
After a slight stir over Utah, and a sharp encounter between Conkling and Frye, the opening business was completed, and the convention adjourned for that day.
A newspaper dispatch sent out of the room during this session said:
“There is a good deal of talk about Garfield. Some significance is attached to the fact that when the name was mentioned in the convention to-day as a member of the Committee on Rules it was loudly applauded.”
And another added:
“A prolonged contest is now certain on the floor of the convention to-day over the reports from the committees on Credentials, Rules, and Resolutions. Senator Conkling is recognized as the leader of debate on the Grant side. Frye and Hale will be the principal speakers, with Garfield and Conger on the part of the majority. The debates preceding the balloting promise to be the most heated and the ablest ever heard in a Republican Convention.”
That night the popular battle in the streets and lobbies continued, attended with ever-growing excitement. Grant men and Blaine men loudly proclaimed their confidence in a victory for their respective favorites, on the first or second ballot. Each of these two leaders claimed about three hundred reliable votes; but, in fact, they had not six hundred between them.
Sherman, Edmunds, Washburne, and Windom men felt sure that neither Blaine nor Grant could be nominated on account of the violent opposition of their factions. This gave hope to each of these smaller sections, and made “dark-horse” talk plausible.
At eleven o’clock of June 3d, the second day’s fight of the convention began. As the delegations took their places, the great crowd of spectators occupied themselves in getting acquainted with the men who were to give and receive the hard blows to be dealt by both sides when the contest opened. All these men—Conkling, Garfield, Frye, Hale, and Logan—were cordially received, though there were degrees in the favor.
The most spontaneous of the greetings given any one of the leaders was to Garfield. One of the ovations to him gave rise to a ludicrous affair for Conkling. The latter had made his usual late and pompous entrance, had been received with much noise, and walked slowly up to his seat near the front. Just as he rose to show himself further and address the chair, General Garfield came in at the rear. A tremendous and rapidly spreading cheer broke out, which the New York “Duke” mistook for his own property.
The second day was now passing, and the preliminaries were not yet complete. It was the policy of the Grant men to make delay, and wear out the strength of all opponents. They had come, as Cameron said, “to stick until we win.” The Blaine leaders, on the other hand, had no such reliable, lasting force. They must dash in boldly and carry off their prize at once, or be forever defeated.
To-day the Blaine men came in jubilant, for they had beaten the Grant faction in the committees. Conkling opened the proceedings from the floor at the earliest moment. He moved to adjourn until evening to await the report of the Committee on Credentials. Hale opposed this. Conkling, in his haste, forgetting his parliamentary knowledge, claimed that his motion to take a recess was not debatable. The Chairman overruled this, much to the annoyance of Conkling. He soon poured out a little vial of wrath on Hale, and sneered at him as his “amiable friend.” To this Hale retorted that he had not spent his time in cultivating sarcastic and sneering methods in argument; and if the Senator from New York was less amiable than others this morning the convention understood the reason well. At this reference to the general defeat of the Grant forces in the committees during the last evening the people laughed loudly at Conkling, and that august gentleman himself deigned to smile.
Soon the Committee on Permanent Organization reported, the temporary chairman and other officers were continued, and Mr. Hoar took permanent possession of his Chairmanship. Thereupon Mr. Frye moved that the Committee on Rules and Order of Business report at once. Mr. Sharpe, of New York, now arose and said that he had been instructed by the delegates of nine States to prepare a minority report of the Committee on Rules; that he had not had time to do so, and this ought not to be taken advantage of, because, by agreement in the committee, he should have had a longer time to prepare.
Mr. Frye then said that if the chairman of that committee—Mr. Garfield—was present, he would request that gentleman to state what agreement had been made.
As General Garfield arose in his seat he was greeted with loud and prolonged cheers and applause, and cries of “Platform,” “Step up on the seat.” He said:
“Mr. President, the Committee on Rules finished its business at about eleven o’clock by adopting a body of rules and an order of business. A resolution was then offered by one member of the committee that it was the judgment of the committee that the report ought to be made after the report of the Committee on Credentials, and that was adopted, whether unanimously or not I am unable to say, for the committee was about breaking up. General Sharpe requested that a minority of that committee might have leave to offer their views as a minority, and no objection was made. No vote was taken on that latter topic. I did not, therefore, and shall not tender a report of the Committee on Rules. I am, however, like every other delegate, subject to the orders of this convention, and when they desire the report and order it, I suppose the committee are ready to make it, but good faith requires this certainly, that if the minority is not ready with its report it ought to have the time.”
Mr. Frye then withdrew his motion, and the convention adjourned until evening.
At half-past five they had reassembled and the battle proceeded at the point where it had been dropped before adjournment.
The Committee on Credentials were not ready to report, and it was so announced. The Blaine men forced the fighting, entering a motion by Mr. Henderson, of Iowa, that the convention proceed to consider the report of the Committee on Rules and Organization. This the Grant men resisted, and for this reason: The rules which had been agreed to by the committee only allowed five minutes debate on the matter of each individual contested seat. The Grant men did not want the report adopted before the Committee on Credentials reported, because they wanted to ascertain just what the latter report would be. Logan led the fight for Grant, supported by Boutwell and others. Henderson held his own very well. Finally, after an hour of this running fire of debate, Mr. Sharpe moved to amend the pending motion by substituting an order that the Committee on Credentials report at once.
On this amendment a vote was soon reached which proved to be the most significant event of the day; for it was the first vote taken by States; it was a test vote between the Grant men on the one side and the allied anti-Grant factions on the other, and it settled the fate of the “unit rule.”
Upon Alabama being called, the Chairman of the delegation, Mr. Dunn, announced 20 ayes.
Mr. Allen Alexander, of Alabama, a colored delegate—I desire to vote “No.”
The Chairman—Does the gentleman from Alabama desire that his vote should be received in the negative?
Mr. Alexander—Yes, sir.
The Chairman—It will be so recorded.
Several other States offered divided votes.
The result was against Sharpe’s substitute, by a vote of 318 to 406. About forty delegates were absent or did not vote. There was great rejoicing among the anti-Grant factions when it became certain that Hoar would allow no “unit rule” until forced to do so by an order of the convention.
On motion of Mr. Brandagee, of Connecticut, Henderson’s motion was laid on the table, and adjournment till the next day followed immediately.
Friday of convention week dawned less delightfully than did the first two days. There was a cloudy sky, an east wind, a rheumatic, chilly atmosphere penetrating every nook and corner of the great Convention Hall, and a crowd of shivering mortals pushed and elbowed each other up and down the passages, delegates looking angular, stiff, and cold, and angry,—every body denouncing the weather. The dull light made the pictures on the walls look sour and stern and cross. The frown on the wretched oil-painted face of old Ben Wade was deepened; Zach Chandler’s hard mouth appeared more firmly set, and Sumner’s jaw was more rigid and uncompromising than ever in life. The flags drooped under the depressing atmospheric influences, blue turned black, the red was dull, and the white looked dirty, and the stars were dim. The opening scenes of each day had now assumed a stereotyped form. Conkling made his arrival in state as usual, and the usual cheer went up. General Phil Sheridan was greeted with hearty applause, and Garfield’s entrance was the signal for a great ovation.
Hardly had the opening prayer of the good man of God come to its amen when Mr. Conkling offered the following:
Resolved, As the sense of this Convention, that every member of it is bound in honor to support its nominee, whoever that nominee may be; and that no man should hold a seat here who is not ready to so agree.
Mr. Hale said he thought that a Republican Convention did not need to be instructed, that its first and underlying duty, after nominating its candidate, was to elect him over the Democratic candidate.
A call of the States being requested, the convention voted unanimously in favor of Mr. Conkling’s resolution, with the exception of three hostile votes from West Virginia.
Mr. Conkling then offered the following:
“Resolved, That the delegates who have voted that they will not abide the action of the convention do not deserve and have forfeited their vote in this convention.”
Mr. Campbell, of West Virginia—“Mr. Chairman: There are three gentlemen from West Virginia, good and true Republicans, who have voted in the negative in the last vote. Gentlemen, as a delegate in a Republican Convention, I am willing to withdraw. If it has come to this that in the city of Chicago, where I came as a young man from the State of Virginia, after having submitted twenty years to contumely and to violence in the State of Virginia for my Republican principles—if it has come to this, that in the city of Chicago a delegate from that State can not have a free expression of opinion, I for one am willing to withdraw from this convention. Mr. Chairman, I have been a Republican in the State of Virginia from my youth. For twenty-five years I have published a Republican newspaper in that State. I have supported every Republican Presidential nominee in that time. I expect to support the nominee of this convention. But, sir, I shall do so as a Republican, having imbibed my principles from the great statesman from New York, William H. Seward, with whom I had an early acquaintance by virtue of my having gone to school with him nine years from the city of Utica, from which the Senator from New York now hails. I was a Republican then, and I made the acquaintance of that distinguished gentleman. I came home, and in my youth I became a newspaper editor. From that day to this—from the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry all through the troubles of the last twenty-five years—I have consistently and always supported our State and National Republican nominee. But, Mr. Chairman, I feel as a Republican that there is a principle in this question, and I will never go into any convention and agree beforehand that whatever may be done by that convention shall have my indorsement. Sir, as a free man, whom God made free, I always intend to carry my sovereignty under my own hat. I never intend that any body of men shall take it from me. I do not, Mr. Chairman, make my living by politics; I make it by my labor as a newspaper editor; and I am not afraid to go home and say that I stood up here in this convention, as I was not afraid to stand up in the State of West Virginia, when but 2,900 men were found to vote for Abraham Lincoln, and where that party has risen to-day to 45,000 votes under the training that we received from our early inspiration of principle. I am not afraid to go home and face these men as I have faced them always.”
The two other dissenters also stated their position as defiantly if not as ably. After some further debate, Mr. Garfield spoke, taking ground against Conkling’s pending resolution. While speaking to this, he said:
“There never can be a convention, of which I am one delegate, equal in rights to every other delegate, that shall bind my vote against my will on any question whatever on which my vote is to be given.
“I regret that these gentlemen thought it best to break the harmony of this convention by their dissent; but, when they tell the convention that their dissent was not, and did not mean, that they would not vote for the nominee of this convention, but only that they did not think the resolution at this time wise, they acted in their right, and not by my vote. I do not know the gentlemen, nor their affiliations, nor their relations to candidates, except one of them. One of them I knew in the dark days of slavery, and for twenty long years, in the midst of slave-pens and slave-drivers, has stood up for liberty with a clear-sighted courage and a brave heart equal to the best Republicans that live on this globe. And if this convention expel him, then we must purge ourselves at the end of every vote by requiring that so many as shall vote against us shall go out.”
A few minutes later Mr. Conkling withdrew the obnoxious resolution.
The first important business of the day was now transacted. Mr. Garfield, as Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Order of Business, read the report of that committee. Its most important provision was:
“Rule VIII. In the record of the votes by States, the vote of each State, Territory, and the District of Columbia, shall be announced by the chairman; and in case the votes of any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia shall be divided, the chairman shall announce the number of votes cast for any candidate or for or against any proposition; but, if exception is taken by any delegate to the correctness of such announcement by the chairman of his delegation, the president of the convention shall direct the roll of members of such delegation to be called and the result recorded in accordance with the votes individually given.”
From this resolution a minority of the committee dissented, and, through General Sharpe, presented, as Rule VIII, the following:
“In the record of the votes by States, the vote of each State, Territory, and the District of Columbia shall be announced by the chairman; and in case the votes of any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia shall be divided, the chairman shall announce the number of votes cast for any candidate or for or against any proposition.”
When the final action was taken, the majority report prevailed.
At last there came the long-delayed report of the Committee on Credentials, the one great matter preliminary to the real work of this great gathering of the people’s representatives. This committee’s principal duty was to decide upon the conflicting claims of “regular” and “bolting” delegations from several States.
The reading of this report was painfully tedious, taking over three hours; and the debates which followed as the separate State contests were being settled, kept any other business from being done that day.
From the State of Louisiana, the committee recommended the admission of the delegation with their alternates headed by Henry C. Warmouth, and the exclusion of the delegation with their alternates headed by Taylor Beattie. This contest arose out of two rival conventions.
The committee recommended James T. Rapier for admission as a delegate from the Fourth Congressional District of Alabama. The facts found were that Rapier had been requested to pledge support for Grant, and upon his refusal to do so the president of the convention had been requested to withhold the credentials unless he would, within twenty-four hours, give such pledge. This, Rapier had refused to do.
The committee recommended that William H. Smith and Willett Warner be admitted in the place of Arthur Bingham and R. A. Mosely from the Seventh Congressional District of Alabama. The facts in the case of Messrs. Smith and Warner were substantially the same as those in the case of James T. Rapier.
The committee recommended the admission of eight delegations from the State of Illinois, in the place of sitting members. The Committee found that a State Convention had been held at Springfield, on the 19th day of May, to elect delegates to the National Convention. During the convention, the delegates from eight Congressional Districts had assembled and organized District Conventions, each of which had elected two delegates and two alternates to the Chicago Convention by clear majorities of all the delegates elected to the State Convention in each of said districts, as was shown by the credentials accompanying the report. The State Convention, by means of a committee of one from each Congressional District, selected, and afterward assumed to elect, two delegates to the National Convention, including the sitting members from the foregoing districts, the delegates from each of which filed in the State Convention protests against said election by the State Convention. The committee reported against the validity of the contests in the Second District of Illinois of the seats of sitting members, A. M. Wright and R. S. Tuthill.
Contests were also settled by this report in cases coming from several other States.
In each case of favorable consideration, the committee ascertained that those delegates who were recommended were actually chosen by a proper convention, representing the Congressional District from which they were accredited.
The committee then proceeded to the justice and equity of recognizing, securing, and protecting Congressional District representation, as is also demonstrated by the actual precedents of the Republican party since its organization.
With the exception of a couple of hours for supper, this extraordinary session kept to the subjects of this report steadily from one o’clock in the afternoon till after two in the morning. This chapter can not find room for these debates, though surpassing in interest, as they do, many a volume of the Congressional Record. The Illinois questions caused the most intense feeling of all. At ten o’clock they were taken up; after a short time, on motion, the further debate was limited to one hour on each side.
The whole subject of this report was not fully disposed of until early in the Saturday session. The result was that the majority report was adopted, and the “machine” thus received another solid shot, which penetrated its iron sides below waterline; but the leaders fired no guns to signal their distress.
Saturday, June 5th, was, like Friday, dark and gloomy. The vast crowd, after the preceding night of excitement, was, of course, dull and sleepy. It was noted, however, that when Garfield came into the hall the audience waked up and gave a hearty cheer.
The roll was called at about twelve o’clock. After finishing the matters connected with the credentials, the Convention, on motion of General Garfield, adopted the report of the Committee on Rules. The Committee on Resolutions next reported, and the Platform was adopted; after which the Convention adjourned till evening.
Skirmishing ended, now would come serious work. The triumvirate and its legions had exhausted every parliamentary resource for delay, and at last had to face “the inevitable hour” which must lead, for them, to glory, or the common grave of all their plans.
It was a magnificent audience which poured into the great hall that evening to witness the beginning of the end of this tremendous political conflict.
After some preliminaries, Mr. Hale, of Maine, moved that the roll of States be called alphabetically and that nominations for candidates for President be made.
General Logan inquired whether the rules permitted the seconding of nominations for candidates for President. The Chairman said no, that the rules did not provide for it. Garfield thought there would be no objection to the seconding of nominations. Unanimous consent was accorded for five-minute speeches in seconding nominations. Hale’s motion was then adopted without opposition.
The roll was then called down to Michigan, with no responses. When that State was named, James F. Joy arose and nominated, for President of the United States, James G. Blaine. Mr. Joy was not the kind of a man to arouse the enthusiasm of an audience, and when he had closed, Mr. Pixley, of California, seconded the nomination. These speeches were a great disappointment to the Blaine men. They still remembered Ingersoll’s famous “plumed knight” speech for Blaine at Cincinnati, in 1876. To remedy matters, Mr. William P. Frye, of Maine, obtained the floor by consent, and delivered the following brief, but brilliant little speech, which, in a measure, retrieved the mistake already made. He said:
“I saw once a storm at sea in the night-time, and our staunch old ship battling for its life with the fury of the tempest; darkness every-where; the wind shrieking and howling through the rigging; the huge waves beating upon the sides of that ship and making her shiver from stem to stern. The lightnings were flashing, the thunders were rolling. There was danger every-where. I saw at the helm a calm, bold, courageous, immovable, commanding man. In the tempest, calm; in the commotion, quiet; in the dismay, hopeful. I saw him take that old ship and bring her into the harbor, into still waters, into safety. That man was a hero. I saw the good old ship, the State of Maine, within the last year, fighting her way through the same darkness, through the same perils, against the same waves, against the same dangers. She was freighted with all that is precious in the principles of our Republic—with the rights of American citizenship, with all that is guaranteed to the American citizen by our Constitution. The eyes of the whole Nation were upon her; an intense anxiety filled every American heart, lest the grand old ship, the State of Maine, might go down beneath the waves forever, carrying her precious freight with her. But, sir, there was a man at the helm. Calm, deliberate, commanding, sagacious, he made even the foolish men wise. Courageous, he inspired the timid with courage; hopeful, he gave heart to the dismayed, and he brought that good old ship proudly into the harbor, into safety, and there she floats to-day, brighter, purer, stronger from her baptism of danger. That man, too, was a hero, and his name was James G. Blaine. Maine sends greetings to this magnificent Convention. With the memory of her own salvation from impending peril fresh upon her, she says to you, representatives of 50,000,000 of American people, who have met here to counsel how the Republic shall be saved, she says to you, representatives of the people, take a man, a true man, a staunch man for your leader, who has just saved her, and who will bear you to safety and certain victory.”
Minnesota was next called; whereupon E. F. Drake placed in nomination William Windom, of Winona, a very able and distinguished Senator from that State.
Now was heard the call for New York; a call which meant Roscoe Conkling and the nomination of the great General and ex-President, Ulysses S. Grant.
As Mr. Conkling advanced to the front, he was greeted with tremendous cheers. Taking a commanding position on one of the reporter’s tables, he stood a few moments and regarded the audience while they grew silent at an imperious wave of his hand. Then he said:
“When asked whence comes our candidate, our sole reply shall be, he hails from Appomattox with its famous apple-tree. In obedience to instructions I should never dare to disregard, expressing also my own firm conviction, I rise to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide for many years whether the country shall be Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of the hour is not a candidate who can carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can do that. The need is not of a candidate popular in the territories, because they have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States. Not the doubtful States of the North, but doubtful States of the South, which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to take little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, but every thing to receive. No, gentlemen, the need that presses upon the conscience of this convention is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States both North and South. And believing that he, more surely than any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most illustrious borne by living man.
“His services attest his greatness, and the country—nay, the world—knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone in things written and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done. And perils and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce against the will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised, having filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the high-born and the titled, but the poor and the lowly in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and the defects of many systems of government; and he has returned a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce light that beat upon him during sixteen years, the most trying, the most portentous, the most perilous.
“Vilified and reviled, truthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other lands, but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Calumny’s ammunition has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once; its force is spent: and the name of Grant will glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those who have tried to tarnish that name have moldered in forgotten graves, and when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished utterly.
“Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee’s surrender foreshadowed the wisest prophecies and principles of true reconstruction. Victor in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized his aversion to war, and his love of peace by an arbitration of international disputes, which stands the wisest, the most majestic example of its kind in the world’s diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popularity and frenzy, had swept both Houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant which, single and alone, overthrew expansion, and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, to him immeasurably more than to any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is as good as gold.
“With him as our leader we shall have no defensive campaign. No! We shall have nothing to explain away. We shall have no apologies to make. The shafts and the arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his feet.
“Life, liberty, and property will find a safeguard in him. When he said of the colored men in Florida, ‘Wherever I am they may come also;’ when he so said, he meant that had he the power, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should no longer be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to receive Denis Kearney in California, he meant that Communism, lawlessness, and disorder, although it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole city, would find a foe in him. He meant that popular or unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may.
“His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his unequaled experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one which would dumbfounder Solomon, because he thought there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen! my countrymen what stultification does not such a fallacy involve. The American people exclude Jefferson Davis from public trust. Why? Why? Because he was the arch-traitor and would-be destroyer; and now the same people is asked to ostracise Grant, and not to trust him. Why? Why, I repeat? Because he was the arch-preserver of his country, and because not only in war, but twice as Civil Magistrate, he gave his highest, noblest efforts to the Republic. Is this an electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy’s masquerade? There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting; no department of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience, making him exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who tries your cause, the officer who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul, what man do you reject because, by his works, you have known him, and found him faithful and fit? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? Who dares—who dares to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American people? Can it be said that Grant has used official power and place to perpetuate his term? He has no place, and official power has not been used for him. Without patronage and without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus, without telegraph wires running from his house to this Convention, or running from his house anywhere else, this man is the candidate whose friends have never threatened to bolt unless this Convention did as they said. He is a Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the candidates of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the majority as the very essence of their faith, and they mean to uphold that faith against not only the common enemy, but against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps, and guerrillas—the men who deploy between the lines, and forage now on one side and then on the other. This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration. It can break that power which dominates and mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization whose very existence is a standing protest against progress.
“The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its very hope of existence is a solid South. Its success is a menace to order and progress. I say this Convention can overthrow that power. It can dissolve and emancipate a solid South. It can speed the Nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements. Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain victory with its greatest Marshal at its head.”
After Mr. Bradley, of Kentucky, had seconded Grant’s nomination, the call proceeded, and Ohio being reached, General Garfield arose. Amid great applause he advanced to Mr. Conkling’s late high station on a table, and, as soon as order was restored, said:
“Mr. President: I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep solicitude. No emotion touches my heart more quickly than a sentiment in honor of a great and noble character. But as I sat on these seats and witnessed these demonstrations, it seemed to me you were a human ocean in a tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when sunshine bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor takes the level from which he measures all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of the people.
“When our enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find the calm level of public opinion, below the storm, from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where 15,000 men and women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed; not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of 756 delegates waiting to cast their votes into the urn and determine the choice of their party; but by 5,000,000 Republican firesides, where the thoughtful fathers, with wives and children about them, with calm thoughts inspired by love of home and love of country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and the knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by,—there God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but in the sober quiet that comes between now and November, in the silence of deliberate judgment, will this great question be settled. Let us aid them to-night.
“But now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want? Bear with me a moment. Hear me for this cause, and for a moment, be silent that you may hear. Twenty-five years ago this Republic was wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with the traffic in the body and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people. The baleful doctrine of State sovereignty had shocked and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the National Government, and the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin Territories of the West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that crisis the Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from the fire of liberty which God has lighted in every man’s heart, and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver and save the Republic. It entered the arena when beleaguered and assailed Territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made them free forever.
“Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the young party, under the leadership of that great man, who on this spot, twenty years ago, was made its leader, entered the national capital and assumed the high duties of the Government. The light which shone from its banner dispelled the darkness in which slavery had enshrouded the Capitol and melted the shackles of every slave, and consumed, in the fire of liberty, every slave-pen within the shadow of the Capitol. Our national industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the treasury itself was well nigh empty. The money of the people was the wretched notes of 2,000 uncontrolled and irresponsible state bank corporations, which were filling the country with a circulation that poisoned rather than sustained the life of business.
“The Republican party changed all this. It abolished the babel of confusion and gave the country a currency as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of the people. It threw its protecting arm around our great industries, and they stood erect as with new life. It filled with the spirit of true nationality all the great functions of the Government. It confronted a rebellion of unexampled magnitude, with a slavery behind it, and, under God, fought the final battle of liberty until victory was won. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the sweet, calm words of peace uttered by the conquering nation, and saying to the conquered foe that lay prostrate at its feet, ‘This is our only revenge, that you join us in lifting to the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars forever and forever, the immortal principles of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, shall be free and stand equal before the law.’ Then came the questions of reconstruction, the public debt, and the public faith.