prejudice that I had cherished against Grant since 1864 entirely
dissipated by a conversation into which I cautiously led him on the
Lincoln-McClellan campaign of 1864. I have stated in another chapter
that Mr. Lincoln hesitated in October, 1864, to send an order to
General Grant to furlough five thousand of his Pennsylvania soldiers
home to vote for President, and sent it to Meade. I had known how
Lincoln had sustained Grant after the battle of Shiloh, when Grant
had few friends and none outside of Lincoln able to sustain him. When
Lincoln hesitated to send the order to Grant, I spoke very freely
and reminded Lincoln how he had saved Grant, and wanted to know why
he could not now trust the man who would have been overwhelmed but
for the generous and heroic offices of Lincoln. Lincoln finally
answered that he had never received or heard of any expression from
General Grant expressing a preference for his election over General
McClellan. Lincoln certainly at that time doubted Grant’s attitude in
that contest, and having been one of the many who had urged Lincoln to
remove Grant from his command after Shiloh, I could not fail to cherish
some prejudice against Grant as wanting in fidelity to Lincoln.
In our general discussion of politics I remarked that he had very
studiously avoided all political expression during the war, and that
I had specially noted his silence during the campaign of 1864 between
Lincoln and McClellan. His answer was prompt and given evidently in
the frankest manner, as he said substantially: “Of course, I could not
with propriety give any public expression in a political contest where
one candidate had given me the highest commission in the army and the
other candidate had been my predecessor in command of the army.” The
answer was given in such simple earnestness that I never thereafter
doubted Grant’s fidelity to Lincoln, although Lincoln certainly was
disappointed that Grant gave no expression during the campaign. On the
night of Lincoln’s election Grant sent him a very hearty telegram of
congratulation.
President Grant drifted into a political control that ultimately made
his administration intensely sectional and factional, and during his
first administration he was intolerant of criticism, and often openly
disregarded Republican sentiment in sustaining many of his favorites,
who brought scandals upon his rule. On great questions, however, Grant
certainly was great. He conceived the idea of territorial expansion
that has been so successfully carried out by the present administration
with the hearty approval of an overwhelming majority of the people.
He made an earnest movement for the annexation of San Domingo, and he
gave exhaustive public and private efforts to attain it. This policy
was severely criticised by some of the leading members of the party,
prominent among whom were Sumner and Greeley, and the San Domingo
scheme was ridiculed from one end of the country to the other as a
wild, visionary, political enterprise, designed to give place and
fortune to administration favorites.
So bitter did the Republican national feud become that the
anti-administration leaders decided to take the initiative in opposing
Grant’s re-election. At no time in the history of any administration
was the political machinery of the Government so complete and despotic
as it was under Grant, although not in any degree personally directed
by himself, and it was well known that the opposition would have little
voice in the regular Republican convention, and that it was entirely
powerless to prevent Grant being presented as the Republican nominee.
The first national conventions of the year were held at Columbus, O.,
in February. The Labor Reformers were first in the field, as their
convention was held at Columbus on the 21st of February, with Edward M.
Chamberlain, of Massachusetts, as President. This convention was made
up largely or wholly of men who believed in the greenback policy, as
it demanded an indefinite issue of greenbacks, which would be a legal
tender for the payment of all public and private debts. The following
is the full text of its platform:
We hold that all political power is inherent in the people, and free
government is founded on their authority and established for their
benefit; that all citizens are equal in political rights, entitled
to the largest religious and political liberty compatible with the
good order of society, as also to the use and enjoyment of the fruits
of their labor and talents; and no man or set of men is entitled to
exclusive separable endowments and privileges, or immunities from the
Government, but in consideration of public services; and any laws
destructive of these fundamental principles are without moral binding
force, and should be repealed. And believing that all the evils
resulting from unjust legislation now affecting the industrial classes
can be removed by the adoption of the principles contained in the
following declaration, therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the Government to establish a just
standard of distribution of capital and labor by providing a purely
national circulating medium, based on the faith and resources of the
nation, issued directly to the people without the intervention of any
system of banking corporations; which money shall be legal tender in
the payment of all debts, public and private, and interchangeable
at the option of the holder for Government bonds bearing a rate of
interest not to exceed 3.65 per cent., subject to future legislation
by Congress.
2. That the national debt should be paid in good faith, according
to the original contract, at the earliest option of the Government,
without mortgaging the property of the people or the future earnings
of labor, to enrich a few capitalists at home and abroad.
3. That justice demands that the burdens of Government should be so
adjusted as to bear equally on all classes, and that the exemption
from taxation of Government bonds bearing extortionate rates of
interest is a violation of all just principles of revenue laws.
4. That the public lands of the United States belong to the people and
should not be sold to individuals nor granted to corporations, but
should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people, and
should be granted to landless settlers only, in amounts not exceeding
one hundred and sixty acres of land.
5. That Congress should modify the tariff so as to admit free such
articles of common use as we can neither produce nor grow, and lay
duties for revenue mainly upon articles of luxury and upon such
articles of manufacture as will, we having the raw materials in
abundance, assist in further developing the resources of the country.
6. That the presence in our country of Chinese laborers, imported by
capitalists in large numbers for servile use, is an evil, entailing
want and its attendant train of misery and crime on all classes of the
American people, and should be prohibited by legislation.
7. That we ask for the enactment of a law by which all mechanics and
day-laborers employed by or on behalf of the Government, whether
directly or indirectly, through persons, firms, or corporations,
contracting with the State, shall conform to the reduced standard of
eight hours a day, recently adopted by Congress for national employés,
and also for an amendment to the acts of incorporation for cities and
towns, by which all laborers and mechanics employed at their expense
shall conform to the same number of hours.
8. That the enlightened spirit of the age demands the abolition of
the system of contract labor in our prisons and other reformatory
institutions.
9. That the protection of life, liberty, and property are the three
cardinal principles of government, and the first two are more sacred
than the latter; therefore money needed for prosecuting wars should,
as it is required, be assessed and collected from the wealth of the
country, and not entailed as a burden upon posterity.
10. That it is the duty of the Government to exercise its power over
railroads and telegraph corporations, that they shall not in any case
be privileged to exact such rates of freight, transportation, or
charges, by whatever name, as may bear unduly or unequally upon the
producer or consumer.
11. That there should be such a reform in the civil service of the
national Government as will remove it beyond all partisan influence,
and place it in the charge and under the direction of intelligent and
competent business men.
12. That as both history and experience teach us that power ever seeks
to perpetuate itself by every and all means, and that its prolonged
possession in the hands of one person is always dangerous to the
interests of a free people, and believing that the spirit of our
organic laws and the stability and safety of our free institutions
are best obeyed on the one hand and secured on the other by a
regular constitutional change in the chief of the country at each
election; therefore, we are in favor of limiting the occupancy of the
Presidential chair to one term.
13. That we are in favor of granting general amnesty and restoring the
Union at once on the basis of equality of rights and privileges to
all, the impartial administration of justice being the only true bond
of union to bind the States together and restore the government of the
people.
14. That we demand the subjection of the military to the civil
authorities, and the confinement of its operations to national
purposes alone.
15. That we deem it expedient for Congress to supervise the patent
laws, so as to give labor more fully the benefit of its own ideas and
inventions.
16. That fitness, and not political or personal considerations, should
be the only recommendation to public office, either appointive or
elective, and any and all laws looking to the establishment of this
principle are heartily approved.
Four ballots were had to nominate a candidate for President, resulting
in the choice of David Davis, of Illinois. The following table exhibits
the ballots in detail:
═══════════════════════════════════╤════════╤════════╤════════╤═══════
│ First. │ Second.│ Third. │Fourth.
───────────────────────────────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────
John W. Geary, of Pennsylvania │ 60 │ ―― │ ―― │ ――
Horace H. Day, of New York │ 59 │ 21 │ 59 │ 3
David Davis, of Illinois │ 47 │ 88 │ 93 │ 201
Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts │ 13 │ 76 │ 12 │ ――
J. M. Palmer, of Illinois │ 8 │ ―― │ ―― │ ――
Joel Parker, of New Jersey │ 7 │ 7 │ 7 │ 7
George W. Julian, of Indiana │ 6 │ 1 │ 5 │ ――
B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri │ ―― │ ―― │ 14 │ ――
Horace Greeley, of New York │ ―― │ ―― │ 11 │ ――
═══════════════════════════════════╧════════╧════════╧════════╧═══════
Two ballots were had for Vice-President, as follows:
═════════════════════════════════╤════════╤════════
│ First. │ Second.
─────────────────────────────────┼────────┼────────
E. M. Chamberlain, Massachusetts │ 72 │ 57
Joel Parker, New Jersey │ 70 │ 112
Allanson M. West, Mississippi │ 18 │ ――
Thomas Ewing, Ohio │ 31 │ 22
W. G. Bryan, Tennessee │ 10 │ ――
═════════════════════════════════╧════════╧════════
Davis and Parker were unanimously declared the candidates of the party
for President and Vice-President.
Although Judge Davis had responded by telegraph to the notification of
his nomination from the convention, expressing his gratitude for the
honor conferred, he did not definitely accept. Had Judge Davis been
nominated by the Liberal Republicans at Cincinnati in May, he would
doubtless have remained as the candidate of the Labor Reformers, but
in June, when there was no possibility of him being a candidate of any
other organization, Davis and Parker both declined and retired from the
contest. A small portion of the delegates were reconvened, and Charles
O’Conor, of New York, was nominated for President, without naming any
candidate for Vice-President. Thus, the Labor Reform organization was
practically out of the battle of 1872.
A Prohibition National Convention was also held at Columbus on the
22d of February, with representatives from nine States, and Samuel
Chase, of Ohio, was made permanent president. An elaborate platform
was adopted, but the party does not seem to have been of sufficient
importance to command the publication of its platform in full in the
newspapers, and it is lost to history, as I have not been able to find
it. James Black, of Pennsylvania, was nominated for President, and John
Russell, of Michigan, for Vice-President by a unanimous vote, after
having been presented by a committee on nominations.
The Liberal Republican National Convention met at Cincinnati on the 1st
of May. The organized Republican opposition to Grant had its origin in
the State contest in Missouri, where the Democrats and the Liberals
united to efface a most proscriptive Constitution and laws, denying
all rights of citizenship to those who had been engaged in rebellion.
A number of meetings were held in the Western cities to organize the
Liberal Republican party, and it was a mass-meeting of the Liberals of
Missouri in Jefferson City, in January, 1872, that first decided to
call a national convention of Liberal Republicans, and fixed Cincinnati
and the 1st of May as the place and time for it to assemble.
It seemed evident to all who had intelligently and dispassionately
observed the political situation that the majority of the people of
the country would vote against the re-election of Grant if they could
be heartily united, but the elements were strangely incongruous, as
Greeley, Sumner, Trumbull, and many others of the Liberal leaders had
been among the most earnest champions of radical Republicanism, and
had antagonized the Democratic party so fiercely and persistently as
to make unity between them apparently impossible. It was only the
utterly helpless condition of the Democrats that made them entertain
the question of fusing with the Liberals by taking their ticket and
platform.
Strange as it may seem, Mr. Vallandigham, one of the most aggressive
of all the Northern “Copperheads” during the war, and who had been
arrested by Burnside and banished into the Southern lines, was one
of the first of the leading Democrats to propose a union of all the
elements opposed to Grant and unite in fully accepting the results
of the war, the reconstruction policy, and the amendments to the
Constitution. I attended this convention as a delegate and acted
as chairman of the delegation. Of the prominent men named for the
nomination, I greatly preferred David Davis, the executor of Abraham
Lincoln, and a man so conservative and liberal in his political views
and so thoroughly identified with the substantial interests of the
country that he would have provoked no antagonism whatever from the
financial and business interests of the nation, but Horace Greeley was
his competitor for the place, and there was no man in the country for
whom I cherished stronger affection. I had known Greeley for many years.
When the Liberal agitation began, the prominent candidates discussed
were Horace Greeley, Charles Francis Adams, David Davis, and B. Gratz
Brown, of Missouri. Greeley became intensely interested in his own
nomination. He felt that he had devoted his life to the best efforts
for his country, and especially for the lowly. He was the foremost of
all in the great battle for the overthrow of slavery, and he craved
the recognition of his work by an election to the Presidency. Before
the convention met he made an appointment to meet me at the Colonnade
Hotel in Philadelphia. He felt that he could speak with entire freedom
to me, and he opened his heart to the full extent of saying how much he
desired the nomination and what it meant to him.
Could I have made him President, I would gladly have done so, but I
knew that he could not be elected, and told him so with frankness that
he appreciated. He yielded to my judgment as to his availability, and
accepted the suggestion that had then been made generally by the more
conservative of the Liberal Republicans that David Davis would be the
only candidate who could certainly defeat Grant. He was conservative,
able, and clear-headed, and the business interests of the country would
have had entire confidence in him. In answer to my statement that
the Democrats certainly could not be united in Greeley’s favor, and
without which an election could not be accomplished, he said: “Well, if
they won’t take me head foremost, they might take me boots foremost,”
meaning for Vice-President. I said I did not doubt that his nomination
for the second place could be accomplished with every prospect of
success at the election. We parted with the distinct understanding that
his friends should move unitedly to nominate David Davis for President
and Greeley for Vice-President.
When we reached Cincinnati a conference of the leading friends of Davis
and Greeley was held the night before the convention met, Senator
Fenton being present as the leader of the Greeley forces. Leonard
Swett, the immediate representative of Davis, was present, along with
John D. Defrees, of Indiana, and a number of others. The plan of
operation was agreed upon, and when we adjourned to enjoy a late supper
we regarded it as settled that Davis and Greeley would be nominated on
the next day.
About midnight it was whispered that General Frank P. Blair, as the
representative of B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, and others had held
a secret conference to unite the Greeley and Brown forces to make
Greeley the candidate for President and Brown second on the ticket.
We soon discovered that the movement had been thoroughly organized,
and many Greeley men who were much more zealous than discreet at
once accepted the new situation, and forced even Fenton to fall back
to the support of Greeley. Fenton was one of Greeley’s most sincere
and devoted friends, and it was with great reluctance that he joined
in the effort to nominate Greeley when he felt that it could result
only in crucifying him. The withdrawal of the Greeley men from the
Davis-Greeley combination left Davis a hopeless candidate, as the
convention was largely radical and little inclined to consider
questions of expediency.
The Liberal Republican National Convention was simply a huge
mass-meeting, with nearly all of the States of the Union represented,
and it was boiling over with go-as-you-please independence in politics.
Stanley Matthews, afterward made Supreme Judge, was temporary
president, and although he denounced the Grant administration in his
opening speech as a monument of corruption, he soon thereafter bolted
Greeley and supported Grant. Carl Schurz was made permanent president.
The contest for President was evidently narrowed down to Adams and
Greeley. I voted on every ballot for Adams, with whom I had little
sympathy, and three-fourths of the Pennsylvania delegation voted
with me. On the 6th ballot Greeley was nominated by changes of votes
after the ballot had been announced, but I did not change the vote
of Pennsylvania until he had received a majority of the votes of the
convention. The following are the ballots for President:
══════════════════════════════╤═══════╤═══════╤══════╤═══════╤══════╤══════
│First. │Second.│Third.│Fourth.│Fifth.│Sixth.
──────────────────────────────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼───────┼──────┼──────
Charles Francis Adams, Mass. │203 │ 243 │ 264 │ 279 │ 258 │ 324
Horace Greeley, New York │147 │ 245 │ 258 │ 251 │ 309 │ 332
Lyman Trumbull, Illinois │110 │ 148 │ 156 │ 141 │ 81 │ 19
B. Gratz Brown, Missouri │ 95 │ 2 │ 2 │ 2 │ 2 │ ――
David Davis, Illinois │ 92-1/2│ 75 │ 41 │ 51 │ 30 │ 6
Andrew G. Curtin, Pennsylvania│ 62 │ ―― │ ―― │ ―― │ ―― │ ――
Salmon P. Chase, Ohio │ 2-1/2│ 1 │ ―― │ ―― │ 24 │ 32
══════════════════════════════╧═══════╧═══════╧══════╧═══════╧══════╧══════
Mr. Greeley’s nomination was made unanimous, and the convention
proceeded to ballot for Vice-President as follows:
═════════════════════════════╤═════════╤═════════
│ First. │ Second.
─────────────────────────────┼─────────┼─────────
B. Gratz Brown, Missouri │ 237 │ 435
Lyman Trumbull, Illinois │ 158 │ 175
George W. Julian, Indiana │ 134-1/2│ ――
Gilbert C. Walker, Virginia │ 84-1/2│ 75
Cassius M. Clay, Kentucky │ 34 │ ――
Jacob D. Cox, Ohio │ 25 │ ――
John M. Scoville, New Jersey │ 12 │ ――
Thomas W. Tipton, Nebraska │ 8 │ 3
John M. Palmer, Illinois │ ―― │ 8
─────────────────────────────┴─────────┴─────────
The following platform was unanimously adopted:
The administration now in power has rendered itself guilty of wanton
disregard of the laws of the land, and of usurping powers not granted
by the Constitution; it has acted as if the laws had binding force
only for those who were governed, and not for those who govern. It has
thus struck a blow at the fundamental principles of constitutional
government and the liberties of the citizen.
The President of the United States has openly used the powers and
opportunities of his high office for the promotion of personal ends.
He has kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in places of power
and responsibility, to the detriment of the public interest.
He has used the public service of the Government as a machinery of
corruption and personal influence, and has interfered with tyrannical
arrogance in the political affairs of States and municipalities.
He has rewarded with influential and lucrative offices men who
had acquired his favor by valuable presents, thus stimulating the
demoralization of our political life by his conspicuous example.
He has shown himself deplorably unequal to the task imposed upon
him by the necessities of the country, and culpably careless of the
responsibilities of his high office.
The partisans of the administration, assuming to be the Republican
party and controlling its organization, have attempted to justify such
wrongs and palliate such abuses to the end of maintaining partisan
ascendancy.
They have stood in the way of necessary investigations and
indispensable reforms, pretending that no serious fault could be found
with the present administration of public affairs, thus seeking to
blind the eyes of the people.
They have kept alive the passions and resentments of the late civil
war, to use them for their own advantage; they have resorted to
arbitrary measures in direct conflict with the organic law, instead
of appealing to the better instincts and latent patriotism of the
Southern people by restoring to them those rights the enjoyment of
which is indispensable to a successful administration of their local
affairs, and would tend to revive a patriotic and hopeful national
feeling.
They have degraded themselves and the name of their party, once justly
entitled to the confidence of the nation, by a base sycophancy to the
dispenser of executive power and patronage, unworthy of republican
freemen; they have sought to silence the voice of just criticism, and
stifle the moral sense of the people, and to subjugate public opinion
by tyrannical party discipline.
They are striving to maintain themselves in authority for selfish ends
by an unscrupulous use of the power which rightfully belongs to the
people, and should be employed only in the service of the country.
Believing that an organization thus led and controlled can no longer
be of service to the best interests of the Republic, we have resolved
to make an independent appeal to the sober judgment, conscience, and
patriotism of the American people.
We, the Liberal Republicans of the United States, in national
convention assembled at Cincinnati; proclaim the following principles
as essential to just government:
1. We recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that
it is the duty of government, in its dealings with the people, to mete
out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color,
or persuasion, religious or political.
2. We pledge ourselves to maintain the union of these States,
emancipation and enfranchisement, and to oppose any reopening of
the questions settled by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments of the Constitution.