Part 11 (1/2)

All the industries of the country have revived, labor is in demand, wages have increased, and throughout the entire country there is evidence of a coming prosperity greater than we have ever enjoyed.

Upon this record the Republican Party asks for the continued confidence and support of the people, and the convention submits for their approval the following statement of the principles and purposes which will continue to guide and inspire its efforts.

1. We affirm that the work of the Republican Party for the last twenty years has been such as to commend it to the favor of the nation; that the fruits of the costly victories which we have achieved through immense difficulties should be preserved; that the peace regained should be cherished; that the Union should be perpetuated, and that the liberty secured to this generation should be transmitted undiminished to other generations; that the order established and the credit acquired should never be impaired; that the pensions promised should be paid; that the debt, so much reduced, should be extinguished by the full payment of every dollar thereof; that the reviving industries should be further promoted, and that the commerce, already increasing, should be steadily encouraged.

2. The Const.i.tution of the United States is a supreme law, and not a mere contract. Out of confederated states it made a sovereign nation.

Some powers are denied to the nation, while others are denied to the states; but the boundary between the powers delegated and those reserved is to be determined by the national, and not by the state tribunal.

3. The work of popular education is one left to the care of the several states, but it is the duty of the national government to aid that work to the extent of its const.i.tutional ability. The intelligence of the nation is but the aggregate of the intelligence in the several states, and the destiny of the nation must be guided, not by the genius of any one state, but by the average genius of all.

4. The Const.i.tution wisely forbids Congress to make any law respecting the establishment of religion, but it is idle to hope that the nation can be protected against the influence of secret sectarianism which each state is exposed to its domination. We therefore recommend that the Const.i.tution be so amended as to lay the same prohibition upon the legislature of each state, and to forbid the appropriation of public funds for the support of sectarian schools.

5. We reaffirm the belief avowed in 1876, that the duties levied for the purpose of revenue should so discriminate as to favor American labor; that no further grants of the public domain should be made to any railway or other corporation; that slavery having perished in the states, its twin barbarity--polygamy--must die in the territories; that everywhere the protection accorded to a citizen of American birth must be secured to citizens by American adoption; that we deem it the duty of Congress to develop and improve our seacoast and harbors, but insist that further subsidies to private persons or corporations must cease; that the obligations of the Republic to the men who preserved its integrity in the day of battle are undiminished by the lapse of fifteen years since their final victory--to do them honor is and shall forever be the grateful privilege and sacred duty of the American people.

6. Since the authority to regulate immigration and intercourse between the United States and foreign nations rests with the Congress of the United States and the treaty-making power, the Republican Party, regarding the unrestricted immigration of Chinese as a matter of grave concernment under the exercise of both these powers, would limit and restrict that immigration by the enactment of such just, humane and reasonable laws and treaties as will produce that result.

7. That the purity and patriotism which characterized the earlier career of Rutherford B. Hayes in peace and war, and which guided the thoughts of our immediate predecessors to him for a presidential candidate, have continued to inspire him in his career as Chief Executive; and that history will accord to his administration the honors which are due to an efficient, just and courteous discharge of the public business, and will honor his vetoes interposed between the people and attempted partisan laws.

8. We charge upon the Democratic Party the habitual sacrifice of patriotism and justice to a supreme and insatiable l.u.s.t for office and patronage; that to obtain possession of the national government and control of the place, they have obstructed all efforts to promote the purity and to conserve the freedom of the sufferage, and have devised fraudulent ballots and invented fraudulent certification of returns; have labored to unseat lawfully elected members of Congress, to secure at all hazards the vote of a majority of the states in the House of Representatives; have endeavored to occupy by force and fraud the places of trust given to others by the people of Maine, rescued by the courage and action of Maine's patriotic sons; have, by methods vicious in principle and tyrannical in practice, attached partisan legislation to appropriation bills upon whose pa.s.sage the very movement of the government depended; have crushed the rights of the individual; have advocated the principles and sought the favor of the rebellion against the nation, and have endeavored to obliterate the sacred memories and to overcome its inestimably valuable results of nationality, personal freedom, and individual equality.

The equal, steady, and complete enforcement of the laws and the protection of all our citizens in the enjoyment of all the privileges and immunities guaranteed by the Const.i.tution, are the first duties of the nation.

The dangers of a ”Solid South” can only be averted by a faithful performance of every promise which the nation has made to the citizen.

The execution of the laws, and the punishment of all those who violate them, are the only safe methods by which an enduring peace can be secured and genuine prosperity established throughout the South.

Whatever promises the nation makes the nation must perform. A nation cannot with safety relegate this duty to the states. The ”Solid South”

must be divided by the peaceful agencies of the ballot, and all honest opinions must there find free expression. To this end the honest voter must be protected against terrorism, violence or fraud.

And we affirm it to be the duty and the purpose of the Republican Party to use all legitimate means to restore all the states of this Union to the most perfect harmony which may be possible, and we submit to the practical, sensible people of these United States to say whether it would not be dangerous to the dearest interests of our country at this time to surrender the administration of the national government to a party which seeks to overthrow the existing policy under which we are now so prosperous, and thus bring distrust and confusion where there is now order, confidence and hope.

9. The Republican Party, adhering to the principles affirmed by its last national convention of respect for the const.i.tutional rules governing appointments to office, adopts the declaration of President Hayes that the reform of the civil service should be thorough, radical and complete. To this end it demands the co-operation of the legislative with the executive departments of the government, and that Congress shall so legislate that fitness, ascertained by proper practical tests, shall admit to the public service.

The opening words of the fifth plank became the deciding issue of the campaign. The nominations for President were made at the evening session Sat.u.r.day. James G. Blaine was first placed in nomination by Thomas F.

Joy, and seconded by F. M. Pixley and Wm. P. Frye; Ulysses S. Grant was nominated by Roscoe Conkling and seconded by Wm. O. Bradley; John Sherman was nominated by James A. Garfield and seconded by F. C. Winkler and R. B. Elliott; William Windom was nominated by E. F. Drake; George F. Edmunds by Frederick Billings, and Elihu B. Washburn by J. E.

Ca.s.sady. The nominating speeches concluded near midnight, and aroused the utmost enthusiasm among the 15,000 men and women who were packed in the great hall. The convention adjourned at midnight to meet and begin balloting on Monday morning. The first ballot on Monday morning resulted as follows, 756 delegates being present:

Grant ................ 304 Edmunds .............. 34 Blaine ............... 284 Washburne ............ 30 Sherman .............. 93 Windom ............... 10

Twenty-eight ballots were taken on Monday with very little material change. Mr. Garfield received one vote on the second ballot, and afterwards received not more than two votes on any ballot until the thirty-fourth, taken on Tuesday, when Wisconsin broke and gave sixteen votes for Garfield, and this was the beginning of the movement by the Blaine and Sherman forces to combine and nominate Mr. Garfield, who was named on the thirty-sixth ballot. The vote for General Grant was solid until the end, never falling below that of the first ballot, 304. The concluding ballots are here given:

34th 35th 36th Ballot. Ballot. Ballot.

Grant ......... 312 313 306 Blaine ........ 275 257 42 Sherman ....... 107 99 3 Edmunds ....... 11 11 Washburne ..... 30 23 5 Windom ........ 4 3 Garfield ...... 17 50 399

Mr. Garfield was nominated, and the convention gave way to almost twenty minutes of cheering and enthusiasm, at the conclusion of which Roscoe Conkling moved that the nomination be made unanimous. As a concession to the disappointed Grant forces, Chester A. Arthur, of New York, was nominated for Vice-President on the first ballot over Elihu B.

Washburne, Marshall Jewell, Thomas Settle, Horace Maynard and Edmund J.

Davis, the ballot standing 468 for Arthur and 193 for Washburne, his nearest compet.i.tor, with scattering votes for the rest.

Although the nomination of Mr. Garfield, like that of Mr. Hayes, was totally unexpected, he was not unknown, and had already, by his services and career, earned for himself an enviable place in the nation's history. Born in Cuyahoga county, Ohio, in 1831, he had risen from an honorable poverty to the presidency of a College at the age of 26. He served one term in the Ohio Senate, and at the opening of the Civil War he was commissioned a Lieutenant-Colonel of Volunteers, and without any military experience and with a small force he routed a large body of Confederates at Middle Creek, Ky., in January, 1862, for which he received the highest praise from his superiors and the rank of Brigadier-General from President Lincoln. The rest of his military career was equally satisfactory and prominent, and he reached the rank of Major-General after Chickamauga. Resigning his commission, he took his seat in the House of Representatives in December, 1863, and immediately became a leader of the Republican forces, and his legislative work had been most conspicuous. He served from the Thirty-eighth to the Forty-Sixth Congresses inclusive, was on the Electoral Commission of 1877, and at the time of his nomination had been elected from Ohio to the United States Senate, but had not yet taken his seat.