was a necessity for honest and intelligent government for the protection of all classes of citizens in those States in their personal, political and private rights," and deprecated. the foundation of political parties there solely upon sectional and race issues. He believed it practicable to promote by legitimate agencies of the General Government, honest and capable local governments in all the States. The Democratic National Convention met at St. Louis, Tuesday, June 27th, with Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, as Temporary Chairman. That evening the Committee on Organization reported a list of officers, with John A. McClernand, of Illinois, as Permanent Chairman. On the 28th, the Convention met and listened to speeches from William P. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, and several others, before the Committee on Resolutions reported the following platform: We, the delegates of the Democratic party of the United States, in National Convention assembled, do hereby declare the administration of the Federal Government to be in urgent need of immediate reform, do hereby enjoin upon the nominees of this Convention, and of the Democratic party in each State, a zealous effort and cooperation to this end; and do hereby appeal to our fellow citizens of every former political connection, to undertake with us this first and most pressing patriotic duty. For the Democracy of the whole country, we do here reaffirm our faith in the permanency of the Federal Union, our devotion to the Constitution of the United States, with its Amendments universally ac cepted as a final settlement of the controversies that engendered civil war, and do here record our steadfast confidence in the perpetuity of republican selfgovernment. In absolute acquiescence in the will of the majority the vital principle of republics; in the supremacy of civil over military authority; in the total separation of Church and State, for the sake alike of civil and religious freedom, in the equanty of all citizens before must laws of their own enactment, in the liberty of individual conduct, unvexed by sum; tu ary laws in the faithfur education of the rising gen eration, that they may preserve, enjoy and transmit these best conditions of human happiness and hope, we behold the noblest products of a hundred years of changeful history, but while upholding the bond of our Union and great charter of these, our rights, it be hooves a free people to practice also that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty. Reform is necessary to rebuild and establish in the hearts of the whole people, the Union, eleven years ago happily rescued from the danger of a secession of States, but now to be saved from a corrupt centralism which, after inflicting upon ten States the rapacity of carpet-bag tyrannies, has honey-combed the offices of the Federal Government itself with incapacity, waste and fraud; infected States and munici palities with the contagion of misrule, and locked fast the prosperity of an industrious people in the paralysis of "hard times." Reform is necessary to establish a sound currency, restore the public credit, and maintain the National honor. We denounce the failure, for all these eleven years of peace, to make good the promise of the legaltender notes, which are a changing standard of value, in the hands of the people, and the non-payment of which is a disregard of the plighted faith of the Nation. We denounce the improvidence which, in eleven years of peace, has taken from the people in Federal taxes thirteen times the whole amount of the legal-tender notes, and squandered four times their sum in useless expense without accumulating any reserve for their redemption. We denounce the financial imbecility and immorality of that party, which, during eleven years of peace, has made no advance toward resumption and no preparation for resumption, but instead has obstructed resumption, by wasting our resources and exhausting all our surplus income; and, while annually professing to intend a speedy return to specie payments, has annually enacted fresh hindrances thereto. As such hindrance we denounce the resumption clause of the act of 1875, and we here demand its repeal. We demand a judicious system of preparation by public economies, by official retrenchments, and by wise finance, which shall enable the Nation soon to assure the whole world of its perfect ability and its perfect readiness to meet any of its promises at the call of the creditor entitled to payment We believe such a system, well devised, and, above ali, intrusted to competent hands for execution, creating at no time an artificial scarcity of currency, and at no time alarming the public mind into a withdrawal of that vaster machinery of which ninety five per cent of all business transactions are performed a system openi. public, and inspiring genera, confidence, would from the day of its adoption bring healing on its wings to all our harrassed industries, set in motion the wheels of commerce, manufactures, and the mechanical arts, restore employment to labor, and renew in all its natural sources the prosperity of the people. Reform is necessary in the sum and modes of Federal taxation, to the end that capital may be set free from distrust, and labor lightly burdened. We denounce the present tariff, levied upon nearly 4,000 articles, as the masterpiece of injustice, inequality, and false pretense. It yields a dwindling, not a yearly rising revenue. It has impoverished many industries to subsidize a few. It prohibits imports that might purchase the products of American labor. It has degraded American commerce from the first to an inferior rank on the high seas. It has cut down the sales of American manufactures at home and abroad, and depleted the returns of American agriculture-an industry followed by half our people. It costs the people five times more than it produces to the Treasury, obstructs the processes of production and wastes the fruits of labor. It promotes fraud, fosters smuggling, enriches dishonest officials and bankrupts honest merchants. We demand that all custom house taxation shall be only for revenue. Reform is necessary in the scale of public expense -Federal, State and municipal. Our Federal taxation has swollen from sixty millions gold, in 1860, to four hundred and fifty millions currency, in 1870; our aggregate taxation from one hundred and fifty-four millions gold, in 1860, to seven hundred and thirty millions currency, in 1870; or in one decade from less than five dollars per head to more than eighteen dollars per head. Since the peace, the people have paid to their tax gatherers more than thrice the sum of the National debt, and more than twice that sum for the Federal Government alone. We demand a rigorous frugality in every department and from every officer of the Government. Reform is necessary to put a stop to the profligate waste of public lands and their diversion from actual settlers by the party in power, which has squandered 200,000,000 acres upon railroads alone, and out of more than thrice that aggregate has disposed of less than a sixth directly to tillers of the soil. Reform is necessary to correct the omissions of a Republican Congress and the errors of our treaties and our diplomacy, which have stripped our fellow citizens of foreign birth and kindred race recrossing the Atlantic, of the shield of American citizenship, and have exposed our brethren of the Pacific coast to the incursions of a race not sprung from the same great parent stock, and in fact now by law denied citizenship through naturalization, as being neither accustomed to the traditions of a progressive civilization nor exer cised in liberty under equal laws. We denounce the policy which thus discards the liberty-loving German and tolerates a revival of the coolie trade in Mongolian women imported for immoral purposes, and Mongolian men held to perform servile labor contracts, and demand such modification of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such legislation within Constitutional limitations, as shall prevent further importation or immigration of the Mongolian race. Reform is necessary, and can never be effected but by making it the controlling issue of the elections, and lifting it above the two false issues with which the office-holding class and the party in power seek to smother it: 1. The false issue with which they would enkindle sectarian strife in respect to the public schools, of which the establishment and support belong exclusively to the several States, and which the Democratic party has cherished from their foundation, and is resolved to maintain without prejudice or preference for any class, sect or creed, and without largesses from the Treasury to any. 2. The false issue by which they seek to light anew the dying embers of sectional hate between kindred peoples once estranged but now reunited in one indivisible Republic and a common destiny. Reform is necessary in the civil service. Experience proves that efficient, economical conduct of the Governmental business is not possible if its civil service be subject to change at every election, be a prize fought for at the ballot-box-be a brief reward of party zeal instead of posts of honor assigned for proved competency, and held for fidelity in the public employ; that the dispensing of patronage should neither be a tax upon the time of all our public men nor the instrument of their ambition. Here again promises falsified in the performance attest that the party in power can work out no practical or salutary reform. Reform is necessary even more in the higher grades of the public service. President, Vice President, Judges, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet Officers, these and all others in authority are the people's servants. Their offices are not a private perquisite; they are a public trust. When the annals of this Republic show the disgrace and censure of a Vice President; a late Speaker of the House of Representatives marketing his rulings as a presiding officer; three Senators profiting secretly by their votes as lawmakers; five Chairmen of the leading Committees of the late House of Representatives exposed in jobbery; a late Secretary of the Treasury forcing balances in the public accounts; a late Attorney General misappropriating public funds; a Secretary of the Navy enriched or enriching friends by percentages levied off the profits of contractors with his department; an Ambassador to England censured in a dishonorable speculation; the President's Private Secretary barely escaping conviction upon a trial for guilty complicity in frauds upon the revenue; a Secretary of War impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors the demonstration is complete that the first step in reform must be the people's choice of honest men from another party, lest the disease of one polit ical organization infect the body politic, and lest by making no change of men or parties, we get no change of measures and no real reform. All these abuses, wrongs and crimes, the product of sixteen years' ascendency of the Republican party, create a necessity for reform confessed by Republicans themselves; but their reformers are voted down in Convention and displaced from the Cabinet. The party's mass of honest voters is powerless to resist the 80,000 office-holders, its leaders and guides, Reform can only be had by peaceful civic revolution. We demand a change of system, a change of Administration, a change of parties, that we may have a change of measures and of men. Resolved, That this Convention, representing the Democratic party of the United States, cordially endorses the action of the present House of Representatives in reducing and curtailing the expenses of the Federal Government, in cutting down salaries and extravagant appropriations, and in abolishing useless offices, and places not required by the public necessities, and we shall trust to the firmness of the Democratic members of the House that no Committee of Conference and no misinterpretation of the rules will be allowed to defeat these wholesome measures of economy demanded by the country. Resolved, That the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, and the widows and orphans of those who have fallen in battle, have a just claim upon the care, protection and gratitude of their fellow citizens. A minority of the Committee - Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, Daniel Voorhees, of Indiana, John C. Brown, of Tennessee, Malcolm Hay, of Pennsylvania, H. H. Trimble, of Iowa, John J. Davis, of West Virginia, Thomas L. Davis, of Kansas, and C. H. Hardin, of Missouri, brought in a separate report. They desired to strike out the clause As such hindrance we denounce the resumption clause of the act of 1875, and we here demand its repeal" and to sub stitute the following: The law for the resumption of specie payments on the first of January, 1879, having been enacted by the Republican party without deliberation in Congress, or discussion before the people, and being both ineffective to secure its objects and highly injurious to the business of the country, ought to be forthwith repealed." After some debate the Convention rejected the minority report- yeas 219. nays 550, and adopted the platform as reported yeas 651, nays 83. The candidates placed in nomination. were: Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware; Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana; Joel Parker, of New Jersey; Samuel J. Tilden, of New York; William Allen, of Ohio; and Winfield S. Hancock, of Pennsylvania. But two ballots were taken, resulting in Tilden's nomination by the following voteFirst ballot: Tilden 417. Hendricks 140, Hancock 75, Allen 56, Bayard 33, Parker, 18. Second ballot: Tilden 535. Hendricks 60, Hancock 59, Allen 54, Parker 18, Bayard 11, Allen G. Thurman 7. On June 29th, Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, was nominated by acclamation for Vice President The nomination of Governor Hayes was not received at first, outside of Ohio, with general enthusiasm by the Republicans, as he had not been before the public with such commanding prominence as Blaine, Morton and Conkling, whom he defeated in Convention. His spotless public and private record, however, soon attracted the attention of the observing electors, and this in connection with his unassuming demeanor during the progress of the campaign, caused him to grow in popular esteem and favor. His Democratic opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, was a man of great wealth and recognized political adroit ness, who had been elected Governor of New York as a "reform" candidate and had prosecuted and convicted a number of Tammany Democrats for violations of the laws. Notwithstanding this, he soon demonstrated that he was somewhat of a political schemer himself, and in consequence had perfected a machine" of his own. His notoriety as a reformer undoubtedly gained him many recruits from. the independents and others who had, in times past, supported Republican candidates, but the fact that he stood upon an anti-resumption platform and the revival of his anti-Union record during the Civil War deterred many otherwise dissatisfied Republicans from supporting him. As it was, the vote was exceeding close, and the result in dispute in a number of States, owing to wholesale corruption in New York City and an almost successful attempt by means of cipher dispatches, bribery and other questionable means, to prevent a number of Republican candidates from securing their certificates of election. There had also been assassinations as well as armed intimidation in the South, and for weeks after the election timid people in America were fearful, and the European press was sure the English press especially, that there would be another civil war in the United States. Some of the Democrats, too, went so far as to threaten that they would inaugurate Tilden President by force of arms, a prominent Kentucky editor pledging one hundred thousand men from his State for that purpose. While realizing the gravity of the situation the people in general were confident that a peaceable solution of the controversy would be discovered, and the proceedings of Congress, the following January, fully justified their belief. The attention of the fearful was called to the fact that, unlike the conditions in 1860, the White House had an occupant in Ulysses S. Grant who was fearless and determined, and that, almost within the sound of his voice, was an equally resolute commander of the United States troops-General William Tecumseh Sherman. Tecumseh Sherman. These, it was believed, at the first insurrectionary movement, would act immediately and decisively. Fortunately the threats of the hotheads, and the foolish vaporings of a few would-be leaders in riotous demonstrations, were unheeded by the great mass of the populace. ilton. The Republican electoral ticket chosen at the November election was as follows: At large-Aaron F. Perry, Hamilton County; and Edward H. Bohm, Cuyahoga. By Districts—1. John W. Herron, Ham2. John W. Warrington, Hamilton. 3. George W. Hulick, Clermont. 4. John C. Williamson, Darke. 5. Isaac N. Alexander, Paulding. 6. James B. Luckey, Ottawa. 7. Orange Edwards, Brown. 8. Anson P. Howard, Champaign. 9. John J. Hane, Marion. J. Hane, Marion. 10. John S. Davis, Erie. II. John L. Jones, Jackson. 12. Augustus R. Keller, Fairfield. 13. Edward M. Downer, Crawford. 14. Andrew M. Burns, Richland. 15. Columbus Downing, Morgan. 16. David Cunningham, Harrison. 17. John H. Whitcraft, Mahoning. 18. Samuel G. Barnard, Wayne. 19. Benjamin F. Wade, Ashtabula. Worthington G. Streator, Cuyahoga. 20. |