778 



UNITED STATES. 



Before the sixth ballot was announced, Min- 

 nesota changed 9 votes from Trurabull to Gree- 

 ley ; Pennsylvania changed her vote to 50 for 

 Greeley, 6 for Davis ; Indiana changed 27 to 

 Adams; Illinois changed all but one to Gree- 

 ley; and others changed, so that, when the 

 vote was complete, the chairman announced 

 the result as, Greeley, 482 ; Adams, 187. The 

 chair thereupon announced Mr. Greeley as the 

 candidate of the convention for President of 

 the United States. 



The convention then proceeded to ballot for 

 Vice-President, with the following result: 



B. Gratz Brown was thereupon declared the 

 nominee of the convention for Vice-President 

 of the United States. 



Mr. Greeley, on the next day, retired abso- 

 lutely from all connection with the editorial 

 department of the New York Tribune, and sub- 

 sequently accepted the nomination in the fol- 

 lowing letter : 



NEW YORK, May 20, 1872. 



GENTLEMEN : I have chosen not to acknowledge 

 your letter of the 3d inst., until I could learn how 

 the work of your convention was received in all parts 

 of our great country, and judge whether that work 

 was approved and ratified by the mass of our fellow- 

 citizens. Their response has from day to day reached 

 me through telegrams, letters, and the comments 

 of journalists independent of official patronage and 

 indifferent to the smiles or frowns of power. The 

 number and character of these unconstrained, un- 

 purchased, unsolicited utterances, satisfy me that 

 the movement which found expression at Cincinnati 

 lias received the stamp of public approval, and been 

 hailed by a majority of our countrymen as the har- 

 binger of a better day for the republic. 



I do not misinterpret this approval as especially 

 complimentary to myself, nor even to the cbivalrous 

 and justly-esteemed, gentleman with whose name I 

 thank your convention for associating mine. I re- 

 ceive and welcome it as a spontaneous and deserved 

 tribute to that admirable platform of principles where- 

 in your convention BO tersely, so lucidly, so forcibly 

 set forth the convictions which impelled, and the 

 purposes which guided its course a platform which, 

 casting behind it the wreck and rubbish of worn- 

 out contentions and by-gone feuds, embodies in fit 

 and few words the needs and aspirations of to-day. 

 Though thousands stand ready to condemn your 

 every act, hardly a syllable of criticism or cavil has 

 been aimed at your platform, of which the substance 

 may be fairly epitomized as follows: 



1. All the political rights and franchises which 

 bave been acquired through our late bloody^ convul- 

 sion must and shall be guaranteed, maintained, en- 

 joyed, respected evermore. 



2. All the political rights and franchises which 

 have been lost througb that convulsion should and 

 must be promptly restored and reestablished, BO 

 that there shall be henceforth no proscribed class 

 and no disfranchised caste within the limits of our 

 Union, whose long-estranged people shall reunite 

 and fraternize upon the broad basis of universal am- 

 nesty with impartial suffrage. 



3. That, subject to our solemn constitutional obli- 

 gation to maintain the equal rights of all citizens, 

 our policy should aim at local self-government and 

 not at centralization ; that the civil authority should 

 be supreme over the military ; that the writ of 

 habeas corpus should be jealously upheld as the safe- 

 guard of personal freedom; that the individual citi- 

 zen should enjoy the largest liberty consistent with 

 public order, ancl that there shall be no Federal sub- 

 version of the internal polity of the several States 

 and municipalities, but that each shall be left free to 

 enforce the rights and promote the well-being of it 

 inhabitants by such means as the judgment of it 

 own people shall prescribe. 



4. There shall be a real and not merely a simulate 

 reform in the civil service of the republic ; to whic 

 end it is indispensable that the chief dispenser of it 

 vast official patronage shall be shielded from tin 

 main temptation to use his power selfishly, by a rul( 

 inexorably forbidding and precluding his reelection, 



5. That the raising of revenue, whether by tariff 01 

 otherwise, shall be recognized and treated as the peo- 

 ple's immediate business, to be shaped and directec" 

 by them through their Representatives in Congress 

 whose action thereon the President must neithe 

 overrule by his veto, attempt to dictate, nor presui 

 to punish, by bestowing office only on those wno agi 

 with him /withdrawing it from those who do not. 



6. That the public lands must be sacredly re- 

 served for occupation and acquisition by cultiva- 

 tors, and not recklessly squandered on the project- 

 ors of railroads, for which our people have no pres- 

 ent need, and the premature construction of which is 

 annually plunging us into deeper and deeper abysses 

 of foreign indebtedness. 



7. That the achievement of these grand purposes 

 of universal beneficence is expected and sought at 

 the hands of all who approve them, irrespective of 

 past affiliations. 



8. That the public faith must at all hazards bo 

 maintained and the national credit preserved. 



9. That the patriotic devotedness and inestimable 

 services of our fellow-citizens, who, as soldiers or 

 sailors, upheld the flag and maintained the unity of 

 the republic, shall ever be gratefully remembered and 

 honorably requited. 



These propositions, so ably and forcibly presented 

 in the platform of your convention, have already 

 fixed the attention and commanded the assent of a 

 large majority of our countrymen, who joyfully 

 adopt them, as I do, as the basis of a true, benefi- 

 cent national reconstruction of a new departure 

 from jealousies, strifes, and hates, which have no 

 longer adequate motive or even plausible pretext, 

 into an atmosphere of peace, fraternity, and mutual 

 good-will. In vain do the .drill-sergeants of decay- 

 ing organizations flourish menacingly their trun- 

 cheons and angrily insist that the files shall be closed 

 and straightened; in vain do the whippers-in of 

 parties once vital, because rooted in the vital needs 

 of the hour, protest against straying andbolting, de- 

 nounce men nowise their inferiors as traitors and 

 renegades, and threaten them with infamy and ruin. 

 I am confident that the American people have al- 

 ready made your cause their own, fully resolved that 

 their brave hearts and strong arms shall bear it onto 

 triumph. In this faith and with the distinct under- 

 standing that, if elected, I shall be the President 

 not of a party but of the whole people, I accept your 

 nomination, in the confident trust that the masses 

 of our countrymen North and South are eager to 

 clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has too 

 long divided them, forgetting that they have been 

 enemies in the joyful consciousness that they are 

 and must henceforth remain brethren. Yours grate- 

 fully, HORACE GREELEY. 

 To Hon. CARL SOHTJRZ, President ; Hon. GEORGE W. 

 JULIAN, Vice-President, and Messrs. "WILLIAM E. 

 McLEAN. JOHN G. DAVIDSON, J. H. RHODES ; Sec- 

 retaries of the National Convention of the Liberal 

 Republicans of the United States. 



