466 THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION. 



when their own party platform in 1876, denounces them 

 as having made no "advance towards resumption, no 

 preparation for resumption, but, instead, has obstructed 

 resumption." They then denounced them because they 

 had not resumed. They denounced the greenbacks or 

 legal tender notes as a "changing standard of value in the 

 hands of the people." It cannot be denied that Mr. Til- 

 den was a representative Democrat. In him the party 

 trusted as its great leader. From a letter written by Mr. 

 Parke Godwin an intimate friend and supporter of Mr. 

 Tilden in 1875, we are enabled to learn more clearly the 

 position of the Democratic party and its illustrious leader 

 upon the question of resumption. Mr. Godwin, speaking 

 of the financial plank, as quoted from the Democratic 

 platform, in 1876, says: 



"It is proper to recall before we scrutinize the scope 

 and meaning of these phrases that were stoutly opposed, 

 both in committee and convention, by inflationist leaders. 

 Whatever their real purport, these men saw in them a flat 

 contradiction of their own schemes. 



"General Bwing and Mr. Voorhees, who spoke for 

 the minority, denounced them as a complete surrender to 

 the hard-money theorists. The former, in order to obtain 

 a partial recognition of his ways of thinking, moved a 

 substitute proposing a repeal of the whole Resumption 

 Act * forthwith ' " Mr. Dorsheimer of the majority of the 

 committee, refused to accede to it, saying: "I propose 

 right here to make a straight issue between hard and soft 

 money. By that we stand or fall." He was sustained by 

 the convention, and the substitute rejected by a vote of 

 more than two and a half to one 550 to 219. The result 

 was regarded as a decisive victory for the advocates of the 

 sounder doctrines. I cannot doubt that such is the right 

 interpretation of the result; for I discover that these 



