to Grant. I had reasons to know that Mr.
Bruce, in consequence of his cordial relations with Senator
Conkling,--the national leader of the Grant forces,--was not unfriendly
to Grant, and that he would use his influence to prevent the delegation
from going into any combination for the sole purpose of defeating the
nomination of Grant. In other words, Grant was Brace's second choice for
the nomination.

The fight for the delegation was waged with a good deal of heat and
bitterness. The canvass had not progressed very far before it was
developed that Grant was much stronger than the faction by which he was
being supported. The fight was so bitter, and the delegates to the State
Convention were so evenly divided, that the result was the election of a
compromise delegation which was about evenly divided between Grant and
Sherman. Bruce and Hill were among those that were elected.

The National Convention, which was held in Chicago in June of that year,
was one of the most exciting and interesting in the history of the
party. It was that convention that abolished what was known as "the unit
rule." Up to that time the right of a State Convention to elect all the
delegates to which the State was entitled,--district as well as
State,--and to instruct them as a body had never before been questioned.
New York, as well as other States, had instructed the delegates to cast
the entire vote of the State for Grant. This was the unit rule. It is a
rule which even now is enforced in National Conventions of the
Democratic party. It was through the enforcement of this rule that Mr.
Cleveland was renominated, when he was so bitterly opposed by a portion
of the delegation from his own State,--especially the Tammany
delegates,--that General Bragg was moved to make the celebrated
declaration that he "loved Mr. Cleveland on account of the enemies he
had made." Notwithstanding the fact that those delegates were strongly
opposed to Mr. Cleveland, and though they protested against having their
votes recorded for him, they were so recorded through the application
and enforcement of the unit rule. It was the enforcement of this rule
upon which Mr. Conkling insisted in the National Republican Convention
of 1880. About twenty of the New York district delegates, under the
leadership of Judge W.H. Robertson, refused to be governed by the
instructions of the State Convention. Their contention was that the
State Convention had no right to bind by instru