acceptance in all. Equal suffrage was still regarded however
rather as an expedient of security against disloyalty than as a
measure of National right, rather as an incident to the power of
re-organizing rebellious communities than as a subject of National
jurisdiction for all the States.

The Fourteenth Amendment was about to be proclaimed, and would place
American citizenship under Constitutional protection. The Fifteenth
Amendment, ordaining equal political and civil rights, had not yet
come. In this period of transition the platform asserted that the
guarantee of suffrage to the loyal men of the South must be maintained,
but that the question of suffrage in the loyal States belonged to the
States themselves. This was an evasion of duty quite unworthy of the
Republican party, with its record of consistent bravery through
fourteen eventful years. It was a mere stroke of expediency to escape
the prejudices which negro suffrage would encounter in a majority of
the loyal States, and especially in Indiana and California, where a
close vote was anticipated. The position carried with it an element of
deception, because every intelligent man knew that it would be
impossible to force negro suffrage on the Southern States by National
authority, and leave the Northern States free to exclude it from their
own domain. It was an extraordinary proposition that the South, after
all the demoralization wrought by the war, should be called upon to
exhibit a higher degree of political justice and virtue than the North
was willing to practice.

On the financial issue the platform was earnest and emphatic. It
denounced all forms of repudiation as a national crime, and demanded
the payment of the public debt in the utmost good faith, according to
the letter and the spirit of the law. The resolutions reflected
universal Republican feeling in an impassioned arraignment of President
Johnson. At the same time they commended the spirit of magnanimity
and forbearance with which those who had taken up arms against the
Union were received into fellowship with loyal men, and favored the
removal of all political disabilities as rapidly as was consistent with
public safety.

When the preliminary business of the Convention had been concluded,
John A. Logan, in a vigorous and eloquent speech, presented the name
of General Grant for President. On a call of the roll the nomination
was repeated by the entire Convention without a dissenting v