d at Cooper Institute.[1356] The Fenton
leaders, conspicuously posted on the platform, indicated neither a
real love of reform nor an absence of office-seekers, but the presence
among the vice-presidents of E.L. Godkin of the _Nation_ and Parke
Godwin of the _Post_ removed all doubt as to the sincere desire of
some of those present to replace Grant with a President who would
discourage the use of patronage by enforcing civil service reform, and
encourage good government in the South by enacting universal amnesty.
To Schurz's charge that the national Republican convention would be
made up of office-holders, Oliver P. Morton declared, three days later
in the same hall, that there would be more office-seekers at
Cincinnati than office-holders at Philadelphia.[1357]

[Footnote 1355: _Ibid._, March 30, 1872.]

[Footnote 1356: New York _Tribune_, April 14, 1872.]

[Footnote 1357: Dudley Foulke, _Life of Morton_, Vol. 2, p. 255.]

The managers of the Liberal Republican movement preferred Charles
Francis Adams for President. Adams' public life encouraged the belief
that he would practise his professed principles, and although isolated
from all political associations it was thought his brilliant
championship of the North during the temporising of the English
government would make his nomination welcome. David Davis and Lyman
Trumbull of Illinois were likewise acceptable, and Salmon P. Chase had
his admirers. Greeley's availability was also talked of. His signature
to the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis, releasing the ex-president of the
Confederacy from prison, attracted attention to his presidential
ambition, while his loud declaration for universal amnesty opened the
way for a tour of the South. At a brilliant reception in Union Square,
given after his return, he described the carpet-bagger as "a worthless
adventurer whom the Southern States hate and ought to hate," likening
him to the New York legislator "who goes to Albany nominally to
legislate, but really to plunder and steal."[1358] His excessive zeal
for Democratic support led to the intimation that he had economised
his epithets in criticising the Tweed ring.[1359] As early as February,
Nast, with his usual foresight, pictured "H.G., the editor" offering
the nomination to "H.G., the farmer," who, rejoicing in the name of
Cincinnatus, had turned from the plough toward the dome of the Capitol
in the distance.[1360] To the charge that he was a candidate for
President, Gre