on votes, James A. Bayard received 6
from Delaware and 9 from New Jersey; Jeremiah S. Black 21 from
Pennsylvania; William S. Groesbeck 2 from Ohio. There were 8 blanks.]

[Footnote 1379: New York _Tribune_, July 11, 1872.]

[Footnote 1380: July 11.]

[Footnote 1381: Century Dictionary.]

CHAPTER XXIII

DEFEAT AND DEATH OF GREELEY

1872

The Republicans of New York welcomed the outcome of the Democratic
national convention. There was a time in its preliminary stages when
the Liberal movement, blending principle and resentment, had assumed
alarming proportions. Discontent with the Administration, stimulated
by powerful journals, seemed to permeate the whole Republican party,
and the haste of prominent men to declare themselves Liberals,
recalling the unhappy division in the last State convention and the
consequent falling off in the Republican vote, added to the
solicitude. Moreover, the readiness of the Democrats to approve the
principles of the Missouri reformers suggested a coalition far more
formidable than the Philadelphia schism of 1866. That movement was to
resist untried Reconstruction, while the Missouri division was an
organised protest against practices in the North as well as in the
South which had become intolerable to men in all parties. Gradually,
however, the Republican revolt in New York disclosed limitations which
the slim attendance at Cincinnati accentuated. Several congressional
districts had been wholly unrepresented, and few prominent men had
appeared at Cincinnati other than free-traders and Fenton leaders.
Such an exhibition of weakness had an exhilarating effect upon
Republicans, who received the nomination of Greeley with derision.

In this frame of mind the friends of the Administration, meeting in
State convention at Elmira on May 15, sent a delegation to
Philadelphia, headed by the venerable Gerrit Smith, which boasted that
it was without an office-holder. Three weeks later the Republican
national convention, amidst great enthusiasm, unanimously renominated
Grant for President. A single ballot sufficed also for the selection
of Henry Wilson of Massachusetts for Vice-President.[1382] The
platform, to offset the Liberals' arraignment, favoured civil service
reform, the abolition of the franking privilege, the prohibition of
further land grants to corporations, an increase in pensions, and "the
suppression of violent and treasonable organisations" in the South.

[Footnote 138