at Indianapolis on May 17, 1876, with 240 delegates
representing eighteen States. Ignatius Donnelly, who had apparently
changed his mind on the currency question since 1873, was the temporary
president. The platform contained the usual endorsement of a circulating
medium composed of legal-tender notes interconvertible with bonds but
gave first place to a demand for "the immediate and unconditional repeal
of the specie-resumption act." This measure, passed by Congress
in January, 1875, had fixed January 1, 1879, as the date when the
Government would redeem greenbacks at their face value in coin. Although
the act made provision for the permanent retirement of only a part
of the greenbacks from circulation, the new party denounced it as a
"suicidal and destructive policy of contraction." Another plank in the
platform, and one of special interest in view of the later free silver
agitation, was a protest against the sale of bonds for the purpose of
purchasing silver to be substituted for the fractional currency of
war times. This measure, it was asserted, "although well calculated to
enrich owners of silver mines will still further oppress, in taxation,
an already overburdened people."

There was a strong movement in the convention for the nomination
of David Davis for the presidency, but this seems to have met with
opposition from Eastern delegates who remembered his desertion of
the National Labor Reform party in 1872. Peter Cooper of New York was
finally selected as the candidate. He was a philanthropist rather than
a politician and was now eighty-five years old. Having made a large
fortune as a pioneer in the manufacture of iron, he left his business
cares to other members of his family and devoted himself to the
education and elevation of the working classes. His principal
contribution to this cause was the endowment of the famous Cooper Union
in New York, where several thousand persons, mostly mechanics, attended
classes in a variety of technical and educational subjects and enjoyed
the privileges of a free library and reading room. When notified of his
nomination, Cooper at first expressed the hope that one or both of
the old parties might adopt such currency planks as would make the new
movement unnecessary. Later he accepted unconditionally but took no
active part in the campaign.

The Greenback movement at first made but slow progress in the various
States. In Indiana and Illinois the existing independent organiza