The strength of Cleveland’s position before the people was pointedly illustrated by his nomination in a convention that was not specially friendly, but that was forced to make him the candidate because of the overwhelming popular Democratic sentiment that demanded it. A year or so before the convention met, he had written a brief and positive letter against the free coinage of silver, and the Democrats of the South and West almost with one voice declared against him at the time, but when the Democratic people faced the conditions presented by the battle of 1892, the masses came to the support of Cleveland and the leaders were compelled to follow. The cheap-money craze had made serious inroads in both of the great parties, and the Republican platform was a weak and awkward straddle of the whole issue, while the Democratic convention had an honest money plank declaring for bimetallism and the free use of gold and silver with the intrinsic value of the dollar to be maintained.
The Democratic Convention at Chicago was presided over by William C. Owens, of Kentucky, as temporary president, and William L. Wilson, of West Virginia, as permanent president. After a protracted and acrimonious discussion that extended the session of the convention of the second day until long after midnight, the ballot for President was finally reached, resulting as follows:
| Grover Cleveland, N. Y. | 617 | ¹⁄₃ |
| David B. Hill, N. Y. | 114 | |
| Horace Boies, Iowa | 103 | |
| Arthur P. Gorman, Md. | 36 | ¹⁄₂ |
| Adlai E. Stevenson, Ill. | 16 | ²⁄₃ |
| John G. Carlisle, Ky. | 14 | |
| Wm. R. Morrison, Ill. | 3 | |
| James E. Campbell, Ohio | 2 | |
| Wm. C. Whitney, N. Y. | 1 | |
| Wm. E. Russell, Mass. | 1 | |
| Robert E. Pattison, Penn. | 1 |
There was an animated contest for Vice-President, and the special friends of Cleveland were united in favor of Isaac P. Gray, of Indiana, but they were defeated in their choice, as they were on several vital points of the platform. Only one ballot was had for Vice-President, resulting as follows:
| Adlai E. Stevenson, Ill. | 402 |
| Isaac P. Gray, Ind. | 344 |
| Allen B. Morse, Mich. | 86 |
| John L. Mitchell, Wis. | 45 |
| Henry Watterson, Ky. | 26 |
| Bourke Cockran, N. Y. | 5 |
| Lambert Tree, Ill. | 1 |
| Horace Boies, Iowa | 1 |
Stevenson had not received the requisite two-thirds, but he so far outstripped the candidate of the Cleveland leaders that they cordially acquiesced, and the nomination of Stevenson was made unanimous. The following platform was adopted after having been amended in open convention, where the tariff plank of the platform was substituted for the more temperate plank reported by the committee, by a vote of 564 to 342.
Section 1. The representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, in national convention assembled, do reaffirm their allegiance to the principles of the party as formulated by Jefferson, and exemplified by the long and illustrious line of his successors in Democratic leadership, from Madison to Cleveland; we believe the public welfare demands that these principles be applied to the conduct of the Federal Government through the accession to power of the party that advocates them; and we solemnly declare that the need of a return to these fundamental principles of a free popular government, based on home rule and individual liberty, was never more urgent than now, when the tendency to centralize all power at the Federal capital has become a menace to the reserved rights of the States that strikes at the very roots of our Government under the Constitution as framed by the fathers of the Republic.
Sec. 2. We warn the people of our common country, jealous for the preservation of their free institutions, that the policy of Federal control of elections to which the Republican party has committed itself is fraught with the greatest dangers, scarcely less momentous than would result from a revolution practically establishing monarchy on the ruins of the Republic. It strikes at the North as well as the South, and injures the colored citizen even more than the white. It means a horde of deputy marshals at every polling-place armed with Federal power, returning boards appointed and controlled by Federal authority, the outrage of the electoral rights of the people in the several States, the subjugation of the colored people to the control of the party in power, and the reviving of race antagonisms now happily abated, of the utmost peril to the safety and happiness of all; a measure deliberately and justly described by a leading Republican Senator as “the most infamous bill that ever crossed the threshold of the Senate.” Such a policy, if sanctioned by law, would mean the dominance of a self-perpetuating oligarchy of office-holders, and the party first intrusted with its machinery could be dislodged from power only by an appeal to the reserved right of the people to resist oppression, which is inherent in all self-governing communities. Two years ago, this revolutionary policy was emphatically condemned by the people at the polls; but in contempt of that verdict, the Republican party has defiantly declared in its latest authoritative utterance that its success in the coming elections will mean the enactment of the Force bill, and the usurpation of despotic control over elections in all the States. Believing that the preservation of republican government in the United States is dependent upon the defeat of this policy of legalized force and fraud, we invite the support of all citizens who desire to see the Constitution maintained in its integrity, with the laws pursuant thereto, which have given our country a hundred years of unexampled prosperity; and we pledge the Democratic party, if it be intrusted with power, not only to the defeat of the Force bill, but also to relentless opposition to the Republican policy of profligate expenditure, which in the short space of two years has squandered an enormous surplus, and emptied an overflowing treasury, after piling new burdens of taxation upon the already overtaxed labor of the country.
Sec. 3. We denounce the Republican protection as a fraud, a robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few. We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the Federal Government has no constitutional power to impose and collect tariff duties, except for the purposes of revenue only, and we demand that the collection of such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of the Government when honestly and economically administered.
We denounce the McKinley Tariff law enacted by the Fifty-first Congress as the culminating atrocity of class legislation; we endorse the efforts made by the Democrats of the present Congress to modify its most oppressive features in the direction of free raw materials and cheaper manufactured goods that enter into general consumption, and we promise its repeal as one of the beneficent results that will follow the action of the people in intrusting power to the Democratic party. Since the McKinley Tariff went into operation, there have been ten reductions of the wages of laboring men to one increase. We deny that there has been any increase of prosperity to the country since that tariff went into operation, and we point to the dulness and distress, the wage reductions and strikes in the iron trade, as the best possible evidence that no such prosperity has resulted from the McKinley act.