Walter B. Scates, ex-judge of the supreme court of Illinois, wrote: "You saved the Republican party in the impeachment trial and I now hope you may save the country from corruption, pillage, high tax, class legislation, and central despotism."
Jesse K. Dubois, auditor of Illinois, perhaps the most sagacious and experienced politician in the state, wrote, after signing the call for the Cincinnati Convention: "With you as our candidate I would wager we carry this state anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 majority as against Grant."
On February 23, Trumbull made a speech in the Senate defending the Missouri Convention's platform against the objections of Senator Morton, who had stigmatized it as a Democratic movement, because that party in Connecticut had endorsed it in their state convention. In this speech Trumbull took up each resolution in the platform and showed that it was either in accord with Republican doctrine as affirmed in the national platforms of the party, or had been commended by President Grant in official messages to Congress. On the subject of civil service reform, to promote which Grant had appointed the George William Curtis Commission, he said:
The great evil of our civil service system grows out of the manner of making appointments and renewals and the use which is made of the patronage, treating it as mere party spoils. Often the patronage is used for purposes not rising to the dignity of even party purposes, but by certain individuals for individual and personal ends. It would be bad enough if the patronage were used as mere spoils for party, but it is infinitely worse than that under our present system.
The Senator from Indiana, in his speech the other day, undertook to create the impression that I was opposed to civil service reform. Why, sir, I offered the very bill in this body which became a law under which the Civil Service Commission was organized. I introduced bills here years ago in favor of a reform in the civil service and especially to break up the running of members of Congress to the departments begging for offices. In my judgment there is nothing more disreputable, or which interferes more with the proper discharge of public duty, than this hanging around the skirts of power begging for offices for friends.
The growth of the Cincinnati movement was signalized by a meeting at the Cooper Union in New York City on the evening of April 12, of which the Nation said: "We believe that it was the most densely packed meeting which ever met there. All approach within fifty yards of the entrance was next to impossible in the early part of the evening, so great was the crowd in the street." Both Trumbull and Schurz spoke here to enthusiastic hearers.
Among the letters received by Trumbull prior to the convention the most thoughtful and weighty was the following written by Governor John M. Palmer, of Illinois:
Springfield, April 13, 1872.
I have felt considerable apprehension in regard to the Cincinnati movement for the reason that I have doubted the ability of men of the right stamp to control the action of the proposed convention, and I have believed that it would be better to endure the abuses and weaknesses and follies of Grant's Administration for another four years than to crystallize them by the mistake of making a bad nomination of his successor. Grant is an evil that we can endure if we retain the right to point out his faults in principle and practice, but if some ancient Federalist should be elected to succeed him what is now usurpation would be accepted by the people as the proper theory of the government. But if the Cincinnati Convention nominates a statesman I will support him, and you if you are selected as the candidate.
John M. Palmer.
Among the names mentioned as desirable candidates that of Charles Francis Adams was the most prominent. After him came Lyman Trumbull, Horace Greeley, David Davis, B. Gratz Brown, and Andrew G. Curtin. Adams had been Minister to Great Britain during the war, and was now one of the arbitrators of the Geneva Tribunal under the Alabama Claims Treaty. He had written a letter to David A. Wells which showed that he did not desire the nomination, was perfectly indifferent to it, but that if it were given to him without pledges of any kind he would not refuse. He said among other things:
If the call upon me were an unequivocal one based upon confidence in my character earned in public life, and a belief that I would carry out in practice the principles I professed, then indeed would come a test of my courage in an emergency; but if I am to be negotiated for, and have assurances given that I am honest, you will be so kind as to draw me out of that crowd.