The spirit of the convention was good, and there seemed a willing response to this portion of the opening prayer:
"By Thy grace, give to them a spirit of concord, that harmony may prevail in their counsels; a spirit of wisdom that may discern and use the right means to promote the end for which they are convened; a spirit of patriotism, that the prosperity of the Nation may overshadow all personal or sectional desires; a spirit of courage, that they may be faithful to the deepest convictions of duty."
Ex-Governor Morgan, of New York, Chairman of the National Executive Committee, in his opening address, pertinently said:
"Resumption accomplished, then, in all human probability, will follow ten or fifteen years of prosperity, equal to that of any former period, perhaps greater than the country has yet seen. If you will, in addition, put a plank in your platform, declaring for such an amendment of the constitution as will extend the presidential office to six years, and make the incumbent ineligible for re-election, you will deserve the gratitude of the American people."
The Hon. Theodore M. Pomeroy, Temporary Chairman, forcibly declared:
"No, gentlemen, the late war was not a mere prize-fight for National supremacy. It was the outgrowth of the conflict of irreconcilable moral, social, and political forces. Democracy had its lot with the moral, social, and political forces of the cause which was lost; the Republican party with those which triumphed and survived. The preservation of the results of that victory devolves upon us here and now. Democracy has no traditions of the past, no impulses of the present, no aspirations for the future, fitting it for this task. The reaction of 1874 has already spent itself in a vain effort to realize the situation. It has simply demonstrated that no change in the machinery of the government can be had outside of the Republican party, without drawing with it a practical nullification of the great work of reconstruction, financial chaos, and administrative revolution. The present House of Representatives has succeeded in nothing except the development of its own incapacity."
The additional speeches delivered on the first day (which was devoted to organization) were by Senator Logan, General Joseph R. Hawley, Ex-Governor Noyes, Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, Ex-Governor Wm. A. Howard, of Michigan, and Fred. Douglass.
Mr. Douglass was vociferously applauded, when he said:
"The thing, however, in which I feel the deepest interest, and the thing in which I believe this country feels the deepest interest, is that the principles involved in the contest which carried your sons and brothers to the battle-field, which draped our Northern churches with the weeds of mourning, and filled our towns and our cities with mere stumps of men—armless, legless, maimed, and mutilated—the thing for which you poured out your blood and piled a debt for after-coming generations higher than a mountain of gold, to weigh down the necks of your children and your children's children—I say those principles, those principles involved in that tremendous contest, are to be dearer to the American people in the great political struggle now upon them than any other principles we have."
The most significant event of the first day's proceedings was the reading from the platform, by George William Curtis, of the outspoken address of the Republican Reform Club of the city of New York.