On the second day the Committee on Resolutions reported the Cincinnati platform without addition or qualification. There was something grim and grotesque in the now demonstrated purpose of the Democratic Convention to accept the platform which Mr. Greeley had constructed with especial regard for the tender sensibilities of the Liberal Republicans. While the Democrats as a body had persistently opposed emancipation, and regarded it as a great political wrong, the party now resolved to maintain it. Hostile throughout all its ranks to any improvement in the status of the negro, they now determined in favor of his "enfranchisement." Resisting at every step the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, they now resolved to "oppose any re-opening of the questions that have been settled" by the adoption of these great changes in the organic law. With the Southern States dominant in the Convention, their delegates (all former slave-holders and at a later period engaged in rebellion in order to perpetuate slavery) now resolved with docile acquiescence to "recognize the equality of all men before the law; and the duty of the Government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political."

The Confederate leaders, still sore and angry over their failure to break up the Union, now declared that they remembered "with gratitude the heroism and sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic," and that no act of the Democratic party "should ever detract from their justly earned fame, nor withhold the full reward of their patriotism." Hitherto viewing the public debt as the price of their subjugation, they now declared that "the public credit must be sacredly maintained;" and they heartily denounced "repudiation in every form and guise." In their determination to make a complete coalition with the other wing of Mr. Greeley's supporters, the Confederate Democrats determined to accept any test that might be imposed upon them, to endure any humiliation that was needful, to assert and accept any and every inconsistency with their former faith and practice. It is somewhat interesting to compare the platform to which the Democrats assented in 1872 with any they had ever before adopted, or with the record of their senators and representatives in Congress upon all the public questions at issue during the years immediately preceding the Convention.

The report which committed the Democracy to so radical a revolution in its platform of principles met with protest from only an inconsiderable number of the delegates, and was adopted by a vote of 670 to 62. The Convention was now ready for the nominations. It had been plain for some weeks that the Cincinnati ticket would be accepted. The only question was whether the Democratic Convention should formally nominate Greeley and Brown, or whether it should simply indorse them without making them the regular Democratic candidates. It was urged on the one hand that to put the formal seal of Democracy on them might repel some Republican votes which would otherwise be secured. It was answered on the other hand that the passive policy would lose Democratic votes, which were reluctant at the best and could only be held by party claims. There was more danger from the latter source than from the former, and the general sentiment recognized the necessity of stamping the ticket with the highest Democratic authority. There was but one ballot. Mr. Greeley received 686 votes; while 15 from Delaware and New Jersey were cast for James A. Bayard, 21 from Pennsylvania for Jeremiah S. Black, 2 for William S. Groesbeck. For Vice-President Gratz Brown received 713, John W. Stevenson of Kentucky 6, with 13 blank votes.

Mr. Greeley's letter accepting the Democratic nomination appeared a few days later. He frankly stated that the Democrats had expected and would have preferred a different nomination at Cincinnati, and that they accepted him only because the matter was beyond their control. He expressed his personal satisfaction at the endorsement of the Cincinnati platform, and affected to regard this act as the obliteration of all differences. The only other point of the letter was an argument for universal amnesty. This was the one doctrine upon which the parties to the alliance could most readily coalesce, and Mr. Greeley gave it singular prominence, as if confident that it was the surest way of winning Democratic support. He emphasized his position by referring to the case of Mr. Vance, who had just been denied his seat as Senator from North Carolina. Mr. Greeley made this case the chief theme of his letter, and insisted that the policy which excluded the chosen representative from a State, whoever he might be, was incompatible with peace and good will throughout the Union.(1)

With Grant and Greeley fairly in the field, the country entered upon a remarkable canvass. At the beginning of the picturesque and emotional "log cabin canvass of 1840," Mr. Van Buren, with his keen insight into popular movements, had said, in somewhat mixed metaphor, that it would be "either a farce or a tornado." The present canvass gave promise on different grounds of similar alternatives. General Grant had been tried, and with him the country knew what to expect. Mr. Greeley had not been tried, and though the best known man in his own field of journalism, he was the least known and most doubted in the field of Governmental administration. No other candidate could have presented such an antithesis of strength and of weakness. He was the ablest polemic this country has ever produced. His command of strong, idiomatic, controversial English was unrivaled. His faculty of lucid statement and compact reasoning has never been surpassed. Without the graces of fancy or the arts of rhetoric, he was incomparable in direct, pungent, forceful discussion. A keen observer and an omnivorous reader, he had acquired an immense fund of varied knowledge, and he marshaled facts with singular skill and aptness.

In an era remarkable for strong editors in the New-York Press,—embracing Raymond of the Times, the elder Bennett of the Herald, Watson Webb of the Courier-Enquirer, William Cullen Bryant of the Evening Post, with Thurlow Weed and Edwin Crosswell in the rival journals at Albany,—Mr. Greeley easily surpassed them all. His mind was original, creative, incessantly active. His industry was as unwearying as his fertility was inexhaustible. Great as was his intellectual power, his chief strength came from the depth and earnestness of his moral convictions. In the long and arduous battle against the aggressions of Slavery, he had been sleepless and untiring in rousing and quickening the public conscience. He was keenly alive to the distinctions of right and wrong, and his philanthropy responded to every call of humanity. His sympathies were equally touched by the sufferings of the famine-stricken Irish and by the wrongs of the plundered Indians. Next to Henry Clay, whose ardent disciple he was, he had done more than any other man to educate his countrymen in the American system of protection to home industry. He had on all occasions zealously defended the rights of labor; he had waged unsparing war on the evils of intemperance; he had made himself an oracle with the American farmers; and his influence was even more potent in the remote prairie homes than within the shadow of Printing-House Square. With his dogmatic earnestness, his extraordinary mental qualities, his moral power, and his quick sympathy with the instincts and impulses of the masses, he was in a peculiar sense the Tribune of the people. In any reckoning of the personal forces of the century, Horace Greeley must be counted among the foremost—intellectually and morally.

When he left the fields of labor in which he had become illustrious, to pass the ordeal of a Presidential candidate, the opposite and weaker sides of his character and career were brought into view. He was headstrong, impulsive, and opinionated. If he had the strength of a giant in battle, he lacked the wisdom of the sage in council. If he was irresistible in his own appropriate sphere of moral and economic discussion, he was uncertain and unstable when he ventured beyond its limits. He was a powerful agitator and a matchless leader of debate, rather than a master of government. Those who most admired his honesty, courage, and power in the realm of his true greatness, most distrusted his fitness to hold the reins of administration. He had in critical periods evinced a want both of firmness and of sagacity. When the Southern States were on the eve of secession and the temper of the country was on trial, he had, though with honest intentions, shown signs of irresolution and vacillation. When he was betrayed into the ill-advised and abortive peace negotiations with Southern commissioners at Niagara, he had displayed the lack of tact and penetration which made the people doubt the solidity and coolness of his judgment. His methods of dealing with the most intricate problems of finance seemed experimental and rash. The sensitive interests of business shrank from his visionary theories and his dangerous empiricism. His earlier affiliation with novel and doubtful social schemes had laid him open to the reproach of being called a man of isms.

Mr. Greeley had moreover weakened himself by showing a singular thirst for public office. It is strange that one who held a commanding station, and who wielded an unequaled influence, should have been ambitious for the smaller honors of public life. But Mr. Greeley had craved even minor offices, from which he could have derive no distinction, and, in his own phrase, had dissolved the firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley because, as he conceived, his claims to official promotion were not fairly recognized. This known aspiration added to the reasons which discredited his unnatural alliance with the Democracy. His personal characteristics, always marked, were exaggerated and distorted in the portraitures drawn by his adversaries. All adverse considerations were brought to bear with irresistible effect as the canvass proceeded, and his splendid services and undeniable greatness could not weigh in the scale against the political elements and personal disqualifications with which his Presidential candidacy was identified.

The political agitation became general in the country as early as July. Senator Conkling inaugurated the Grant campaign in New York with an elaborate and comprehensive review of the personal and public issues on trial. Senator Sherman and other leading speakers took the field with equal promptness. On the opposite side, Senator Sumner, who had sought in May to challenge and prevent the renomination of General Grant by concentrating in one massive broadside all that could be suggested against him, now appeared in a public letter advising the colored people to vote for Greeley. Mr. Blaine replied in a letter pointing out that Mr. Greeley, in denying the power of the General Government to interpose, had committed himself to a policy which left the colored people without protection.(2)

The September elections had ordinarily given the earliest indication in Presidential campaigns; but circumstances conspired this year to make the North-Carolina election, which was held on the 1st of August, the preliminary test of popular feeling. The earliest returns from North Carolina, coming from the eastern part of the State, were favorable to the partisans of Mr. Greeley. They claimed a decided victory, and were highly elated. The returns from the Western and mountain counties, which were not all received for several days, reversed the first reports, and established a Republican success. This change produced a re-action, and set the tide in the opposite direction. From this hour the popular current was clearly with the Republicans. The September elections in Vermont and Maine resulted in more than the average Republican majorities, and demonstrated that Mr. Greeley's candidacy had not broken the lines of the party. Early in that month a body of Democrats, who declined to accept Mr. Greeley, and who called themselves "Straightouts," held a convention at Louisville, and nominated Charles O'Connor for President and John Quincy Adams for Vice-President. The ticket received a small number of votes in many States, but did not become an important factor in the National struggle.