GREELEY ON THE MAN WHO NOMINATED HIM.

It has already been shown that Frank Blair was the principal intriguer along with Gratz Brown, to log-roll Greeley's nomination through the Convention, along with Brown's. Here is what Greeley said of Blair in the Tribune of May 7, 1864:

"An outright secessionist is wickeder and more dangerous than Frank Blair; but his position seems to us meaner and more glaringly inconsistent than that of Jeff. Davis. He would first use the blacks to subjugate the traitors, and then combine with the traitors to trample on and deny all political rights to the blacks."

When Greeley says of Blair that "his position is meaner and more glaring that that of Jeff. Davis,” he justifies the inference that he Greeley would not go so far to bail Blair as he did to bail Jeff. Davis; and yet, after all this denunciation of the blatant Missourian, and a thousand times as much more, which he heaped upon him after his famous Brodhead letter, and during the campaign of 1868, Mr. Greeley does not hesitate to accept, chiefly from these same traitors, a nomination which he owes mainly to the good offices of this same "mean," disreputable and "glaringly inconsistent" Blair!

BLAIR TO BRODHEAD.

The "Brodhead letter" referred to-written a few days before Blair's nomination by the Democrats at New York for Vice-President, contained this passage, which was not qualified or toned down in the least by the context, nor afterwards explained by Blair:

"The reconstruction policy of the Radicals will be complete before the

next election; the States so long excluded will have been admitted, negro suffrage established and the carpet-baggers installed in their seats in both houses of Congress. There is no possibility of changing the political character of the Senate, even if the Democrats should elect their President and a majority of the popular branch of Congress. We cannot therefore undo the Radical plan of reconstruction by Congressional action; the Senate will continue a bar to its repeal; must we submit to it? How can it be overthrown? It can only be overthrown by the authority of the Executive, who is sworn to maintain the Constitution, and who will fail of his duty if he allows the Constitution to perish under a series of Congressional enactments which are in palpable violation of its fundamental principles.

"If the President elected by the Democracy enforces, or permits others to enforce, these reconstruction acts, the Radicals, by the accession of twenty spurious Senators and fifty Representatives, will control both branches of Congress, and his Administration will be as powerless as the present one of Mr. Johnson.

There is but one way to restore the Government and the Constitution, and that is for the President (Greeley?) to declare these acts null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpation at the South, disperse the carpet-bag State Governments, allow the white people to reorganize their own governments and elect Senators and Representatives."

A PERTINENT QUESTION.

In the Tribune of May 4, 1864, on one of the days when Mr. Greeley felt more like helping the Republican party than he did like beating Lincoln, he wrote these words, which especially the last clause, with names in brackets, altered a trifle, is well suited to the present time:

"Some of us think Slavery might and should have been crowded to the wall much faster and more sternly than it has been," [the trouble with “some of us" this year, however, is of an opposite sort, viz.: That Slavery, in the form of terrorism, has been pushed too hard]; "Supposing," continues Mr. Greeley, “supposing this true; should we make anything by substituting for our present Administration one whereof [Frank Blair, Beauregard, Warmoth, Letcher of Virginia, Sat. Clark, Boss Tweed, the Brooklyn Ring, et id omne genus] are the chief spokesmen and champions ?"

GREELEY ON HIS SOUTHERN SUPPORTERS.

One great end of Greeley's candidacy, as claimed

by his advocates, is to "break the sway of the carpet-baggers" at the South, and to set up the "respectable element" of the Southern population in their place. From this respectable element they expect such support as will enable them to carry most of the Southern States. Here is Greeley's opinion of this "respectable element," after he had been among them in 1871-only a year ago. We extract it from an "H. G." letter in the Tribune, published about the time that Greeley returned from his trip through the South.

"The ancient aristocracy of the South remind me of the Federal SquireInstead of archy of our country after Jefferson's election as President. studying the new situation and seeking to master it, they content themselves with endless and fruitless complainings. They lament the sway of the "carpetbaggers" over their late slaves, but take no effective measures to counteract it. Rogues as some of the "carpet-baggers" are, they are all zealous for the education of the Blacks, while the submerged aristocracy grudge every penny assessed on them for building school-houses and paying teachers as though it were thrown into the sea. The noblest, purest, most intelligent women of New England, who have come down here to teach Black children, are shunned and banned by the aristocracy, as though they were camp followers of Sherman's army, and being thus doomed to associate only with Blacks, and live with them, are actually charged with this as a betrayal of low tastes when it is a dictate of stern necessity."

And more to the same effect.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BALTIMORE CONVENTION.

Its Composition-A Cut and Dried Affair-To Nominate or to Endorse :That is the Question-Organization-"Dixie" for Music-Greeley Swallowed — Likewise the Cincinnati Platform — Delaware, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Remonstrate in Vain-A Sudden Adjournment.

The Baltimore Convention is a short horse, soon curried. The delegates had, nearly all, been instructed to vote for Greeley and Brown, and there was nothing left for them to do but to meet and go through with the form. The only question was

what that form should be-whether to nominate formally or to simply endorse the Cincinnati nominations and platform, appoint an auxiliary committee, and adjourn. The latter policy was urged with great earnestness by the "Liberal" leaders present, but the Democrats proper would not listen to it for a moment. The "endorsing" policy obtained no show at all in the Convention, and the four-year-long efforts of Horace White and others to persuade the Democracy to go out of business were thus brought to naught. The Democrats reasoned that Greeley was a good enough Democrat for them—that recent converts usually proved more zealous in enforcing the party creed than

older members; and that the Democracy, whose platform now was anything to beat Grant, and reverse his policy-a platform to which Greeley heartily subscribed, could afford to hold up its head as high as ever.

THE LIBERAL PLAN SCORNED.

This course prevailed. The convention met at twelve o'clock on the 9th of June, in Ford's Opera House. It was called to order by August Belmont, Chairman of the National Executive Committee, who had been the chief manipulator of the party in Seymour and Blair days-in McClellan and Pendleton days, and so on back. The leaders generally were equally veterans in the service; though some effort had apparently been made to leave out from the published proceedings the names to which odious records are attached.

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

Mr. Belmont, in his opening speech, of course made pathetic allusions to the "Cæsarism and centralization," which, he said, “are undermining the very foundations of our federal system, and are sweeping away the constitutional bulwarks erected by the wisdom of the fathers of the republic. These abuses," said Belmont, "have become so glaring that the wisest and best men of the Republican party have severed themselves from the Radical wing, which is trying to fasten upon the country another four years' reign of corruption, usurpation and despotism, and whatever individual