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The National Convention |
| Delegates arriving in Chicago in June headed not for P.T. Barnum’s circus, which was in town, but for the even greater show that started on June 2 at the Interstate Exhibition Building on Michigan Avenue. |
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| From the first gavel, it was evident that the key
fight would be over the unit rule. With it, Grant would win. Without it,
he commanded just over 300 votes, short of the 379 needed for the
nomination. Blaine’s forces were almost as strong, with about 280
votes at their command. Cameron, precariously installed as chairman of
the national committee, planned to apply the unit rule in the convention’s
first vote, which was to elect a temporary convention chairman. As
Harrison described, if that happened, the temporary and then the
permanent chairman could apply it to subsequent votes. It would the key to Grant’s nomination. |
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| On the eve of this turning point, The Chicago
Tribune, which was friendly to Blaine, called the unit rule “unrepublican”
because “it would be the application of the pernicious Democratic
doctrine of state-sovereignty to the government of a party which is
based primarily upon the negation of that doctrine.” The opinion was
pointedly ironic, considering Grant’s record. Given the intensity of the opposition, Conkling saw no choice but to work out a compromise with Blaine’s forces: Conkling would select a convention chairman, but the choice would be from a short list supplied by Blaine’s backers. Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts was named |
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Hoar, a member of the party’s Half-Breed faction
who had a well-earned reputation for fairness, ruled against applying
the unit rule to a committee report, enabling the delegates ultimately
to decide the issue for themselves. Meanwhile, the convention’s rules
committee–James A. Garfield was its chairman–adopted a report that
recommended that the rule be thrown out. Conkling took the question to
the floor, where it was defeated, shaking loose about 60 votes of
defectors in the New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois delegations. Grant
was left with 304 of the 379 he needed for the nomination. On the first ballot, Grant received 178, or 58.5 percent, of his votes from Southern and border states; 37 percent from Northern states (almost all of these, 107 out of 113 votes, from the Triumvirate’s New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois); and a handful, 13, from Western states. Incidentally, Grant’s highest vote total during the 36 ballots was 313, or 82.5 percent of the total needed to win. |
| Blaine, on the other hand, received most of his votes from Northern delegations (185, or 67 percent of his total on the first ballot); 15.7 percent from Southern and Border states; and 15.2 percent from the West. Blaine gained the most from the defeat of the unit rule. His supporters cracked the solid Grant delegations delivered to Chicago by the Triumvirate. Twenty-three Pennsylvania votes switched from Grant to Blaine. Seventeen more did so in the New York delegation and 10 more in Illinois. |
| With the unit rule defeated, Conkling tried another
tack, pushing for a loyalty oath resolution that, if adopted, would
pledge every delegate’s support to whoever was the nominee. He pushed
the resolution by reminding the convention that anti-Grant Republicans
had bolted the party when the general was nominated in 1872. The
convention overwhelmingly passed the resolution. Conkling tried to press
his advantage by moving to expel the only three delegates to vote
against it, but he miscalculated. The convention took the side of the
three.
His supporters at the convention described Grant in various ways. Before his ouster as chair, Cameron had opened the convention by alluding to Grant’s world tour. He said that if the United States were to take the lead in world trade, the party needed “men who will command the respect of the civilized world. Our country has grown so rapidly…that we have attained the position as one of the leading powers of the world. We can no longer be satisfied with our isolation.” Cameron’s view was a precursor to the internationalism that historians of Republican presidencies commonly date to about 20 years later, during the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt era. |
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| Conkling pulled out all the stops in his eloquent,
impassioned nomination speech for Grant, speaking while standing atop a
table near the rostrum. Conkling conjured up the Civil War and then went
on the attack, in part by alluding to the fact that Blaine had a special
telegraph wire run from the convention hall to his home to follow the
proceedings. (That implied Blaine was too ambitious.) On another issue,
Conkling remarked, “Nobody now is really disquieted by a third term
except those hopelessly longing for a first term, and their dupes and
coadjutors.” He alluded to labor unrest and civil rights violations in
the south, and said that only the election of Grant would determine
whether the country would “be Republican or Cossack.” He triggered a
wild, 25-minute demonstration for the general.
See the related article |
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Grant kept tabs on the Chicago convention in June 1880 via a telegraph hook-up at the home of a friend in the ex-president's hometown of Galena, Illinois. Pictured here is Grant’s house. |
Grant, keeping tabs on the proceedings from his
hometown of Galena via a telegraph line in a friend’s office, told his
son Buck, “I’m afraid I may be nominated.”
The balloting for the presidential nomination
finally got under way, revealing a deadlock that continued for 35
ballots. Grant received as much as 313 votes of the 379 he needed. |
| Grant turned down another pivotal opportunity,
according his son. Jesse Grant wrote in his 1925 memoirs that Logan
brought a prospective deal to Grant that could have brought him the
nomination: an agreement that if elected, Grant would appoint President
Hayes’ Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, the aforementioned
candidate for president, as his own treasury secretary in exchange for
the votes of Sherman’s 90 delegates.
Although Grant said that was his intention anyway, he categorically refused, saying “’Not to be President of the United States would I consent that a bargain should be made,’” according to Jesse. The account is apocryphal and is not known to be corroborated beyond Jesse’s account. Voting continued until, on the 36th ballot, Blaine’s delegates made the final break toward compromise “dark horse” candidate Garfield, who was nominated. A Grant ally from New York, Chester A. Arthur, was nominated as vice-president. |
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“It would be idle to tell you of my
disappointment at Chicago. The blunder is monumental….Had you been
nominated, the election would have ‘whistled itself,’” Conkling
wrote to Grant later that month.
Nevertheless, Grant campaigned for the Republican ticket in the fall; and Garfield was narrowly elected. Interestingly enough, it was not until 1880 that the two-term president made his first presidential campaign speech . . . and it was not for himself, but for Garfield. |
| In 1892, Democrat Grover Cleveland became the first
presidential candidate to win a third nomination by a major party, but
was only elected twice. It would take 60 years for a president to
succeed where Grant had not: in 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected
for the third time. Barring an unlikely repeal of the 22nd Amendment,
Roosevelt will remain the only president to serve more than two terms. |
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| But Grant tested the third-term waters first, and 127 years later, the campaign on his behalf in 1880 offers a fascinating glimpse at what might have been. |
