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 g O u t a bou t
Fin din
C o a l , O i l , a n d
Na tur al G as

Matt Doeden
Copyright © 2015 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written
permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in
an acknowledged review.
Lerner Publications Company
A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
241 First Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA
For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doeden, Matt.
Finding out about coal, oil, and natural gas / by Matt Doeden.
pages cm — (Searchlight books. What are energy sources?)
Includes index.
ISBN 978–1–4677–3654–1 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978–1–4677–4637–3 (eBook)
Juvenile literature. 4.literature.
1. Coal—Juvenile Fossil fuels—Juvenile literature. I.literature.
2. Petroleum—Juvenile Title. 3. Natural gas—
TP325.D595 2015
553.2—dc23 2013041698

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 – BP – 7/15/14
 Contents
Chapter 1

COAL, OIL,
AND NATURAL
GAS . . . page 4
Chapter 2

TURNING FUEL
INTO ENERGY . . . page 12
Chapter 3

THE PROS AND CONS

OF FOSSIL FUELS . . . page 24
Chapter 4

THE FUTURE OF FOSSIL FUELS . . . page 34

Glossary • 38
Learn More about Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas • 39
Index • 40
 Chapter 1
COAL, OIL, AND
NATURAL GAS

Flip on a light
switch. Ride in a
car or a truck. Take
a trip on a train. Or
just turn up the heat
in your home. What do
all these activities have
in common? They require
energy.
Riding in a car requires
energy. What is
another activity that
requires energy?
 But where does the energy come from? Odds are
that it comes from coal, oil, or natural gas. These three
fossil fuels have provided the world with most of its
energy for hundreds of years.
Train cars such as these
carry coal to power plants.
 Alternatives to fossil fuels include wind energy.
The machines below, called wind turbines,
turn energy from wind into electricity.

Alternative energy sources are on the rise. These

include solar and wind power. But fossil fuels remain the
backbone of the world’s energy supply.
What Is a Fossil Fuel?
Most fossil fuels formed around 300 million years ago.
This was during a time called the Carboniferous Period.
Earth was rich with life at the time. As plants and
animals died, many sank beneath swamps or oceans.
Eventually they formed a spongy material called peat.

Peat forms when trees and other living

things die and break down in wetlands.
 The peat pictured here is just
like the peat that became
fossil
fuels over millions of years.

Over millions of
years, sand, mud, and
rock settled on top of
the peat. As the peat
sunk lower, it came
across high pressures
and temperatures.
Depending on its
location, peat formed
from different types
animals. It also encountered different
of deadpressures
plants andand
temperatures. Depending on these conditions, the peat
eventually formed coal (a solid), oil (a liquid), or natural gas.
 Fossil fuels are made mostly of hydrocarbons.
Hydrocarbons are energy-rich compounds made of
hydrogen and carbon. When fossil fuels burn, the
hydrocarbon bonds break. This releases lots of energy.
We use this energy to power cars, heat our homes, and
make electricity.

The engine in this car burns

gasoline and turns it into the
energy the car needs to move.
Where Are Fossil Fuels Found?
Most fossil fuels are found underground. They’re still
buried by all of that rock and dirt. Many deposits of oil
and natural gas sit beneath oceans. Or they are in places
where oceans once stood. That’s because oceans are
rich in small plants called algae. These tiny plants made
up most of the material that created oil and natural gas.

Oil and natural gas tend

to form under water.
 The remains of
swampy, forested land
helped form coal.

The opposite is
true for coal. Most
coal formed under
solid ground rather
than under oceans.
That’s because
coal formed mostly
from dead trees
and plants. So
coal deposits are
found underneath
land where large,
swampy forests
once stood.
 Chapter 2
TURNING FUEL
INTO ENERGY

Turning fossil fuels into

easily used energy is a
long process. Scientists
must first find the
deposits. The fuels must
be collected and refined.
Then they’re ready to be
burned for their energy.

A scientist searches for

coal deposits. What is the
next step to turn a fossil
fuel into usable energy?
Collecting Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas
Each fossil fuel is collected in a slightly different way.
Coal is usually mined using two main methods. They
are surface mining and underground mining.

Coal mining is hard and

dirty work.
 Trucks collect coal at
a surface mine.

Surface mining is useful when coal is near the surface.

Miners dig holes and place explosives into them. The
explosives blow the rock and soil off the coal. Then
miners collect it.
 Underground mining is used when coal deposits are
deep. Miners dig tunnels hundreds or even thousands of
feet underground. They dig out the coal. Machines called
conveyor belts carry it to the surface.

Miners use machines

that have special blades
to break up the coal.
 Most oil is
collected by drilling
and pumping.
Geologists find an
oil deposit. Then a
machine called an
oil rig drills a hole
down to it. Workers
place a steel pipe
in the hole. At first,
pressure causes
the oil to spurt out
of the pipe. When
the pressure drops,
pumps bring the oil
to the surface. The
oil that comes out of
Oil rigs can be built on
land and over water the ground is called
crude oil.
 The process is similar for natural gas. Geologists find
deposits. Workers drill down to the gas to create a well.
They bring the natural gas to the surface through pipes.

Workers drill pipes into the

ground to collect natural gas.
 People used to burn
off natural gas. Now
they sell it as fuel.

Oil and natural gas often form together. So a lot of

natural gas comes from the same deposits as oil. They
can be collected side by side. Years ago, people burned
off the natural gas as a waste product. But they soon
learned that it was a valuable fuel.
New Collection Methods
In recent decades, scientists have found new sources of
oil and natural gas. Shale is a rock that can be rich with
types of oil and natural gas. Miners collect the rock.
Then they bake the shale at very high temperatures.
This forces the oil out of the rocks. This oil is very similar
to crude oil. Shale is baked at high
temperatures to force the oil out.
 Another method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,
has also become popular. Workers drill wells deep
underground. Then they pump water, sand, and chemicals
into them. These materials cause shale that is deep
underground to fracture, or break. This releases oil and gas.
Workers pump these fuels to the surface to be collected.
 Refining
Most coal is ready to
be burned from the
time it is mined. But
oil and natural gas
aren’t quite ready to
be used straight out
of the ground.

Oil and natural gas need

to go to a refinery before
they can be used as fuel.
 Crude oil is refined into
gasoline used in cars.

Crude oil is a mixture of many hydrocarbons. Crude

oil goes to a refinery. There, machines separate the
hydrocarbons. Some of them become gasoline. Others
become heating oil or motor oil. Still others are used to
make materials such as plastics.
 Natural gas also needs some processing. Raw
natural gas includes the gases methane, propane, and
butane. A natural gas processing plant separates these
substances. Then the
methane is ready to be
piped into homes for
heating and cooking.
Meanwhile, gases such
as butane and propane
are also useful fuels.

Natural gas doesn’t have a

smell, so an odor is added
to it as a safety precaution.
Natural gas is dangerous if
it leaks into a building.
 Chapter 3
THE PROS AND CONS
OF FOSSIL FUELS

People have been

burning fossil fuels
for centuries. Fossil
fuels are plentiful. They
are reliable and easy to
use. Advances in science
and technology help us find
new sources of fossil fuels.
They also give us better
ways to collect them.
This plant burns coal for energy. What is one
advantage of coal and other fossil fuels?
 These people speak out against
coal-fired power plants.

But fossil fuels may not be a good long-term solution to

our energy needs. The debate over their future seems to
grow and grow.
Supply
Fossil fuels are a nonrenewable resource. Once they are
burned, they are gone. So while Earth still has lots of
them, the supply keeps decreasing. We can’t just keep
burning them forever.

This oil rig has been abandoned

because it has pumped up all
the oil it can reach.
 Many people
are looking
for alternative
energy sources.
Renewable
resources such
as solar power,
wind power, and
hydropower won’t
run out as long as
the sun shines.

Hydropower uses a river’s

energy to create electricity.
The Environment
Fossil fuels are hard on the environment. Coal mines
scar the ground. Oil spills in the ocean harm and even
kill fish, birds, and other sea life. And burning fossil fuels
creates a lot of pollution.

This sea otter is covered in oil from a spill.

The oil prevents the otter from maintaining
its body temperature and can kill it.
 Smog is so severe in some cities
that people have to wear face
masks when they go outside.

Many large cities sit under a haze of smog. The smog

is pollution from the gasoline being burned by millions
of cars and trucks. Coal-burning power plants also
contribute to smog.
 Most coal is laced with toxic substances. Some
of these harmful substances are released into the
atmosphere when coal is burned.

Coal-fired power plants

contribute to air pollution.
 These protesters are
speaking out against fracking
because they believe it
pollutes water supplies.

Newer collection
methods such
as fracking can
also damage the
environment. People
are worried that the
chemicals used in
fracking will seep
into water supplies.
been found
Fracking hastoeven
cause small earthquakes. And the long-
term environmental effects of fracking are still unknown.
Climate Change
When fossil fuels are burned, they release lots of carbon
dioxide. Scientists warn that releasing a lot of this gas
into the atmosphere can cause Earth’s climate to change.
Global climate change could have terrible effects. Already
it is causing ice at the poles to melt and the ocean levels
to rise. Climate change could alter weather patterns and
disrupt food supplies. And it may even lead to stronger,
deadlier storms. Global climate change is
melting the polar ice caps.
 Solar panels produce
energy only when
the sun is up.

But people argue

that other energy
sources are just not
as good. Alternative
energy sources aren’t
as reliable. The wind
does not always blow.
We can’t use the sun’s
energy at night. But
burns.
a lump That’s
of coal why many people believe fossil fuels will
always
continue to be our best source of energy for a long time.
 Chapter 4
THE FUTURE OF
FOSSIL FUELS

Fossil fuels aren’t

going away anytime
soon. Alternative energy
sources are becoming
more popular. But they
are not ready to replace
fossil fuels altogether. Until
they are, coal, oil, and natural
gas will remain a key part of
the world’s energy supply.
Furnaces that burn natural
gas heat many homes. What
is one drawback of fossil
fuels such as natural gas?
 But supplies of fossil fuels are dwindling. The fuels
aren’t as easy to get to as they once were. Deep-sea oil
rigs have to drill in deeper, more dangerous waters. As
fossil fuels become harder to find, renewable energy will
become more and more important.

Deep-sea oil rigs often need to drill in

deeper, more dangerous waters to get oil.
Conservation
Using renewable energy is great. But it’s not always
possible. So we can all help reduce the amount of fossil
fuels we use. It’s a simple matter of conserving energy.

Biking instead of
riding in a car is a
good way to reduce
fossil fuel use.
 Using reusable
grocery bags is just
How do you do one way you can
use less energy.
it? There are many
ways. Make sure
not to leave lights
on when you’re not
in the room. Turn
off televisions and
computers when
you’re not using
them. Walk to the
park instead of
getting a ride in the
car. Use reusable
grocery bags
instead of plastic
bags.
can. It Recycle
takes a lot less energy to recycle materials than it
everything
does to make thatthem
you new. Every little bit helps.
Glossary
algae: small plants that do not have roots or stems and that grow
mainly in water
alternative energy source: a source of energy other than
traditional fossil fuels
crude oil: the oil that comes out of the ground and is a mixture of
many different hydrocarbons
fossil fuel: a fuel such as coal, natural gas, or oil that was formed
over millions of years from the remains of dead plants and animals
hydrocarbon: a compound made of only hydrogen and carbon
nonrenewable: not able to be replenished. Once a nonrenewable
form of energy is gone, it is used up for good.
peat: a material composed mainly of decaying plant matter
refine: to remove unwanted elements from a substance
reliable: offering consistently good performance
renewable: able to be replenished over time
shale: a type of rock often rich in oil and natural gas
Learn More about Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas
Books
Chambers, Catherine. Energy in Crisis. New York: Crabtree, 2010.
Learn about the energy crisis and concerns about the world’s future
energy supply. The book also discusses climate change and possible
energy solutions for the future.
Fridell, Ron. Earth-Friendly Energy. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications,
2009. Explore alternative energy sources, such as hydropower, wind,
and solar, and how these energy sources may power our future.
Goodman, Polly. Understanding Fossil Fuels. New York: Gareth Stevens,
2011. This title examines the history, the mining, the current use, and
the future of fossil fuels.
Hansen, Amy S. Fossil Fuels: Buried in the Earth. New York: PowerKids
Press, 2010. This title looks at every stage of fossil fuels, from
formation through mining and use. Readers will also learn the
dangers of fossil fuels and about future alternatives.

Websites
EcoKids—Energy
http://www.ecokids.ca/pub/eco_info/topics/energy/intro/index.cfm
Learn more about energy, how we get it, and how we use it with
simple text, quizzes, and games.
Energy Kids—Nonrenewable Energy Sources
http://www.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=nonrenewable_home-basics
Learn more about coal, oil, and natural gas with pictures, maps, and
charts from this website.
How Oil Refining Works
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/oil-refining1
.htm
Take a closer look at the process of refining crude oil into gasoline,
heating oil, and many other products.
Index
alternative energy sources, 6, 27, mining, 13–15
33–34
natural gas, 5, 8, 10, 17–21, 23, 34
Carboniferous Period, 7–8
climate change, 32 oil, 5, 8, 10, 16, 18–22, 28, 34–35
coal, 5, 8, 11, 13–15, 21, 28–30, 33–34
peat, 7
drilling, 16–17, 35 pollution, 28–30

fossil fuels, 5–7, 9–10, 12–13, 24–26,refining, 12

28, 32–36
fracking, 20, 31
shale, 19–20
hydrocarbons, 9, 22

Photo Acknowledgments
The images in this book are used with the permission of: © iStockphoto.com/caracterdesign, p. 4; © Brad
Sauter/Dreamstime.com, p. 5; Iberdrola Renewables, Inc./Department of Energy/National Renewable
Energy Laboratory, p. 6; © Publiphoto/Science Source, p. 7; © iStockphoto.com/w-ings, p. 8; © Sam Lund/
Independent Picture Service, p. 9; © John R. Kreul/Independent Picture Service, p. 10; © iStockphoto.
com/DanBrandenburg, p. 11; © Sumit buranarothtrakul/Shutterstock.com, p. 12; © Velvetweb/
Dreamstime.com, p. 13; © Awcnz62/Dreamstime.com, p. 14; © Monty Rakusen/Cultura/Getty Images,
p. 15; © iStockphoto.com/westphalia, p. 16; © Bloomberg/Getty Images, p. 17; © Ed Darack/Science
Faction/SuperStock, p. 18; © iStockphoto.com/CedarWings, p. 19; © Laura Westlund/Independent
Picture Service, p. 20; © iStockphoto.com/RicAguiar, p. 21; © iStockphoto.com/antikainen, p. 22; © Todd
Strand/Independent Picture Service, p. 23; © airphoto.gr/Shutterstock.com, p. 24; © Robert Nickelsberg/
Getty Images News/Getty Images, p. 25; © Bali58/Dreamstime.com, p. 26; © iStockphoto.com/
Jennifer_Sharp, p. 27; © FLPA/SuperStock, p. 28; © iStockphoto.com/sndrk, p. 29; © iStockphoto.com/
Schroptschop, p. 30; © a katz/Shutterstock.com, p. 31; © Danita Delimont/Gallo Images/Getty Images,
p. 32; © iStockphoto.com/RyanKing999, p. 33; © iStockphoto.com/nycshooter, p. 34; © iStockphoto.com/
Front cover: © RonFullHD/Shutterstock.com.
landbysea, p. 35; © Brian Summers/First Light/Getty Images, p. 36; © Fuse/Thinkstock, p. 37.

Main body text set in Adrianna Regular 14/20

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Other documents randomly have
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empire has perished from the face of the earth through the decay of
morals in its people and its public men. History repeats itself. What
has been, will be. Name after name of the great men of the new
Republic is stained with private immorality and public crime. The
noblest part of Garfield, with all his genius, was his spotless
character. There was, there is, no greater, purer, manlier man.
“His tongue was framed to music,
His hand was armed with skill,
His face was the mold of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will.”
 CHAPTER X.
THE CLIMAX OF 1880.

The Clans are met in the prairied West,

And the battle is on, is on again,
The struggle of great and little men,
To make one victor above the rest.

T he fathers of the Republic had no suspicion of the form which

American politics has assumed. The thing which we know as a
political party is new under the sun. No other country or age ever had
any thing like what America understands by the word party. When
we speak of a party, we do not have in mind a mere sect, or class,
distinguished by peculiar opinions, and composed of individuals
whose only bond of union is their harmony of opinion, passion, or
prejudice. We do not mean a caste, nor a peculiar section of
American society, nor a portion of the masses, whose birth,
condition, and surroundings predestine them to take a traditional
sort of a view of political affairs, which they hold in common with
their parents and their fellows. This was what Rome, in the days of
her Republic, understood by the name of party. Patrician and
plebeian stood not merely for opinion, but for more—for birth,
heritage, and station. When there was an election, it was a rout, a
rabble, without organization, work, or object. Rich and poor were
arrayed against each other; the public offices were the glittering
prize. But they were captured more by seditions, revolts, coups
d’état, than by the insinuating arts of the wire-puller. The same thing
is largely true of England and France, although less so lately than
formerly.
 But in America by a political party, we mean an organism, of which
the life is, in the beginning at least, an opinion or set of opinions. We
mean an institution as perfectly organized as the government itself;
and taking hold of the people much more intimately. We mean an
organization so powerful that the government is in its hands but a
toy; so despotic that it has but one penalty for treason—political
death; so much beloved, that while a few men in a few widely
separated generations make glorious and awful sacrifices for their
country, nearly all the men of every generation lend themselves,
heart and soul, to the cause of party. A political party raises, once in
four years, drilled armies, more numerous than any war ever called
forth. If the battalions wear no uniform but red shirt and cap, and
carry no more deadly weapon than the flaming torch, they are,
nevertheless, as numerous, as well drilled, and as powerful as the
glistening ranks of Gettysburg or Chickamauga. They, too, fight for
the government—or against it. A political party has its official chief,
its national legislature or “committee,” its state, county, township,
ward, and precinct organizations. It is stupendous. The local
organization has in its secret rooms lists containing the name of
every voter, with an analysis of his political views; if they are
wavering, a few significant remarks on how he can be “reached.” The
county and state organizations have their treasuries, their system of
taxation and revenue, their fields of expenditure, and their cries of
robbery, reform, and retrenchment. In the secret committee rooms
are laid deep and sagacious plans for carrying the election. In some
States, the old, crude ways of sedition, driving away of voters, and
stuffing the poll are still followed; but in most of the States prevail
arts and methods so mysterious, so secret, that none but the expert
politician knows what they are.
A political party has other than financial resources. It owns
newspapers—manufacturers of public sentiment. It makes the men
that make it. It controls offices, and places of trust and profit. It has
all the powers of centralization. One man in a State is at the head of
the organism. He is an autocrat, a czar, a sultan. At the crack of his
finger the political head of his grand vizier falls under the
headsman’s ax. The party has in its service the most plausible
writers, the most eloquent orators, the most ingenious statisticians,
and the most graphic artists. In its service are all the brilliant and
historic names and reputations. Military glory, statesmanship,
diplomacy, are alike appropriated to itself. Wealth, genius, love, and
beauty, alike lay their treasures at its feet.
A party as well as the nation has its laws. Its delegates and
committeemen are as certain to be elected, and those elections are
required to occur at times and places as definitely settled by party
rule as those for Congressmen or President.
The thing which we have been describing did not begin with the
Republic. It is substantially a growth of the last fifty years. Its
beginning was marked by the rise of the convention, its most public
and prominent feature. Formerly, congressional and legislative
caucuses nominated the candidates for office. But about 1831 a
change began to come about. When the first severe cold of winter
begins, every floating straw or particle of dust on the surface of a
pond becomes the center of a crystallization around itself. The
distances between the nearer and smaller, then the more isolated
and larger, centers, are gradually bridged until the icy floor is built.
So in the rise of party organism in the Republic. The local
organizations, the town clubs, the township conventions for the
nomination of trustee and road master, became the initial centers of
a process of crystallization which was to go on until the icy floor of
party organization and platforms covered the thousand little waves
and ripples of individual opinions from shore to shore.
The delegate and the convention, the permanent committee and
the caucus, became the methods by which the organization grew.
Stronger and stronger have they grown, twining themselves like
monster vines around the central trunk of the Republic. Every
Presidential election has doubled the power, unity, centralization
and resources of the monsters. The surplus genius and energy of the
American people for organizing, being unexhausted and unsatisfied
by the simple forms of the Republic, has spent itself in the political
party.
With the rise of the party as an independent, self-sustaining
organism, which, like the government, derives its powers from the
consent of the people, two facts have become more and more
prominent: first, the struggle for the delegateships to the
conventions; second, the struggle to control delegates by instructions
after they were elected. While these are both called struggles, the
word has a widely different meaning in the two places. In the first it
stands for the contest between candidates. Not only did the party
become a nationalized organism for a campaign against the enemy,
but the candidacies within the party for its nomination for a national
office also became nationalized. But, in the second place, the word
struggle stands for a contest, not between men, but between
principles. In every phase of this long conflict the underlying struggle
was between two opposite tendencies. The one was toward stronger
and stronger party organization, greater centralization, increased
powers of the caucus, the absolute tyranny of the majority, in short,
the subordination of the individual to the machine, in the name of
party discipline. The other tendency was toward less organization,
less centralization, less binding powers for the caucus on its
members, the representation of minorities, the subordination of the
machine to the individual.
The struggle between these tendencies, of which the unit rule or
the control of the vote of solid delegations, by instructions or by the
voice of the majority of the delegation, was but a single aspect,
reached its highest point so far, in the Republican National
Convention which assembled in Chicago, June 2d, 1880. As will be
seen, the contests of that convention must make it absolutely unique.
The tremendous tide toward organization received a strong check.
The events of that convention are far more significant of the political
life-tendencies of the American people than the election of the
following November.
All other ages and countries have distrusted the people, have
concentrated power in the hands of the few, and perpetuated it by
the rigid forms of despotic government. In America that tendency
was defeated. But the same instincts are still present in the hearts of
men. It is not impossible that in the struggles toward organization,
discipline, party centralization and the machine aspect of politics, we
see the same devilish forces of the past at work in a new field. It is
not impossible that in party “bosses,” and the tyranny of the
machine, we are really looking in the face of the ancient foe of
mankind, whose sole aim was to concentrate and perpetuate power
in the hands of the few.
When, after General Grant returned from his trip around the
world, he consented to become a candidate for the Presidency, he
had a perfect right to do so. It was the privilege of his countrymen to
bring forward and support for that position the great Captain of the
nineteenth century. The three men who were instrumental in
bringing about his candidacy, and who managed the campaign for
him, were Roscoe Conkling, of New York; Don Cameron, of
Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Republican National Committee; and
John A. Logan, of Illinois. The history of the canvass for the
nomination of General Grant shows an ability so remarkable that his
defeat must still be a matter of wonder. The New York member of the
triumvirate caused a resolution to be passed in his State convention
instructing the delegates to vote solidly for Grant. Cameron achieved
the same thing in Pennsylvania. In Illinois, Logan, fearing or
foreseeing that instructions were a feeble reliance, attempted the
more heroic method of electing a solid Grant delegation by a
majority of votes in the State convention. The minority, to protect
itself, held meetings by congressional districts and selected
contesting delegates. Over the right to instruct and the right to elect
solid delegations the battle was fought. It was unquestioned that with
three solid delegations from the three most populous States in the
Union, and his other strong support, Grant’s nomination was
overwhelmingly assured. The country, in the few days preceding the
convention was wrought up to a pitch of feverish excitement.
The three principal candidates for the Presidency, whose names
were openly before the convention, were: Ulysses S. Grant, of
Illinois; James G. Blaine, of Maine; and John Sherman, of Ohio.
General Grant is the best known living American. His wonderful
career is familiar throughout the civilized world. Rising from the
trade of a tanner in an Illinois village, he became the commander of
the armies of the Republic, the greatest soldier of the age, President
of the United States for two terms, and the most distinguished citizen
of the Union. The foundation of his fame is his military
achievements. Taciturn, self-poised, alike unmoved by victory or
defeat, grim, immovable, bent only on achieving the thing which lay
before him, of deadly earnestness, equal to every emergency, Grant
must be admitted to be a man of solitary and sublime genius. For
practical resources, the age has not produced his equal.
Grant’s candidacy at Chicago, which seemed so singular to many,
was really the result of underlying forces, greater than any of the
men who were borne onward by the tide. First, was the fact of his
personal candidacy.
On one side was the Republican party closing its quarter of a
century—a Long Parliament of counsels, deeds, and changes; and, on
the other, the tried Cromwell of the Commonwealth, backed by his
victories, and asking the party to recognize him again. The party
seemed almost destined to make the choice. In asking again for the
Presidency, it was natural that he should look toward organization,
discipline, and studied strategy as the instrumentalities of his
canvass. His career as a soldier, his mental constitution, and his
political training and experience during the arbitrary and
tempestuous times of the civil war and the epoch of reconstruction,
his military habit of relying on his subordinate generals, all were
antecedents of the memorable struggle at Chicago, and helped to give
it its character.
But if Grant, in his personal canvass, naturally reached for the
party organization to make up his line of battle, the underlying
tendency toward organization in politics, of which we have spoken
heretofore, seeking for its strongest personal representative,
inevitably selected Grant. On the one side was his individual will
turning toward the Machine. On the other was the far more powerful
but impersonal force, in its struggle to grasp and subordinate
American politics, embodying itself in its chosen representative. It
will be remembered that in popular opinion Grant became a
candidate as much at the request of his friends as from any personal
wish. The distinguished gentlemen who thus urged him were
animated not merely by personal affection and preference, but by the
invincible tendency toward organization, structure, and machinery in
politics. In the organism the man found his support; in the man, the
organic force found its strongest representative.
But what of the opposite tendency, the counter-current, which set
against organization, party discipline, unit rules, the tyranny of
majorities, and toward the freedom of individual action? Who was its
representative? Was it ready to do battle with its gigantic foe? The
Chicago Convention must be viewed not as a personal struggle
between rival candidates, but as the meeting of two mighty waves in
the ocean of American politics, the shock of whose collision was to be
felt on the farthest shores. Amid the foam which rose along the line
of breaking crests, mere men were for the moment almost lost from
view.
In the nature of the case the counter tendency could not embody
itself beforehand in a representative. To be sure there was Blaine, the
dashing parliamentary leader, the magnetic politician, the brilliant
debater. Generous and brave of heart, superb in his attitude before
the maligners of his spotless fame, personally beloved by his
supporters beyond any man of his political generation, he was too
independent to represent the organism, and too much of a candidate,
and had too much machinery, too many of the politician’s arts, to
fully meet the requirements of the counter tendency in the great
crisis. Although Blaine was beyond question running on his personal
merits, yet the fact that he was a leading candidate, but without a
majority, destined him to fall a prey to his competitors. In the great
political arena, when one gladiator is about to triumph over his
divided rivals, the latter unite against him, that all may die together,
and by giving to an unknown the palm of victory save themselves
from the humiliation of a rival’s triumph.
John Sherman, the very opposite of Blaine, cold, cautious, solid,
hostile to display, was also a candidate upon personal merits, and
was also to fail from the same cause.
It can not be said that there was any other candidate before the
convention. Windom, Edmunds, and Washburne, had each a small
personal following, but neither sought the nomination, and all were
only possible “dark horses.”
On the floor of the convention, Grant was to be represented by the
triumvirate of United States Senators, Conkling, Cameron, and
Logan. Of these, Cameron, though a superb manipulator, a splendid
manager, and a man full of adroitness and resources, was a silent
man. His voice was not lifted in debate. His work was in the secret
room, planning, and not amid the clash of arms in the open field.
Logan, tall and powerful, of coppery complexion, and long, straight,
black hair, which told plainly of the Indian blood, was a somewhat
miscellaneous but rather powerful debater. His tremendous voice
was well fitted for large audiences. That he was a man of great force
is shown by his career. While his two colleagues were descended
from high-born ancestry,—Cameron’s father having been the son’s
predecessor in the United States Senate,—Logan sprang from below.
 The leader of the trio, and with one exception the most
distinguished person in the convention, was Roscoe Conkling. Tall,
perfectly formed, graceful in every movement, with the figure of an
athlete, and the head of a statesman, surmounted with a crown of
snow-white hair, he was a conspicuous figure in the most brilliant
assemblage of the great which could convene on any continent. In
speaking, his flute-like tones, modulated by the highest elocutionary
art, his intensely dramatic manner, his graceful but studied
gesticulation, united to call attention to the speaker as much as to the
speech. He was dressed in faultless style, from the tightly-buttoned
blue frock coat—the very ne plus ultra of the tailor’s art,—to the
exquisite fancy necktie. If it were not for his intellect he would have
been called a dandy. In his walk there was a perceptible strut. But the
matter of Conkling’s speeches is the best revelation of his character.
Every sentence was barbed with irony; every expression touched
with scorn. He was the very incarnation of pride. Haughty, reserved,
imperious in manner, at every thrust he cut to the quick. His mastery
of the subject in hand was always apparently perfect, and not less
perfectly apparent. He was called “Lord Roscoe,” “The Superb,” “The
Duke,” and other names indicative of his aristocratic bearing. Never
for a moment did he cease to carry himself as if he were on the stage.
It is said that great actors become so identified with the characters
they impersonate, that even in private life they retain the character
which they have assumed on the stage. Thus Booth is said to order
his fried eggs with the air of a Hamlet. So Conkling never for a
moment laid aside the air of high tragedy.
Nevertheless the commanding genius of the man was
unquestioned. He was the chief representative in the Chicago
Convention of the tendency to more organism, stronger party
discipline, a more perfect machine. The problem to which he applied
all his abilities, was to strengthen the party structure; and to that
end, practically place the power of both his party and his country in
the hands of a few. A national party, with the consciences of its
individual members in the hands of a few astute politicians, could
control the Government forever. But the end is vicious, and the
means an abomination to governments of the people, for the people,
and by the people.
 The companion figure to that of Roscoe Conkling, of New York,
was James A. Garfield, of Ohio. He was there as the chief supporter
of John Sherman. The contrast between Conkling and Garfield was
of the strongest possible kind. In person, Garfield was a taller man
than Conkling, but his size and solidity of build made him look
shorter. His figure, though less trim, had an air of comfortable
friendliness and cheer about it. He, too, had a massive head, but it
rested more easily above the broad shoulders. His face lacked the
lines of scorn traced on the other, and made a true picture of a
benevolent good nature, a generous, kindly heart, and a great and
wise intellect. He wore a plain sack coat, and his attire generally
though neat, was of an unstudied sort. He had a habit of sitting with
his leg swinging over the arm of the chair, and his manners were
those of a big, jolly, overgrown boy. In speaking he had a deep, rich
voice, with a kindly accent, in marked contrast with the biting tones
of the great New York Senator. He was never sarcastic, though often
grave. His speeches were conservative but earnest. Socially, his
manners were utterly devoid of restraint; he was accessible to every
body, and appeared to be on good terms with himself. The dramatic
element was completely absent. He believed in Sherman heartily,
though he was evidently a stranger to the mysterious arts of the wire-
puller and politician. For himself, he was well satisfied looking
forward to the seat in the United States Senate, which he was to enter
the next December, with joy and gratification.
These were the two chief figures of the Chicago Convention. Each
was there as the chief supporter of another. The one was the
conscious personification and representative of a tendency which, for
fifty years, had been setting more and more strongly toward party
organism and permanent structure, having for its aim a perfect
power-getting and power-keeping machine. The other was the
unconscious personification and representative of the opposite
tendency, the current which set toward a flexible rather than rigid
party organization, toward new political ideas, and the independence
of individual thought. The one was a patrician, the other the child of
the people.
When the Chicago Convention met, it was the nature of the organic
tendency to have its candidate selected. On the other hand, it was
equally the nature of the opposite tendency to have no candidate. But
each force was present in the convention working in the hearts and
minds of its members. Day after day, the angry white caps rose along
the line where the two waves met. As the crisis approached the
movement of resistance to the strengthening and increase of party
organism, with that instinct which belongs to every subtle underlying
tendency in human society, began to look and to feel its way toward a
personal representative. Having found the man, the spirit would
enter into him and possess him.
Thus it was that when the supreme moment came, personal
candidates and preferences, pledges and plans, leaders and followers
were suddenly lost from view. The force, which was greater than
individuals, rose up, embodied itself in the person of a protesting
and awe-stricken man within whose heart may have been some
presentiment of the tragic future, and, subordinating all to itself,
relentlessly demanding and receiving the sacrifice alike of candidates
and of the supporter, defeating for the time being, not so much the
silent soldier from Galena, as the political tendency which made him
its representative.
Notwithstanding the nomination of Garfield, as the remaining
chapters of this story will show, the spirit of party organism was not
killed but stunned. Cast out from the most famous citizen of the
Republic, it was to enter into a swine. History will say of Guiteau,
that he embodied and represented a force stronger than himself.
Let us turn now from the internal philosophy to the external facts
of the Chicago Convention.
Chicago is a roomy place and well-suited for the meeting of a large
assembly, but its resources were taxed by the Convention of 1880. By
Monday preceding the Convention, its hotels were crowded, and
thousands upon thousands were pouring in every hour. It was a great
gathering of rival clans, which did not wait the order of their generals
to advance, but charged upon each other the moment they came
upon the field.
There were two battles in progress—the one of the masses, the
other of the leaders.
On Monday evening two public meetings of the “Grant” and “anti-
Grant” elements, respectively, were held in Dearborn Park and in the
Base Ball Park.
 The speakers announced for the Grant meeting were Senators
Conkling, Logan, Carpenter, Stewart L. Woodford of New York,
Leonard Swett, Emory Storrs, Robert T. Lincoln, and Stephen A.
Douglas. But the advertised speakers did not all appear; neither
Conkling nor Carpenter spoke. They were too busy plotting
elsewhere. In fact, this Grant meeting was, so far as any
demonstration in favor of the third term was concerned, an
acknowledged failure. The speakers, however, managed to throw
some spirit into the affair, and aroused some enthusiasm.
But the anti-Grant meeting, as was quite evident, felt and fared
better. Though it had been but meagerly advertised, and but few
speakers of prominence had been announced, the grounds were
densely crowded. At least ten thousand persons were in attendance.
The tone of the meeting was unmistakable. The most radical
utterances were the most loudly cheered. The people declared that
“they would not submit to boss rule; that they would not have a third
term; that they would defeat the villainous attempt to deprive them
of their liberties.” People came there determined to be pleased—with
every thing or any thing but Grant. But they hissed the third term.
They shouted themselves hoarse for Blaine, Washburne, and
Edmunds.
Speakers from New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and New
Hampshire, declared that those States would be lost to the
Republican party by a third-term campaign. Meanwhile,
notwithstanding the vast crowds attending the two meetings, the
corridors of the hotels and streets were thronged. The utmost
interest was manifested, and every report of the work of the
managers of the candidates, whether reasonable or unreasonable,
was seized and discussed in its bearing upon the candidates. The
greatest interest centered about the Palmer House, where a secret
meeting of the National Committee was being held.
And what of this secret meeting? The National Committee
contained a majority of anti-Grant men. At its very beginning,
William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire, took the floor and offered
the following resolutions:
“Resolved, That the committee approves and ratifies the call for the approaching
Republican National Convention, which was issued by its chairman and secretary,
and which invites ‘two delegates from each Congressional district, four delegates at
large from each State, two from each Territory, and two from the District of
Columbia,’ to compose the convention.
“Resolved, That this committee recognizes the right of each delegate in a
Republican National Convention freely to cast and have counted his individual
vote therein, according to his own sentiments, if he so decides, against any ‘unit
rule’ or other instructions passed by a State convention, which right was conceded
without dissent, and was exercised in the conventions of 1860 and 1868, and was,
after a full debate, affirmed by the convention of 1876, and has thus become a part
of the law of Republican conventions; and until reversed by a convention itself
must remain a governing principle.”

The first of these passed unanimously. But not so the second. The
“unit rule” was not to die without a struggle. Chairman Cameron
promptly declared this resolution out of order.
Then Mr. Chaffee, of Colorado, offered a resolution approving of
the decision of the Cincinnati Convention, declaring that each
delegate should be allowed to vote on all subjects before the
convention. Mr. Gorham, of California, inquired of Mr. Cameron if
he intended to entertain these resolutions. Mr. Cameron announced
that he would not. This caused great excitement, and Mr. Chaffee
appealed from this decision. The next decision of Mr. Cameron
caused still greater commotion, this being to the effect that there
could be no appeal, as there was no question before the committee.
At this Mr. Chaffee renewed his appeal, saying that if the committee
submitted to such tyranny it might as well have a king. This was
roundly applauded. Mr. Cameron again repeated that there could be
no appeal, and he would put none.
Mr. Chandler thereupon, in a vigorous speech, demurred to such
ruling, and wound up by also appealing from the decision of the
chair. To further aggravate matters, Cameron again refused to
entertain the appeal. This brought Frye, of Maine, to his feet, and in
a caustic speech he told the chairman that the committee had rights
which he (the chairman) was bound to respect.
Mr. Chandler significantly remarked that if the chairman would
not pay any respect to the committee, the same power that made him
chairman would remove him.
Mr. Forbes, of Massachusetts, then offered a resolution appointing
a committee of six to select and present to the committee a candidate
to preside at the temporary organization. This was adopted. A recess
was then taken till half-past ten o’clock.
It now became certain that the anti-Grant men were ready to
depose Cameron at once if they could not control him in any other
way.
The committee to select the name of a temporary chairman
returned after a recess of fifteen minutes, and reported in favor of
Senator George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts. Senator Jones announced
that the minority reserved the right to name a candidate in the
convention. After some minor matters, Mr. Frye offered one of the
resolutions of the caucus, providing, in the case of the absence of the
chairman of the committee from sickness or from any cause, that the
chairman of the committee of six (Mr. Chandler) should be
authorized to call the convention to order, and perform all the duties
pertaining to the temporary organization.
Mr. McCormick followed with a second resolution of the caucus,
directing that in all questions pertaining to the temporary
organization the chairman shall rule that every delegate was at
liberty to vote as he chooses, regardless of instructions. Messrs.
Gorham, Filley, and others, made great opposition, and Mr. Cameron
ruled that this resolution would not be entertained, since it was not
in the power of the committee to instruct the chairman as to his
rulings.
A warm debate followed as to the rights and powers of the
committee. Finally, the meeting attended to some routine business,
and adjourned till next day noon.
The battle now grew hotter every hour. Mr. Conkling’s delegation
broke in two, and issued the following protest:
“Chicago, May 31, 1880.

“The undersigned, delegates to the Republican National Convention,

representing our several Congressional districts in the State of New York, desiring
above all the success of the Republican party at the approaching election, and
realizing the hazard attending an injudicious nomination, declare our purpose to
resist the nomination of General U. S. Grant by all honorable means. We are
sincere in the conviction that in New York, at least, his nomination would insure
defeat. We have a great battle to fight, and victory is within our reach, but we
earnestly protest against entering the contest with a nomination which we regard
as unwise and perilous.
“William H. Robertson, 12th Dist.; William B. Woodin, 26th Dist.; Norman M.
Allen and Loren B. Sessions, 33d Dist.; Moses D. Stivers and Blake G. Wales, 14th
Dist.; Webster Wagner and George West, 20th Dist.; Albert Daggett, 3d Dist.;
Simeon S. Hawkins and John Birdsall, 1st Dist.; John P. Douglass and Sidney
Sylvester, 22d Dist.; John B. Dutcher, 13th Dist.; Henry R. James and Wells S.
Dickinson, 19th Dist.; James W. Husted, 12th Dist.; Ferris Jacobs, Jr., 21st Dist.;
Oliver Abell, Jr., 18th Dist.”

A similar protest was published by twenty-two Pennsylvania

delegates, headed by Mr. James McManes.
At nine o’clock on the morning of June 1st, an anti-Grant caucus
was held, which determined to defeat the “unit rule” at all hazards,
even if Mr. Cameron must first be deposed from the chairmanship.
The news of the firm attitude of the caucus had reached Cameron,
Gorham, Filley, Arthur, and their associates, and before any
movement could be made, the Grant men announced that they had a
proposition to make, looking to harmonizing all differences. A recess
was taken to allow a committee on the part of Cameron, Conkling,
Arthur, and Logan, to state the agreement which they were willing to
make. It proved to be as follows:
“That Senator Hoar should be accepted as temporary chairman of the
convention, and that no attempt should be made to enforce the unit rule, or have a
test vote in the convention, until the committee on credentials had reported, when
the unit-rule question should be decided by the convention in its own way.”

This proposition was finally, in the interest of harmony, agreed to

by all parties.
On Wednesday, June 2d, after days and nights of caucusing,
serenading, speech-making, and cheering by every body, and for
nearly every body, the great convention held its first session. As a
clever correspondent wrote at the time:
“A more beautiful day in June probably never rose upon a Presidential
Convention. The sun, the shade, the trees, the lake, the high façades of business
buildings and palace hotels; the air cool, yet temperate; the well-dressed, energetic
people, and the signs of prosperous business, uninfluenced even by such a
convention, sent a hopeful, cheery feeling to the heart. The rageful features of the
past day or two went into their tents at such sunshine and calm godliness of sky.”
 The place of meeting was in the Exposition Building, in the south
half of which vast structure there is a hall 400 feet long by 150 feet
wide, with galleries all round, and so arranged that room for about
ten thousand people could be provided.

THE EXPOSITION BUILDING, WHERE

GARFIELD WAS NOMINATED.

At eleven o’clock the band stationed on the north gallery began

playing national airs, but nearly an hour passed before the delegates
took their seats. The Chairman called on the Secretary to read the
call, and Secretary Keogh proceeded, in a clear voice, to read the
document.
Mr. Cameron then arose, and, in a short address, nominated, as
temporary chairman, the Hon. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts,
who was elected by a unanimous vote. Mr. Hoar was then conducted
to the chair; and the preliminary organization was thus peacefully
resigned by the disappointed Grant faction, which had expected to
control all.
On motion of Eugene Hale, of Maine, the roll of States and
Territories was called, and the committees made up. There were
four: (1) Permanent Organization; (2) Rules; (3) Credentials; and (4)
Resolutions.
 After a slight stir over Utah, and a sharp encounter between
Conkling and Frye, the opening business was completed, and the
convention adjourned for that day.
A newspaper dispatch sent out of the room during this session
said:
“There is a good deal of talk about Garfield. Some significance is attached to the
fact that when the name was mentioned in the convention to-day as a member of
the Committee on Rules it was loudly applauded.”

And another added:

“A prolonged contest is now certain on the floor of the convention to-day over
the reports from the committees on Credentials, Rules, and Resolutions. Senator
Conkling is recognized as the leader of debate on the Grant side. Frye and Hale will
be the principal speakers, with Garfield and Conger on the part of the majority.
The debates preceding the balloting promise to be the most heated and the ablest
ever heard in a Republican Convention.”

That night the popular battle in the streets and lobbies continued,
attended with ever-growing excitement. Grant men and Blaine men
loudly proclaimed their confidence in a victory for their respective
favorites, on the first or second ballot. Each of these two leaders
claimed about three hundred reliable votes; but, in fact, they had not
six hundred between them.
Sherman, Edmunds, Washburne, and Windom men felt sure that
neither Blaine nor Grant could be nominated on account of the
violent opposition of their factions. This gave hope to each of these
smaller sections, and made “dark-horse” talk plausible.
At eleven o’clock of June 3d, the second day’s fight of the
convention began. As the delegations took their places, the great
crowd of spectators occupied themselves in getting acquainted with
the men who were to give and receive the hard blows to be dealt by
both sides when the contest opened. All these men—Conkling,
Garfield, Frye, Hale, and Logan—were cordially received, though
there were degrees in the favor.
The most spontaneous of the greetings given any one of the leaders
was to Garfield. One of the ovations to him gave rise to a ludicrous
affair for Conkling. The latter had made his usual late and pompous
entrance, had been received with much noise, and walked slowly up
to his seat near the front. Just as he rose to show himself further and
address the chair, General Garfield came in at the rear. A
tremendous and rapidly spreading cheer broke out, which the New
York “Duke” mistook for his own property.
The second day was now passing, and the preliminaries were not
yet complete. It was the policy of the Grant men to make delay, and
wear out the strength of all opponents. They had come, as Cameron
said, “to stick until we win.” The Blaine leaders, on the other hand,
had no such reliable, lasting force. They must dash in boldly and
carry off their prize at once, or be forever defeated.
To-day the Blaine men came in jubilant, for they had beaten the
Grant faction in the committees. Conkling opened the proceedings
from the floor at the earliest moment. He moved to adjourn until
evening to await the report of the Committee on Credentials. Hale
opposed this. Conkling, in his haste, forgetting his parliamentary
knowledge, claimed that his motion to take a recess was not
debatable. The Chairman overruled this, much to the annoyance of
Conkling. He soon poured out a little vial of wrath on Hale, and
sneered at him as his “amiable friend.” To this Hale retorted that he
had not spent his time in cultivating sarcastic and sneering methods
in argument; and if the Senator from New York was less amiable
than others this morning the convention understood the reason well.
At this reference to the general defeat of the Grant forces in the
committees during the last evening the people laughed loudly at
Conkling, and that august gentleman himself deigned to smile.
Soon the Committee on Permanent Organization reported, the
temporary chairman and other officers were continued, and Mr.
Hoar took permanent possession of his Chairmanship. Thereupon
Mr. Frye moved that the Committee on Rules and Order of Business
report at once. Mr. Sharpe, of New York, now arose and said that he
had been instructed by the delegates of nine States to prepare a
minority report of the Committee on Rules; that he had not had time
to do so, and this ought not to be taken advantage of, because, by
agreement in the committee, he should have had a longer time to
prepare.
Mr. Frye then said that if the chairman of that committee—Mr.
Garfield—was present, he would request that gentleman to state
what agreement had been made.
 As General Garfield arose in his seat he was greeted with loud and
prolonged cheers and applause, and cries of “Platform,” “Step up on
the seat.” He said:
“Mr. President, the Committee on Rules finished its business at about eleven
o’clock by adopting a body of rules and an order of business. A resolution was then
offered by one member of the committee that it was the judgment of the committee
that the report ought to be made after the report of the Committee on Credentials,
and that was adopted, whether unanimously or not I am unable to say, for the
committee was about breaking up. General Sharpe requested that a minority of
that committee might have leave to offer their views as a minority, and no
objection was made. No vote was taken on that latter topic. I did not, therefore,
and shall not tender a report of the Committee on Rules. I am, however, like every
other delegate, subject to the orders of this convention, and when they desire the
report and order it, I suppose the committee are ready to make it, but good faith
requires this certainly, that if the minority is not ready with its report it ought to
have the time.”

Mr. Frye then withdrew his motion, and the convention adjourned
until evening.
At half-past five they had reassembled and the battle proceeded at
the point where it had been dropped before adjournment.
The Committee on Credentials were not ready to report, and it was
so announced. The Blaine men forced the fighting, entering a motion
by Mr. Henderson, of Iowa, that the convention proceed to consider
the report of the Committee on Rules and Organization. This the
Grant men resisted, and for this reason: The rules which had been
agreed to by the committee only allowed five minutes debate on the
matter of each individual contested seat. The Grant men did not
want the report adopted before the Committee on Credentials
reported, because they wanted to ascertain just what the latter report
would be. Logan led the fight for Grant, supported by Boutwell and
others. Henderson held his own very well. Finally, after an hour of
this running fire of debate, Mr. Sharpe moved to amend the pending
motion by substituting an order that the Committee on Credentials
report at once.
On this amendment a vote was soon reached which proved to be
the most significant event of the day; for it was the first vote taken by
States; it was a test vote between the Grant men on the one side and
the allied anti-Grant factions on the other, and it settled the fate of
the “unit rule.”
Upon Alabama being called, the Chairman of the delegation, Mr.
Dunn, announced 20 ayes.
Mr. Allen Alexander, of Alabama, a colored delegate—I desire to
vote “No.”
The Chairman—Does the gentleman from Alabama desire that his
vote should be received in the negative?
Mr. Alexander—Yes, sir.
The Chairman—It will be so recorded.
Several other States offered divided votes.
The result was against Sharpe’s substitute, by a vote of 318 to 406.
About forty delegates were absent or did not vote. There was great
rejoicing among the anti-Grant factions when it became certain that
Hoar would allow no “unit rule” until forced to do so by an order of
the convention.
On motion of Mr. Brandagee, of Connecticut, Henderson’s motion
was laid on the table, and adjournment till the next day followed
immediately.
Friday of convention week dawned less delightfully than did the
first two days. There was a cloudy sky, an east wind, a rheumatic,
chilly atmosphere penetrating every nook and corner of the great
Convention Hall, and a crowd of shivering mortals pushed and
elbowed each other up and down the passages, delegates looking
angular, stiff, and cold, and angry,—every body denouncing the
weather. The dull light made the pictures on the walls look sour and
stern and cross. The frown on the wretched oil-painted face of old
Ben Wade was deepened; Zach Chandler’s hard mouth appeared
more firmly set, and Sumner’s jaw was more rigid and
uncompromising than ever in life. The flags drooped under the
depressing atmospheric influences, blue turned black, the red was
dull, and the white looked dirty, and the stars were dim. The opening
scenes of each day had now assumed a stereotyped form. Conkling
made his arrival in state as usual, and the usual cheer went up.
General Phil Sheridan was greeted with hearty applause, and
Garfield’s entrance was the signal for a great ovation.
 Hardly had the opening prayer of the good man of God come to its
amen when Mr. Conkling offered the following:
Resolved, As the sense of this Convention, that every member of it is bound in
honor to support its nominee, whoever that nominee may be; and that no man
should hold a seat here who is not ready to so agree.

Mr. Hale said he thought that a Republican Convention did not

need to be instructed, that its first and underlying duty, after
nominating its candidate, was to elect him over the Democratic
candidate.
A call of the States being requested, the convention voted
unanimously in favor of Mr. Conkling’s resolution, with the
exception of three hostile votes from West Virginia.
Mr. Conkling then offered the following:
“Resolved, That the delegates who have voted that they will not abide the action
of the convention do not deserve and have forfeited their vote in this convention.”

Mr. Campbell, of West Virginia—“Mr. Chairman: There are three gentlemen

from West Virginia, good and true Republicans, who have voted in the negative in
the last vote. Gentlemen, as a delegate in a Republican Convention, I am willing to
withdraw. If it has come to this that in the city of Chicago, where I came as a young
man from the State of Virginia, after having submitted twenty years to contumely
and to violence in the State of Virginia for my Republican principles—if it has come
to this, that in the city of Chicago a delegate from that State can not have a free
expression of opinion, I for one am willing to withdraw from this convention. Mr.
Chairman, I have been a Republican in the State of Virginia from my youth. For
twenty-five years I have published a Republican newspaper in that State. I have
supported every Republican Presidential nominee in that time. I expect to support
the nominee of this convention. But, sir, I shall do so as a Republican, having
imbibed my principles from the great statesman from New York, William H.
Seward, with whom I had an early acquaintance by virtue of my having gone to
school with him nine years from the city of Utica, from which the Senator from
New York now hails. I was a Republican then, and I made the acquaintance of that
distinguished gentleman. I came home, and in my youth I became a newspaper
editor. From that day to this—from the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry all
through the troubles of the last twenty-five years—I have consistently and always
supported our State and National Republican nominee. But, Mr. Chairman, I feel
as a Republican that there is a principle in this question, and I will never go into
any convention and agree beforehand that whatever may be done by that
convention shall have my indorsement. Sir, as a free man, whom God made free, I
always intend to carry my sovereignty under my own hat. I never intend that any
body of men shall take it from me. I do not, Mr. Chairman, make my living by
politics; I make it by my labor as a newspaper editor; and I am not afraid to go
home and say that I stood up here in this convention, as I was not afraid to stand
up in the State of West Virginia, when but 2,900 men were found to vote for
Abraham Lincoln, and where that party has risen to-day to 45,000 votes under the
training that we received from our early inspiration of principle. I am not afraid to
go home and face these men as I have faced them always.”

The two other dissenters also stated their position as defiantly if

not as ably. After some further debate, Mr. Garfield spoke, taking
ground against Conkling’s pending resolution. While speaking to
this, he said:
“There never can be a convention, of which I am one delegate, equal in rights to
every other delegate, that shall bind my vote against my will on any question
whatever on which my vote is to be given.
“I regret that these gentlemen thought it best to break the harmony of this
convention by their dissent; but, when they tell the convention that their dissent
was not, and did not mean, that they would not vote for the nominee of this
convention, but only that they did not think the resolution at this time wise, they
acted in their right, and not by my vote. I do not know the gentlemen, nor their
affiliations, nor their relations to candidates, except one of them. One of them I
knew in the dark days of slavery, and for twenty long years, in the midst of slave-
pens and slave-drivers, has stood up for liberty with a clear-sighted courage and a
brave heart equal to the best Republicans that live on this globe. And if this
convention expel him, then we must purge ourselves at the end of every vote by
requiring that so many as shall vote against us shall go out.”

A few minutes later Mr. Conkling withdrew the obnoxious

resolution.
The first important business of the day was now transacted. Mr.
Garfield, as Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Order of
Business, read the report of that committee. Its most important
provision was:
“Rule VIII. In the record of the votes by States, the vote of each State, Territory,
and the District of Columbia, shall be announced by the chairman; and in case the
votes of any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia shall be divided, the
chairman shall announce the number of votes cast for any candidate or for or
against any proposition; but, if exception is taken by any delegate to the
correctness of such announcement by the chairman of his delegation, the president
of the convention shall direct the roll of members of such delegation to be called
and the result recorded in accordance with the votes individually given.”
 From this resolution a minority of the committee dissented, and,
through General Sharpe, presented, as Rule VIII, the following:
“In the record of the votes by States, the vote of each State, Territory, and the
District of Columbia shall be announced by the chairman; and in case the votes of
any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia shall be divided, the chairman
shall announce the number of votes cast for any candidate or for or against any
proposition.”

When the final action was taken, the majority report prevailed.
At last there came the long-delayed report of the Committee on
Credentials, the one great matter preliminary to the real work of this
great gathering of the people’s representatives. This committee’s
principal duty was to decide upon the conflicting claims of “regular”
and “bolting” delegations from several States.
The reading of this report was painfully tedious, taking over three
hours; and the debates which followed as the separate State contests
were being settled, kept any other business from being done that day.
From the State of Louisiana, the committee recommended the
admission of the delegation with their alternates headed by Henry C.
Warmouth, and the exclusion of the delegation with their alternates
headed by Taylor Beattie. This contest arose out of two rival
conventions.
The committee recommended James T. Rapier for admission as a
delegate from the Fourth Congressional District of Alabama. The
facts found were that Rapier had been requested to pledge support
for Grant, and upon his refusal to do so the president of the
convention had been requested to withhold the credentials unless he
would, within twenty-four hours, give such pledge. This, Rapier had
refused to do.
The committee recommended that William H. Smith and Willett
Warner be admitted in the place of Arthur Bingham and R. A. Mosely
from the Seventh Congressional District of Alabama. The facts in the
case of Messrs. Smith and Warner were substantially the same as
those in the case of James T. Rapier.
The committee recommended the admission of eight delegations
from the State of Illinois, in the place of sitting members. The
Committee found that a State Convention had been held at
Springfield, on the 19th day of May, to elect delegates to the National
Convention. During the convention, the delegates from eight
Congressional Districts had assembled and organized District
Conventions, each of which had elected two delegates and two
alternates to the Chicago Convention by clear majorities of all the
delegates elected to the State Convention in each of said districts, as
was shown by the credentials accompanying the report. The State
Convention, by means of a committee of one from each
Congressional District, selected, and afterward assumed to elect, two
delegates to the National Convention, including the sitting members
from the foregoing districts, the delegates from each of which filed in
the State Convention protests against said election by the State
Convention. The committee reported against the validity of the
contests in the Second District of Illinois of the seats of sitting
members, A. M. Wright and R. S. Tuthill.
Contests were also settled by this report in cases coming from
several other States.
In each case of favorable consideration, the committee ascertained
that those delegates who were recommended were actually chosen by
a proper convention, representing the Congressional District from
which they were accredited.
The committee then proceeded to the justice and equity of
recognizing, securing, and protecting Congressional District
representation, as is also demonstrated by the actual precedents of
the Republican party since its organization.
With the exception of a couple of hours for supper, this
extraordinary session kept to the subjects of this report steadily from
one o’clock in the afternoon till after two in the morning. This
chapter can not find room for these debates, though surpassing in
interest, as they do, many a volume of the Congressional Record.
The Illinois questions caused the most intense feeling of all. At ten
o’clock they were taken up; after a short time, on motion, the further
debate was limited to one hour on each side.
The whole subject of this report was not fully disposed of until
early in the Saturday session. The result was that the majority report
was adopted, and the “machine” thus received another solid shot,
which penetrated its iron sides below waterline; but the leaders fired
no guns to signal their distress.
 Saturday, June 5th, was, like Friday, dark and gloomy. The vast
crowd, after the preceding night of excitement, was, of course, dull
and sleepy. It was noted, however, that when Garfield came into the
hall the audience waked up and gave a hearty cheer.
The roll was called at about twelve o’clock. After finishing the
matters connected with the credentials, the Convention, on motion
of General Garfield, adopted the report of the Committee on Rules.
The Committee on Resolutions next reported, and the Platform was
adopted; after which the Convention adjourned till evening.
Skirmishing ended, now would come serious work. The
triumvirate and its legions had exhausted every parliamentary
resource for delay, and at last had to face “the inevitable hour” which
must lead, for them, to glory, or the common grave of all their plans.
It was a magnificent audience which poured into the great hall that
evening to witness the beginning of the end of this tremendous
political conflict.
After some preliminaries, Mr. Hale, of Maine, moved that the roll
of States be called alphabetically and that nominations for
candidates for President be made.
General Logan inquired whether the rules permitted the seconding
of nominations for candidates for President. The Chairman said no,
that the rules did not provide for it. Garfield thought there would be
no objection to the seconding of nominations. Unanimous consent
was accorded for five-minute speeches in seconding nominations.
Hale’s motion was then adopted without opposition.
The roll was then called down to Michigan, with no responses.
When that State was named, James F. Joy arose and nominated, for
President of the United States, James G. Blaine. Mr. Joy was not the
kind of a man to arouse the enthusiasm of an audience, and when he
had closed, Mr. Pixley, of California, seconded the nomination. These
speeches were a great disappointment to the Blaine men. They still
remembered Ingersoll’s famous “plumed knight” speech for Blaine at
Cincinnati, in 1876. To remedy matters, Mr. William P. Frye, of
Maine, obtained the floor by consent, and delivered the following
brief, but brilliant little speech, which, in a measure, retrieved the
mistake already made. He said:
 “I saw once a storm at sea in the night-time, and our staunch old ship battling
for its life with the fury of the tempest; darkness every-where; the wind shrieking
and howling through the rigging; the huge waves beating upon the sides of that
ship and making her shiver from stem to stern. The lightnings were flashing, the
thunders were rolling. There was danger every-where. I saw at the helm a calm,
bold, courageous, immovable, commanding man. In the tempest, calm; in the
commotion, quiet; in the dismay, hopeful. I saw him take that old ship and bring
her into the harbor, into still waters, into safety. That man was a hero. I saw the
good old ship, the State of Maine, within the last year, fighting her way through the
same darkness, through the same perils, against the same waves, against the same
dangers. She was freighted with all that is precious in the principles of our
Republic—with the rights of American citizenship, with all that is guaranteed to the
American citizen by our Constitution. The eyes of the whole Nation were upon her;
an intense anxiety filled every American heart, lest the grand old ship, the State of
Maine, might go down beneath the waves forever, carrying her precious freight
with her. But, sir, there was a man at the helm. Calm, deliberate, commanding,
sagacious, he made even the foolish men wise. Courageous, he inspired the timid
with courage; hopeful, he gave heart to the dismayed, and he brought that good old
ship proudly into the harbor, into safety, and there she floats to-day, brighter,
purer, stronger from her baptism of danger. That man, too, was a hero, and his
name was James G. Blaine. Maine sends greetings to this magnificent Convention.
With the memory of her own salvation from impending peril fresh upon her, she
says to you, representatives of 50,000,000 of American people, who have met here
to counsel how the Republic shall be saved, she says to you, representatives of the
people, take a man, a true man, a staunch man for your leader, who has just saved
her, and who will bear you to safety and certain victory.”

Minnesota was next called; whereupon E. F. Drake placed in

nomination William Windom, of Winona, a very able and
distinguished Senator from that State.
Now was heard the call for New York; a call which meant Roscoe
Conkling and the nomination of the great General and ex-President,
Ulysses S. Grant.
As Mr. Conkling advanced to the front, he was greeted with
tremendous cheers. Taking a commanding position on one of the
reporter’s tables, he stood a few moments and regarded the audience
while they grew silent at an imperious wave of his hand. Then he
said:
“When asked whence comes our candidate, our sole reply shall be, he hails from
Appomattox with its famous apple-tree. In obedience to instructions I should
never dare to disregard, expressing also my own firm conviction, I rise to propose a
nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The
election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide for
many years whether the country shall be Republican or Cossack. The supreme
need of the hour is not a candidate who can carry Michigan. All Republican
candidates can do that. The need is not of a candidate popular in the territories,
because they have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful
States. Not the doubtful States of the North, but doubtful States of the South,
which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to take little or no part here,
because the South has nothing to give, but every thing to receive. No, gentlemen,
the need that presses upon the conscience of this convention is of a candidate who
can carry doubtful States both North and South. And believing that he, more surely
than any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not
only the North but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant.
Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most illustrious borne by living
man.
“His services attest his greatness, and the country—nay, the world—knows them
by heart. His fame was earned not alone in things written and said, but by the
arduous greatness of things done. And perils and emergencies will search in vain in
the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the
nation leans with such confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce
against the will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people
will never desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest eminence of human
distinction, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised, having filled all lands with his
renown, he has seen not only the high-born and the titled, but the poor and the
lowly in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has
studied the needs and the defects of many systems of government; and he has
returned a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience
added to the hard common sense which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce
light that beat upon him during sixteen years, the most trying, the most
portentous, the most perilous.
“Vilified and reviled, truthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other
lands, but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold
on the public heart. Calumny’s ammunition has all been exploded; the powder has
all been burned once; its force is spent: and the name of Grant will glitter a bright
and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those who have tried to
tarnish that name have moldered in forgotten graves, and when their memories
and their epitaphs have vanished utterly.
“Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as
in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee’s
surrender foreshadowed the wisest prophecies and principles of true
reconstruction. Victor in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized
his aversion to war, and his love of peace by an arbitration of international
disputes, which stands the wisest, the most majestic example of its kind in the
world’s diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popularity and frenzy, had
swept both Houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant which, single and alone,
overthrew expansion, and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, to him
immeasurably more than to any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar
is as good as gold.
“With him as our leader we shall have no defensive campaign. No! We shall have
nothing to explain away. We shall have no apologies to make. The shafts and the
arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his feet.
“Life, liberty, and property will find a safeguard in him. When he said of the
colored men in Florida, ‘Wherever I am they may come also;’ when he so said, he
meant that had he the power, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should
no longer be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves of
their murdered dead. When he refused to receive Denis Kearney in California, he
meant that Communism, lawlessness, and disorder, although it might stalk high-
headed and dictate law to a whole city, would find a foe in him. He meant that
popular or unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they
may.
“His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his unequaled experience, are the
qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only one that the wit of
man or the stress of politics has devised is one which would dumbfounder
Solomon, because he thought there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried
Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an
interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen! my countrymen what
stultification does not such a fallacy involve. The American people exclude
Jefferson Davis from public trust. Why? Why? Because he was the arch-traitor and
would-be destroyer; and now the same people is asked to ostracise Grant, and not
to trust him. Why? Why, I repeat? Because he was the arch-preserver of his
country, and because not only in war, but twice as Civil Magistrate, he gave his
highest, noblest efforts to the Republic. Is this an electioneering juggle, or is it
hypocrisy’s masquerade? There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or
reason, in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in
the balance and not found wanting; no department of human reason in which sane
men reject an agent because he has had experience, making him exceptionally
competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who tries
your cause, the officer who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into
whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul, what
man do you reject because, by his works, you have known him, and found him
faithful and fit? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else
in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? Who dares—who
dares to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the
American people? Can it be said that Grant has used official power and place to
perpetuate his term? He has no place, and official power has not been used for
him. Without patronage and without emissaries, without committees, without
bureaus, without telegraph wires running from his house to this Convention, or
running from his house anywhere else, this man is the candidate whose friends
have never threatened to bolt unless this Convention did as they said. He is a
Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the
candidates of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the majority as
the very essence of their faith, and they mean to uphold that faith against not only
the common enemy, but against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps, and guerrillas
—the men who deploy between the lines, and forage now on one side and then on
the other. This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the
next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of his
election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration. It can break that power
which dominates and mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization whose
very existence is a standing protest against progress.
“The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its very hope of existence is a
solid South. Its success is a menace to order and progress. I say this Convention
can overthrow that power. It can dissolve and emancipate a solid South. It can
speed the Nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements.
Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an
hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplendent with
illustrious achievements, marching to certain victory with its greatest Marshal at
its head.”

After Mr. Bradley, of Kentucky, had seconded Grant’s nomination,

the call proceeded, and Ohio being reached, General Garfield arose.
Amid great applause he advanced to Mr. Conkling’s late high station
on a table, and, as soon as order was restored, said:
“Mr. President: I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention
with deep solicitude. No emotion touches my heart more quickly than a sentiment
in honor of a great and noble character. But as I sat on these seats and witnessed
these demonstrations, it seemed to me you were a human ocean in a tempest. I
have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves
the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm
level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm
has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when sunshine bathes its
smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor takes the level from which he
measures all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the convention, your
present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of the people.
“When our enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have
subsided, we shall find the calm level of public opinion, below the storm, from
which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final
action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where 15,000 men and
women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed; not here, where
I see the enthusiastic faces of 756 delegates waiting to cast their votes into the urn
and determine the choice of their party; but by 5,000,000 Republican firesides,
where the thoughtful fathers, with wives and children about them, with calm
thoughts inspired by love of home and love of country, with the history of the past,
the hopes of the future, and the knowledge of the great men who have adorned and
blessed our nation in days gone by,—there God prepares the verdict that shall
determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June,
but in the sober quiet that comes between now and November, in the silence of
deliberate judgment, will this great question be settled. Let us aid them to-night.
“But now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want? Bear with me a
moment. Hear me for this cause, and for a moment, be silent that you may hear.
Twenty-five years ago this Republic was wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long
familiarity with the traffic in the body and souls of men had paralyzed the
consciences of a majority of our people. The baleful doctrine of State sovereignty
had shocked and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the National
Government, and the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin Territories of
the West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that crisis the
Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from the fire of liberty
which God has lighted in every man’s heart, and which all the powers of ignorance
and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver
and save the Republic. It entered the arena when beleaguered and assailed
Territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of
liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made them free
forever.
“Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the young party, under the
leadership of that great man, who on this spot, twenty years ago, was made its
leader, entered the national capital and assumed the high duties of the
Government. The light which shone from its banner dispelled the darkness in
which slavery had enshrouded the Capitol and melted the shackles of every slave,
and consumed, in the fire of liberty, every slave-pen within the shadow of the
Capitol. Our national industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves
prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the
treasury itself was well nigh empty. The money of the people was the wretched
notes of 2,000 uncontrolled and irresponsible state bank corporations, which were
filling the country with a circulation that poisoned rather than sustained the life of
business.
“The Republican party changed all this. It abolished the babel of confusion and
gave the country a currency as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of
the people. It threw its protecting arm around our great industries, and they stood
erect as with new life. It filled with the spirit of true nationality all the great
functions of the Government. It confronted a rebellion of unexampled magnitude,
with a slavery behind it, and, under God, fought the final battle of liberty until
victory was won. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the sweet, calm words
of peace uttered by the conquering nation, and saying to the conquered foe that lay
prostrate at its feet, ‘This is our only revenge, that you join us in lifting to the
serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars forever and forever, the
immortal principles of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, shall be free
and stand equal before the law.’ Then came the questions of reconstruction, the
public debt, and the public faith.
“In the settlement of these questions the Republican party has completed its
twenty-five years of glorious existence, and it has sent us here to prepare it for
another lustrum of duty and of victory. How shall we do this great work? We can
not do it, my friends, by assailing our Republican brethren. God forbid that I
should say one word to cast a shadow upon any name on the roll of our heroes.
This coming fight is our Thermopylæ. We are standing upon a narrow isthmus. If
our Spartan hosts are united we can withstand all the Persians that the Xerxes of
Democracy can bring against us.
“Let us hold our ground this one year, for the stars in their courses fight for us in
the future. The census to be taken this year will bring reinforcements and
continued power. But, in order to win this victory now, we want the vote of every
Republican, of every Grant Republican in America, of every Blaine man and every
anti-Blaine man. The vote of every follower of every candidate is needed to make
our success certain; therefore I say, gentlemen and brethren, we are here to calmly
counsel together, and inquire what we shall do. [A voice: ‘Nominate Garfield.’—
Great applause.]
“We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I
have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, sees all the
achievements of our past history, and carries in his heart the memory of all its
glorious deeds, and who, looking forward, prepares to meet the labor and the
dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those
we lately met in battle. The Republican party offers to our brethren of the South
the olive branch of peace, and wishes them to return to brotherhood, on this
supreme condition, that it shall be admitted, forever and for evermore, that, in the
war for the Union, we were right and they were wrong. On that supreme condition
we meet them as brethren, and no other. We ask them to share with us the
blessings and honors of this great Republic.
“Now, gentlemen, not to weary you, I am about to present a name for your
consideration—the name of a man who was the comrade, and associate, and friend
of nearly all those noble dead whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-
night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years ago, whose
first duty was courageously done in the days of peril on the plains of Kansas, when
the first red drops of that bloody shower began to fall which finally swelled into the
deluge of war. He bravely stood by young Kansas then, and, returning to his duty
in the national legislature, through all subsequent time his pathway has been
marked by labors performed in every department of legislation.
“You ask for his monuments. I point you to twenty-five years of the national
statutes. Not one great beneficent statute has been placed on our statute books
without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided these men to formulate the laws
that raised our great armies and carried us through the war. His hand was seen in
the workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought back the unity and
married calm of the States. His hand was in all that great legislation that created
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