The meeting was a marvellous success for the purpose for which it was called. It was purely a Republican gathering. The crowd was several times larger than the hall could accommodate. Henry R. Selden, one of the judges of the Court of Appeals and one of the most eminent and respected Republicans of the State, presided. The two hundred vice-presidents and secretaries upon the platform I had known intimately for years as Republican leaders of their counties and districts. The demonstration so impressed the Democratic State leaders that at the national Democratic convention Mr. Greeley was indorsed. There were two State conventions held simultaneously that year, one Democratic and one Liberal Republican. In the division of offices the Democratic party, being the larger, was given the governorship and the Liberal Republicans had the lieutenant-governorship. I was elected as the presiding officer of the Liberal Republican convention and also was made unanimously its nominee for lieutenant-governor. The Democratic convention nominated Francis Kernan, one of the most distinguished lawyers of the State, and afterwards United States senator. If the election had been held early in the canvass there is little doubt but that Mr. Greeley would have carried the State by an overwhelming majority. His difficulty was that for a quarter of a century, as editor of the New York Tribune, he had been the most merciless, bitter, and formidable critic and opponent of the Democratic party. The deep-seated animosity against him was fully aroused as the campaign proceeded by a propaganda which placed in the hands of every Democrat these former slashing editorials of the New York Tribune. Their effect upon the Democratic voters was evident after a while, and when in the September election North Carolina went Republican, a great mass of Republicans, who had made up their minds to support Mr. Greeley, went back to their party, and he was overwhelmingly defeated. In the early part of his canvass Mr. Greeley made a tour of the country. There have been many such travels by presidential candidates, but none like this. His march was a triumphal procession, and his audiences enormous and most enthusiastic. The whole country marvelled at his intellectual versatility. He spoke every day, and often several times a day, and each speech was absolutely new. There seemed to be no limit to his originality, his freshness, or the new angles from which to present the issues of the canvass. No candidate was ever so bitterly abused and so slandered.