The Liberal Republican National Convention met at Cincinnati on the 1st of May. The organized Republican opposition to Grant had its origin in the State contest in Missouri, where the Democrats and the Liberals united to efface a most proscriptive Constitution and laws, denying all rights of citizenship to those who had been engaged in rebellion. A number of meetings were held in the Western cities to organize the Liberal Republican party, and it was a mass-meeting of the Liberals of Missouri in Jefferson City, in January, 1872, that first decided to call a national convention of Liberal Republicans, and fixed Cincinnati and the 1st of May as the place and time for it to assemble. It seemed evident to all who had intelligently and dispassionately observed the political situation that the majority of the people of the country would vote against the re-election of Grant if they could be heartily united, but the elements were strangely incongruous, as Greeley, Sumner, Trumbull, and many others of the Liberal leaders had been among the most earnest champions of radical Republicanism, and had antagonized the Democratic party so fiercely and persistently as to make unity between them apparently impossible. It was only the utterly helpless condition of the Democrats that made them entertain the question of fusing with the Liberals by taking their ticket and platform. Strange as it may seem, Mr. Vallandigham, one of the most aggressive of all the Northern “Copperheads” during the war, and who had been arrested by Burnside and banished into the Southern lines, was one of the first of the leading Democrats to propose a union of all the elements opposed to Grant and unite in fully accepting the results of the war, the reconstruction policy, and the amendments to the Constitution. I attended this convention as a delegate and acted as chairman of the delegation. Of the prominent men named for the nomination, I greatly preferred David Davis, the executor of Abraham Lincoln, and a man so conservative and liberal in his political views and so thoroughly identified with the substantial interests of the country that he would have provoked no antagonism whatever from the financial and business interests of the nation, but Horace Greeley was his competitor for the place, and there was no man in the country for whom I cherished stronger affection. I had known Greeley for many years.