When the convention adjourned I regarded the opportunity to make a successful contest against Grant as wholly lost. Greeley had been hammering the Democrats in his pungent paragraphs for thirty years, and they could have little sympathy with him, and the business interests of the country could not accept a President whose financial policy was expressed in the single sentence, “The way to resume is to resume,” referring, of course, to the resumption of specie payments, then the most vital issue. There were a number of prominent Democrats at the convention as spectators, and I was surprised to learn before midnight that many of them had decided to favor the nomination of the Cincinnati ticket by the Democratic convention. The Democrats of Tennessee led off for the endorsement of Greeley by the Democratic National Convention, as did a number of other States, but it was not until the Democratic State Convention of Indiana met and nominated Hendricks for Governor, with a positive declaration in favor of supporting the Liberal Republican national ticket, that the position of the Democratic party was finally determined. After the bold attitude assumed by Hendricks, the Democratic dispute as to the policy of the party practically ended. It was very generally accepted that the only chance the Democrats had was to fall in as part of the Liberal Republican procession. The Republican National Convention met in Philadelphia on the 5th of June, and as all the disturbing anti-administration elements had been eliminated by the organization of the Liberal Republicans, there was entire harmony in the renomination of General Grant. Morton McMichael, of Pennsylvania, was temporary chairman, and Judge Settle, of North Carolina, permanent presiding officer. The nomination of Grant was made by acclamation and with great enthusiasm, but there was a spirited and, indeed, a desperate contest for the Vice-Presidency. Colfax had been in ill-health some months before the meeting of the convention, and publicly announced his purpose not to be a candidate for re-election. Until then he had been an almost universal favorite with the newspaper correspondents of Washington, who had then become a very formidable political power, but after the announcement of his retirement his fellowship with them gradually diminished, and when later he announced that, notwithstanding his public declination, he would be a candidate for renomination, the Washington newspaper men organized and made an aggressive battle against him. It is not disputed that they accomplished his defeat, as Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, was nominated on the 1st ballot, receiving 364-1/2 votes to 321-1/2 for Colfax.