If, however, the votes of Ohio and New Jersey had not been counted in the affirmative, there was still a three-fourths majority of thirty-seven "States" in favor of ratification. And if the ten Southern communities had been left out of the computation altogether, which would have made the Union to consist, so far as that part of it erected into "States" was concerned, of twenty-seven "States," there would still have been more than a three-fourths majority in favor of ratification, with or without Ohio and New Jersey. The correct procedure, from a scientific point of view, would undoubtedly have been to have computed the necessary majority upon the basis of twenty-seven "States," to have included Ohio and New Jersey among the "States" whose legislatures voted for ratification, and then to have admitted the ten Southern communities as "States" under the Constitution of the United States, _with the Fourteenth Amendment as an already established part of it_, concerning which they had no more to say than they had in regard to any other part of the Constitution. But, however that may be, no objection can be made to the validity of the Fourteenth Amendment on the ground of the majority by which it was ratified. In whatever way we may compute the whole number of "States" and the majority voting in the affirmative, the Amendment was lawfully ratified. [Sidenote: The national conventions of 1868.] During these movements in execution of the Reconstruction Acts, the national party conventions for the nomination of candidates for the presidency and for the formation of platforms were held. That of the {207} Republican party assembled first, on the twenty-first day of May in Chicago, at the moment when its radical elements were filled with rage and chagrin at the failure of the impeachment of the President. [Sidenote: Platform and nominees of the Republican party.] It made General Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut, its presiding officer; adopted a platform, a large part of which was devoted to denunciation of the President, to the promise of bountiful pensions, and to a twist of the British lion's tail on the subject of expatriation; the main principles of which, however, were good faith in the payment of the public debt with sound money, and equal suffrage by Congressional law in the Southern communities; and nominated Grant and Colfax for the presidency and the vice-presidency.