In pronouncing for the guaranty of negro suffrage at the South by Congressional law, the platform attempted to steer clear of the prejudices against negro suffrage at the North by a sort of proviso, which read, "While the question of suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of those States." This was certainly inconsistent, not to say hypocritical. Negro suffrage at the North would have been a comparatively harmless thing on account of the fewness of the negroes as compared with the whites in that section, and on account of the superior average intelligence of the negroes of the North when compared with that of those of the South. There was no sound principle in this article of the platform. It was a mean, shuffling bit of partisan politics. The party itself felt it to be so in the course of the campaign, and came out finally for the settlement of the whole question of negro suffrage upon the same basis for the whole country and by means of a constitutional amendment. {208} The nominees immediately accepted their nominations in characteristic letters, that of General Grant being short, crisp, modest and ending with the now famous sentence: "Let us have peace," and that of Colfax being more lengthy and wordy and containing a rhetorical defence of some of the more questionable parts of the platform. [Sidenote: Democratic platform and nominees.] The Democratic convention assembled in New York on the 4th day of July. It was confronted at the start with the Greenback heresy, and the candidacy of the Greenback champion for the presidency, Mr. George H. Pendleton of Ohio. This heresy was in a sentence the doctrine that all the public debt of the United States not made expressly payable in coin should be paid in United States paper, which Congress might order to be stamped, issued, and made legal tender, to any amount it might please. The shibboleth was, "the same currency for the bondholder and the plough-holder." It had taken firm hold in Ohio, and was rapidly spreading through the valley of the Mississippi. The Eastern Democrats, however, looked upon it with disfavor, and were determined to defeat the nomination of Mr. Pendleton. They were obliged, however, to accept the platform, in so far as it related to this subject, as dictated by their Western compatriots. The third plank in the platform read, "... and where the obligations of the Government do not expressly state upon their face, or the law under which they were issued does not provide, that they shall be paid in coin, they ought in right and in justice to be paid in the lawful money of the United States." The fifth plank also read, "one currency for the Government and the people, the laborer and the officeholder, the pensioner and the soldier, the producer and the bondholder." It is true that the {209} platform did not expressly pronounce in favor of an unlimited issue of paper money with which to