to present Chase; but the Ohioans were too quick for them. They succeeded in withdrawing Pendleton and presenting Seymour himself as their candidate, before the New Yorkers knew what they were about. Seymour, who was occupying the presidency of the convention, declared from his seat that he could not accept, but the Ohioans stuck to their nomination, and the New Yorkers had to assent. They were fairly caught in their own net. [Sidenote: The nominees.] Seymour finally yielded, and the convention addressed itself to the nomination of its candidate for the vice-presidency. The ex-Confederate General William Preston of {211} Kentucky presented the name of the noted Union General Francis P. Blair of Missouri for the place. The nomination was seconded by the ex-Confederate General Wade Hampton of South Carolina, and was made by acclamation. While General Blair was a noted Union soldier of high ability and undoubted loyalty, he was a fierce enemy of the Reconstruction Acts of Congress, and was for this reason very popular with the ex-Confederates. In an open letter to Colonel J. O. Brodhead of St. Louis, written five days before the assembly of the Democratic convention, he not only denounced the Reconstruction Acts as unconstitutional, but advanced a method for getting rid of them and their effects in case a Democratic President should be elected. He proposed that the new President should "declare these Acts null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpations at the South, disperse the carpet-bag State governments, allow the white people to reorganize their own governments, and elect Senators and Representatives." He said, further, that the House of Representatives would contain a majority of Democrats from the North, who would admit the members elected to that body from the South to seats, and that the House with the President would exert such a pressure on the Senate as to cause the doors of that body to be opened to the members from the Southern "States." When General Blair wrote this letter he was being spoken of as a candidate for the presidency, and this letter was taken as the declaration of what he would do if elected to the position of Chief Magistrate of the nation. After his nomination for the vice-presidency, in his speech and letter of acceptance, he announced the chief issue in the contest to be the relief of the South from martial law and negro domination. The ex-Confederates represented it the same way at the South, and threw themselves into {212} the campaign with great enthusiasm for Seymour and Blair.