“Let me see the letter,” said the General. Garfield’s face fell. He had not the letter. Mr. Blaine had asked that it be returned because life was uncertain. “You will not be appointed,” General Brinkerhoff reiterated. Garfield walked the floor for a few minutes, and then stopping, said: “General Brinkerhoff, if Mr. Blaine does not appoint me chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he is the basest of men.” He was not appointed, but a few days later Mr. Dawes was. No move could have been made which would have crystallized so effectually the tariff sentiment of the reformers and sent them so surely toward the Democrats as this. All over the country signs of dissatisfaction multiplied. They were only strengthened by other causes of complaint with the party—the failure to secure civil service reform and the awful need of it; the treatment of the South, which had led to a strong movement, headed by Greeley, in favor of general amnesty; the delay in resuming specie payment. These specific causes were intensified by the feeling about Grant. He had utterly disappointed the hopes of those who had looked to him to put an end to the open corruption and raiding which prevailed in Washington at the time of his election, and he had become almost the tool of some of the very worst elements in the party. Dissatisfaction had become abuse, and every evil in the country was laid at his door, an exaggeration Mr. Cox ridiculed in the next campaign by declaring, “I lay the horse distemper to Grant. Run me as an anti-epizoötic candidate at large.” Between the real issues and the dissatisfaction with Grant there seemed reason enough for revolt, particularly to the Liberal Republicans of Missouri, who had succeeded in their bolt; and accordingly in January, 1872, they called a meeting of leading reformers in St. Louis. Here it was decided to put forth a declaration of principle and call a national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, in May, 1872, of all those who felt that the issues were sufficiently important to justify independent action. Among contributing causes to this movement was the revolt in the Republican party, growing out of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868, and the attempt to read out of the party the seven Republican Senators who had voted Not Guilty. The continuing proscription of the “seven traitors” offended all persons who upheld the right of private judgment and they naturally rebelled against such party tyranny.