Senator Hoar declared that no party in history, not even that which inaugurated the Constitution, had ever accomplished so much in so short a time. It had been formed, he said, to prevent the extension of slavery into the territories, but the "providence of God imposed upon it far larger duties." The Republican party gave "honest, wise, safe, liberal, progressive American counsel" and the Democrats "unwise, unsafe, illiberal, obstructive, un-American counsel." He remembered the Republican nominating convention of 1880 as a scene of "indescribable sublimity," comparable in "grandeur and impressiveness to the mighty torrent of Niagara." During the generation after the war the recollection of the struggle was fresh in men's minds and its influence was a force in party councils. The Democrats were looked upon as having sympathized with the "rebellion" and having been the party of disunion. In campaign after campaign the people were warned not to admit to power the party which had been "traitor" to the Union. Roscoe Conkling, the most influential politician in New York, declared in 1877 that the Democrats wished to regain power in order to use the funds in the United States Treasury to repay Confederate war debts and to provide pensions for southern soldiers. As late even as 1888 the nation was urged to recollect that the Democratic party had been the "mainstay and support of the Rebellion," while the Republicans were the "party that served the Nation." At a later time it was pointed out that the party had not been founded solely on idealism; that the adherence of Pennsylvania to the party, for example, was due at least in a measure to Republican advocacy of a protective tariff; that Salmon P. Chase and Edwin M. Stanton, two of the leading members of Lincoln's cabinet had been Democrats; and that Lincoln's second election and the successful outcome of the war had been due partly to the support of his political opponents. As time went on, also, some of the leaders of the Republican party declared that its original ideals had become obscured in more practical considerations. They felt that abuses had grown up which had been little noticed because of the necessity of keeping in power that party which they regarded as the only patriotic one. They asserted that many of the managers had become arrogant and corrupt. All this helped to explain the strength of such revolts as that of the Liberal Republican movement of 1872. Nevertheless, during the greater part of the twenty-five years after the war, hosts of Republicans cherished such a picture as that drawn by Senator Hoar and Edward MacPherson, and it was that picture which held them within the party and made patriotism and Republicanism synonymous terms.