The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-07-11
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL OPINIONS OF THR LEADING JOURNALS
UPoN CURRENT ToP1Cs-CoMPTLBD EVERY
BAY PoR THR EvENINo TELEGRAPH.
Party Conventions and their Presidential
Candidates.
.F.om The ". Y. Herald.

deniiaI candidate naturally draw our attention
fo tbe clioues and combinations, the trading
and log rolling, and the chances and accidents
which in most cases have determined the
nominations of these PresideDt-makng con-
ventions, and especially under the Demo-
cratic two.thirds rule. Let us look back
little, and we shall see in this Democratic
Convention of 1865 there is nothing extraor-
dinary in its proceedings or results. IL is
only the old story of 1874 and 81 and SO
over again, with certain variations adapted to
the time.
The lines of division between the old Re-
publican and Federal parties having entirely
disappeared with the dissolution of the Fede
raj party, there was in 1924 beautiful scrub
race for the Presidency between Jackson,
Adams, Crawford, and Clay. Jackson came
out first from the people, but lacking a ma
jority vote ofthe electoral colleges the election
was thrown into the House of Representatives
when, by coalition between the friends of
Adams and Clay, Adams was elected. Against
this coalition, denounced by John Randolph as
ga coalition of the Puritan and blacllleg" !" the
Jackson party rallied at once around their
fayOrite for another trial before the people,
and in 1928, by sort of popular spontaneous
combustion he defeated Adams so sigually as
to make "0ld Hickory" as the head of the
new Democratic party, its candidate in ad-
vance for another term. Thus with the assem-
bling of the nominating party convention of
1882 there was no difficulty about its ticket
Jackson and Van BUREN,; for the popularity
of Jackson had settled his nomination, and his
will was accepted as the law in reference to
his associate on the ticket So it was with Van
Buren's nomination and election as President
in 1886, and with his nomination for a second
term in lS40. But in 1910 the financial disas-
ters of Van Buren's administration had turned
the popular tide against him, and So even as
the anointed successor of Jackson, he met with
q crushing defeat.
The friends of Van Bnren, still pressing his
claims for a second term, came forward with
decided majority of the Convention in his be-
half in 1914. Here the previously unsus-
pected power and difficulties and doubts OF the
Democratic two-thiTds rule began to be felt.
Van BuTen, by little over one third of the
Convention, was thus cast aside, and Polk,
never dreamed of before, was finally nOmi-
mated as a compromise for the campaign. The
New York Democracy supported Polk with a
sort of understanding that Van Buren, was
to have another trial in 1S4S and so, when by
the Southern slaveholding oligarchy in that
Convention Cass was nominated, Van Buren,,
assisted by Salmon p. Chase, of Ohio, and
other powerful Democratic free soiers, took
the field as a third party candidate on his in
dependent free-soil Buffalo platform Thus,
in cutting Cass out of the vote of New York
and defeating him, "Little Van" had full salts
vention and the Southern oligarchy, which had
juggled him twice out of the regular Demo-
cratic line of succession.
In 1852, as much of surprise to the party
as was Polk, poor Pierce, over the heads of
bakers dozen of old stagers, became the
Democratic nominee; in 1856, on the strength
of an alibi on the unpopular Kansas Nebraska
bill (having been absent in England at the
time of its passage), Buchanan, after thirty
years of active engineering, secured the prize
under certain skilful manipulations of the
slaveholding interests of the South by the
Pennsylvania delegation. This two-thirds
rule, in fact was the instrument whereby the
Southern shareholders dictated the candidates
of the Democracy from and after the defeat In
1S4O of Van Buren, down to Buchanan. But
in 1860, at Charleston, the Douglas demo
cracy of the West set their faces resOlutely
against the Southern oligarchy, and We know
what has followed.
So much for these 'President-makng con.
ventions of the Democracy under their two.
thirds rule. The old Whig party and the
Republican party, under their majority rule
down to 1860, were not subjected to such terri
BILE conflicts as the Democrats in their nomi-
mating conventions; but they were still largely
controlled by the chapter of accidents. In
1886 the Wings were cut up into a scrub race
against Van Buren,, the results of which
showed that upon one candidate they might
the nomination of General Harrison, when
they might have elected Clay; in 1914 they
nominated Clay with great enthusiasm, only
to have him defeated by an abolition
detection in New York; in lS4S, wher
there was another chance for Clay, they fel
back upon General Taylor, military chieftair
whose election was as proftles5 to the party a
that of Harrison; in 1852 they nominated
General Scott, another military chieftain anC
in that canvass the old Wing party died from
too much abolition. In 1854 poor Pierce
repeal of the Missouri Compromise 9TH,
Kansas Nebraska billy opened the flood
gates of a Northern reaction against slavery
and in 1856 Fremont, the Republican
nominee on the Van Buren, free-sOil platform
of l848, would in all probability have beeI
elected but for the independent opposition
Know. Nothing ticket of Fillmore Ga disap.
pointed Whig) and the indifference of the
Seward clique. In 1860 Seward was adroitly
cut out OF the Republican nomination, anC
Lincoln, as unexpectedly as Polk or Pierce
became the nominee OF his party and, as i
proved, the very man for a crisis more fOrmi
dable to contemplate and more difficult, deli
cate, and dangerous than any other crisis il
American history since the Declaration o
Independence.
Since the time of General Jackson ouI
Presidents, going through the form of al
election by the people, have really beer
chosen by these nominating party conventions
on one side or the other; and these partl
nominations have been effected by few trad
ing managers at venture, or from mere con
siderations of electioneering expediency, ex
cept in the two nominations of Clay and il
the second nomination of Lincoln. Hence
from these juggling conventions, the cOrrup
tl0n OF American politics and politicians ii