New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1880-05-21
THE ILLINOIS CONTENTION.

General Grant has won victory in Illinois
thus much must be conceded Still it is not q
victory of o character greatly to encourage
the advocates of his nomination, or to dis
courage In the least the opponents of the third
term scheme. He has gained what was
conceded to him from the start-what, in fact,
it was absolutely necessary that he should
get in order to enter the race at Chicago. He
has, in short, carried his State, as Blaine,
Sherman, Edmunds and Window have
carried theirs. candidate who cannot
secure his own State Is summarily dropped
from the list, in obedience to custom as old
% Presidential elections. His success, how
ever, is of such q character, and was won by
such strenuous efforts from the jaws of defeat
that it shows his weakness rather than his
strength. 1t conspicuOusly exhibits the rapid
degeneracy of his candidacy, which began
with boastful confidence of sweeping the
country by spontaneous outburst of popular
feeling, and has now got to such a pass that
his supporters find cause for rejoicing in the
fact that he has barely escaped rejection In
his own State.
The result at Springfield will provoke COM
parsons far from agreeable to General Grants
adherents. People will remember how Maine
Endorsed Blaine, and will ask what sort of O
victory it would have been for him if in q Con-
venti0n Of nearly seven hundred delegates
he had come off with only ptiful majority
of 70. They will ask, too, where Sherman
would now be as candidate if his triumph
in the Ohio Convention had been of the
proportions of that of Grant at Springfield
They will remember, also, the cordial and
20 l.
Vermont and to Window by Minnesota. From
these comparisons they will be forced to the
conclusion that candidate who cannot
harmonic his party in his own State cannot
get the harmonious support of the party in
the Nation, and is therefore not available for
nomination at Chicago. There is no answer
to this conclusion. The logic of the Spring
field figures is irresistible.
CHANGING now at the dOin0s of the Convention
at Springfield we find that the Committee On Gre
dentials made exactly the report expected from
il, favoring the seating Of a mixed delegation
from Cook County, but found an unexpected
argument to justify this action. 1t claimed
that under the call of the State Committee both
the County Conventions were wholly irregular;
that the Republicans of Cook County were
not invited to send representatives to the
State Convention, but the Republicans of
the seven Senatorial Districts comprised In
that county. Opinions will differ as to whether
this is O strained construction of the call. If
not, it is certainly strange that the two
factions in Cook County should have sup
posed they had right to hold County Con-
vention, and should have struggled with each
other at the primaries for the control of that
Convention, when in fact they had no such
right. No claim was set up by the beaten
faction that the Convention was irregular, and
the Springfield Committee OH Credentials was
able to bring out the fact, If fact it be, with
the force of o new discovery, and to use it to
deprive the anti-Grant men of nearly half
the fruits of their victory in Chicago. The
Committee fell back on the records of the
primaries and made up a list of delegates
from the several Senatorial Districts in ac-
cordance with the sentiment of the districts as
shown by those records. This skilful usO
of tochnicaIity shielded tho Committee,