EXPECTATIONS"

("A [mud] mountain was once greatly agitated. Loud groans and noises were heard, and crowds of people came from all parts to see what was the matter. After long expectation and many wise conjectures from the by standers out popped a-MOUSE")

people in their Congressional districts, and to the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free of Executive interference or dictation.

7. The public credit must be sacredly maintained, and we denounce repudiation in every form and guise. 8. A speedy return to specie payment is demanded alike by the highest considerations of commercial morality and honest government.

9. We remember with gratitude the heroism and sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors of the republic, and no act of ours shall ever detract from their justly-earned fame, or the full reward of their patriotism.

10. We are opposed to all further grants of lands to railroads or other corporations. The public domain should be held sacred to actual settlers.

II. We hold that it is the duty of the Government, in its intercourse with foreign nations, to cultivate the friendship of peace, by treating with all on fair and equal terms, regarding it alike dishonorable either to demand. what is not right, or to submit to what is wrong.

12. For the promotion and success of these vital principles, and the support of the candidates nominated by this convention we invite and cordially welcome the cooperation of all patriotic citizens, without regard to previous affiliations.

GREELEY'S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDACY, 1872

The newly formed Liberal Republican party at its first national convention, in Cincinnati, on May 1, 1872, gave Horace Greeley its nomination for the Presidency, and on July 9th the National Democratic Convention, in Baltimore, honored him similarly. The following extracts from his two letters of acceptance throw light on the political situation of the day and set forth the candidate's views on engrossing political problems. Text of first letter of acceptance from "Proceedings of the Liberal Republican Convention, in Cincinnati, May 1-3, 1872." New York: Baker & Godwin, 1872, pp. 38-40. Text of second letter of acceptance from "Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention," held at Baltimore, July 9, 1872. Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, 1872, pp. 79-81. (See page 84.)

SUBSTANCE OF THE CINCINNATI PLATFORM

1. All the political rights and franchises which have been acquired through our late bloody convulsion must and shall be guaranteed, maintained, enjoyed, respected

evermore.

2. All the political rights and franchises which have been lost through that convulsion should and must be promptly restored and re-established, so that there shall be henceforth no proscribed class and no disfranchised caste within the limits of our Union, whose long-estranged

people shall unite and fraternize upon the broad basis of universal amnesty with impartial suffrage.

3. That, subject to our solemn constitutional obligation to maintain the equal rights of all citizens, our policy should aim at local self-government and not at

centralization; that the civil authority should be supreme over the military; that the writ of habeas corpus should be jealously upheld as the safeguard of personal freedom; that the individual citizen should enjoy the largest liberty consistent with public order, and that there shall be no federal subversion of the internal polity of the several States and municipalities, but that each shall be left free to enforce the rights and promote the well-being of its inhabitants by such means as the judgment of its own people shall prescribe.

4. There shall be a real and not merely a simulated reform in the civil service of the republic; to which end it is indispensable that the chief dispenser of its vast official patronage shall be shielded from the main temptą

tion to use his power selfishly, by a rule inexorably forbidding and precluding his re-election.

5. That the raising of revenues, whether by tariff or otherwise, shall be recognized and treated as the people's immediate business, to be shaped and directed by them through their representatives in Congress, whose action thereon the President must neither overrule by his veto, attempt to dictate, nor presume to punish, by bestowing office only on those who agree with him or withdrawing it from those who do not.

6. That the public lands must be sacredly reserved for occupation and acquisition by cultivators, and not recklessly squandered on the projectors of railroads, for which our people have no present need, and the premature construction of which is annually plunging us into deeper and deeper abysses of foreign indebtedness.

7. That the achievement of these grand purposes of universal beneficence is expected and sought at the hands of all who approve them, irrespective of past affiliations. 8. That the public faith must at all hazards be maintained and the national credit preserved.

9. That the patriotic devotedness and inestimable services of our fellow-citizens, who, as soldiers or sailors, upheld the flag and maintained the unity of the republic, shall ever be gratefully remembered and honorably requited.

ACCEPTANCE OF THE BALTIMORE NOMINATION

Gentlemen,-Upon mature deliberation, it seems fit that I should give to your letter of the 10th inst. some further and fuller response than the hasty, unpremeditated words in which I acknowledged and accepted your nomination at our meeting on the 12th.

That your convention saw fit to accord its highest honor to one who had been prominently and pointedly opposed to your party in the earnest and sometimes angry