16. That fitness, and not political or personal considerations, should be the only recommendation to public office, either appointive or elective, and any and all laws looking to the establishment of this principle are heartily approved. Judge Davis's Response. Washington, February 22, 1872. E. M. Chamberlain, President of the National Labor Reform Convention: Sir: Be pleased to thank the convention for the unexpected honor which they have conferred upon me. The Chief Magistracy of the Republic should neither be sought nor declined by any American citizen. David Dayis. Judge Davis's Declination. Bloomington, June 24, 1872. Hon. E. M. Chamberlain, President of the Columbus Convention, Bostoyi, Massachusetts: Dear Sir: The national convention of Labor Reformers, on the 22J of February last, honored me with the nomination as their candidate for the Presidency. Having regarded that movement as the iniiiation of a policy and purpose lo unite various political elements in compact opposition, 1 consented to the use of my name before the Cincinnati convention, where a distinguished citizen of New York was nominated. Under these circumstances I deem it proper to retire abso luteiy from the presidential contest, and thus leave the friends who were generous enough to offer their voluntary support free to obey their convictions of duty unfettered by any supposed obligation. Sympathizing earnestly witn all just and proper measures by which the condition of labor may be elevated and improved, I am, with great respect, your fellow-citizen, David Davis. Governor Parker's Declination. Freehold, N. J., June 28, 1872. Edwin M. Chamberlain, President Columbus Convention, Boston, Massachusetts: Sir: Your letter, informing me that the conveniion of the Labor Reform party, which met at Columbus on the 22d day of February last, placed me in nomination for the office of Vice President of the United States, has been re ceived. I feel honored by the preference thus expressed by the representatives of a large and influential body of my fellow-citizens. I am in favor of all legal and just measures that tend to improve the condition of. the workingmen. I have always been a member of the Democratic party. For nearly thirty-five years I have shared its triumphs and defeats, adhering to its fortunes because I considered its success essential to good government and to the elevation of the laboring classes. Having been placed in an important public position as the nominee of that party, 1 am bound in honor, as well as by inclination, to stand by its organization and abide by the decision of its national convention. To be the candidate of one parry while supporting the nominees of another, although the two may agree substantially in principle, would be inconsistent, and 1 therefore respectfully deciine the nomination tendered me by the convention you represent. Joel Parker. The convention has been called to meet again July 30, 1872. X1TI0XAL COLORED C0XVKXTI0X. New Orleans, Api-il 10-14, 1872. [Met under call of the '''southern States convention of colored men/' issued from Columbia, South Carolina, October 18, 1871.] The Platform. Regretting the necessity which has called into existence a colored convention, and deeply sensible of the responsibilities which have been intrusted to our consideration, we hereby acknowledge our gratitude for past triumphs in behalf of equal rights, and respectfully submit our peculiar grievances to the immediate attention of the American people in the following platform and resolutions: 1. We thank God, the friends of universal liberty in this and other lands, the bravery of colored soldiers, and the loyalty of the colored people for our emancipation, our citizenship, and our enfranchisement. 2. Owing our political emancipation in this country to Republican legislation,to which all other parties and political shades of opinion were unjustly and bitterly opposed, we would be blind to our prospects and false to our best interests did we identify ourselves with any other organization; and as all roads out of the Republican party lead into the Democratic camp, we pledge our unswerving devotion to support the nominees of the Philadelphia convention. 3. We sincerely and gratefully indorse the administration of President U. S. Grant in maintaining our liberties, in protecting us in our privdeges, in punishing our enemies; in the dawn of recognition of the claims of men without regard to color, by appointing us to important official positions at home and abroad; in the assurances that he has given to defend our rights, and that while we in our gratefulness acknowledge and appreciate his efforts in behalf of equal rights, we are not unmindful of his glory as a soldier and his exalted virtues as a statesman. 4. Our thanks are due and are hereby tendered to President Grant for overriding the precedents of prejudice in the better recognition of the services of men, without regard to color in some parts of the country, and we earnestly pray that colored Republicans of States where there are no Federal positions given to colored men may no longer be ignored, but that they may be stimulated by some recognition of Federal patronage. 5. It would be an ingratitude, loathed by men and abhorred by God, did we not acknowledge our overwhelming indebtedness to the services of tbe Hon. Charles Sumner, who stood for a long time alone in the Senate of the United States the Gibraltar of our c*use and the north star of our hopes; who forfeited caste in the estimation of a large por* ion of his countrymen by his unsw^rvingdevotion to equal rights; who has been maligned for his fidelity to principles; who has been stricken down by an assassin for advocating liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof, and in whose giant body, rising as it were almost out of the grave to marshal the hosts of impartial justice with his mighty ideas, going to the farthest part of the land, and finding a responsive echo in the triumph of liberty over slavery, we have an assurance of this good, great, and beloved patriot, that he will be as faithful to the Republican party in the future as he has been unfaltering in the past. 6. Having been by solemn legislation of the American Congress raised to the dignity of citizenship, we appeal to law-abiding people of the States, and especially of those who in the days of the fugitive slave law exhorted obedience to statutes however offensive, to protect and defend us in the enjoyment of our just rights and privileges upon all conveyances which are common carriers, at all resorts of public amusements, where tastes are cultivated and manhood is quickened, and in all places of public character or corporate associations which owe their existence to the legislation of the nation or States; against the spirit of slavery, which attempts to degrade our standard of intelligence and virtue by forcing our refined ladies and gentlemen into smoking-cars amid obscenity and vulgarity; which humiliates our pride by denying us first-c ass accommodations on steamboats, and compelling us to eat and sleep with servants, tor which we are charged the same as those who have the best accommodations; and which closes the doors of hotels against famishing colored persons, however wealthy, intelligent, or respectable they may be, while all such public places and conveyances welcome and entertain all white persons, whatever may be their character, who may apply. Now, in view of this disgraceful inconsistency, this affectation or prejudice, this rebellion against the laws of God. humanity, and the nation, we appeal to the justice of the American people to protect us in our civil rights in public places and upon public conveyances, which are readily accorded, and very justly, to the most degraded specimens of our white fellow citizens. 7. That wherever Republicans have betrayed colored constituencies, we recommend that better men be elected to succeed them, and especially do we pledge ourselves to elect successors in Congress, wherever we have the power, to every Republican who voted against or dodged the supplementary civil rights bill recently introduced into the United States Senate by Hon. Charles Sumner; and also successors to those who shall not show a satisfactory record on the civil rights bill now in the United States House of Representatives. 8. That while men protesting strong radical sentiments, and elected to Congress by overwhelming majorities of colored voters, were found voting against the supplementary civil rights bill in the Senate of the Unite'd States, we honor that manly exhibition of devotion to the principles of the Republican party which influenced the Hon. Schuyler Colfax, Vice President of the United States, to honor the cause of justice by recording his casting vote as President of the Senate in favor of equality before the law as indicated in the supplementary civil rights bill as it parsed the Senate by virtue of the aforesaid casting vote. 9. That we, in the name of the colored men of the United States, repudiate any sympathy or connection whatever with the late Labor Reform convention, lately held at Columbus, Ohio, and also the convention of Liberal Republicans called for the 1st of May, 1872, at Cincinnati. ADDENDUM. Mr. Greeley's Second Letter of Acceptance. New York, July 18,1872. Hon. James R. Doolittle, chairman of the National Democratic Convention, and Messrs. F. W. Sykes, John C. Maccabe, and others, committee: Gentlemen-; Upon mature deliberation, it seems fit that I should give to your letter of the 10th instant 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 controversies of the last forty years, is essentially noteworthy. That many of you originallypreferredthattheLibera I Republicans should present another candidate for President, and would more readily have united with us in the support of Adams or Trumbull, Davis or Brown, is well known. I owe my adoption at Baltimore wholly to the fact that I had already been nominated at Cincinnati, and that a concentration of forces upon any new ticket had been proved impracticable. Gratified as I am at your concurrence in the Cincinnati nominations, certain as I am that you would not have thus concurred had you not deemed me upright and capable, I find nothing in the circumstance calculated to inflame vanity or nourish self-conceit. But that your convention saw fit, in adopting the Cincinnati ticket, to reaffirm the Cincinnati platform, is to me a source of the profoundest satisfaction. That body was constrained to take this imfortant step by no party necessity, real or supposed, t might have accepted the candidates of the Liberal Republicans upon grounds entirely its own, or it might have presented them (as the first Whig national convention did Harrison and Tyler) without adopting any platform whatever. That it chose to plant itself deliberately, by a vote nearly unanimous, upon the fullest and clearest enunciation of principles which are at once incontestably Republican and emphatically Democratic, gives trustworthy assurance that a new and more auspicious era is dawning upon our long distracted country. Some of the best years and best efforts of my life were devoted to a struggle against chattel slavery— a struggle none the less earnest or arduous because respect for constitutional obligations constrained me to act for the most part on the defensive—in resistance to the diffusion rather than in direct efforts for the extinction of human bondage. Throughout most of those years my vision was uncheered, my exertions were rarely animated, by even so much as a hope that I should live to see my country peopled by freemen alone. The affirmance by your convention of the Cincinnati platform is a most conclusive proof that not mere'y is slavery abolished, but that its spirit is extinct; that,despite the protests of a respectable but isolated few, there remains among us no party and no formidable interest which regrets the overthrow or desires the reestablishment of human bondage, whether in letter or in spirit. I am thereby justified in my hope and trust that the first century of American independence will not close before the grand elemental truths on which its rightfulness was based by Jefferson and the continental Congress of '76 will no longer be regarded as " glittering generalities/' but will have become the universally accepted and honored foundations of our political fabric. I demand the prompt application of those prin* ciples to our existing condition. Having done what I could for the complete emancipation of blacks, I now insist on the full enfranchisement of all my white countrymen. Let none say that the ban has just been removed from all but a few hundred elderly gentlemen to whom eligibility to office can be of little consequence. My view contemplates not the hundreds proscribed, but the millions who are denied the right to be ruled and represented by the men of their unfettered choice. Proscription were absurd if these did not wish to elect the very men whom they are forbidden to choose. I have a profound regard for the people of that New England wherein I was born, in whose common schools I was taught. I rank no other people above them in intelligence, capacity, and moral worth. But while they do many things well, and some admirably, there is one thing which I am sure they can not wisely or safely undertake, and that is the^ selection, for States remote from and unlike their own, of the persons by whom those States shall be represented in Congress. If they could do this to good purpose, then republican institutions were unfit, and aristocracy the only true political system. Yet what have we recently witnessed? Zebulon B. Vance, the unquestioned choice of a large majority of the present Legislature of North Carolina— a majority backed by a majority of the people who voted at its election—refused the seat in the Federal Senate to which he was fairly chosen, and the Legislature thus constrained to choose another in his stead or leave the State unrepresented for years. The votes of New England thus deprived North Carolina of the Senator of her choice, and compelled her to send another in his stead—another who, in our late contest, was, like Vance, a rebel, and a fighting rebel, but who had not served in Congress before the war as Vance had, though the latter remained faithful to the Union till after the close of his term. I protest against the disfranchisement of a State— presumptively, of a number of States—on grounds so narrow and technical as this. The fact that the same Senate which refused Vance his seat proceeded to remove his disabilities'after that seat had been filled by another, only serves to place in stronger light the indignity to North Carolina and the arbitrary, capricious tyranny which dictated it. I thank you, gentlemen, that my name is so conspicuously associated with yours in a determined effort to render amnesty complete and universal, in spirit as well as in letter. Even defeat in such a cause would leave no sting, while triumph would rank with those victories which no blood reddens and which evoke no tears but those of gratitude and joy. Gentlemen, your platform, which is also mine, assures me that Democracy is not henceforth to stand for one thing and Republicanism for another, but that those terms are to mean in politics, as they always have meant in the dictionary, substantially one and the same thing—namely, Equal Rights, regardless of creed, or clime, or color. I hail this as a genuine New Departure from outworn feuds and meaningless contentions in the direction of Progress and Reform. Whether I shall be found worthy to bear the standard of the great Liberal movement which the American people have inaugurated is to be determined not by words but by deeds. With me, if I steadily advance; over me, if I falter, its grand array moves on to achieve for our country her glorious, beneficent destiny. I remain, gentlemen, yours, HORACE'GREELEY. INDEX TO HAND-BOOK OF 1872. Ibandoned And Captured Property, amount of, Abbott, Joseph C, Senator in 41st Congress, 1. Acker, Ephraim L., Representative in 42d Con- Adams, Charles Francis, member of tribunal of Adams. George M., Representative in 41st Con- Address of National Liberal Republican Conven- Admission Of States, proposed amendment respect- Agricultural Statistics, 184. Akerman, Amos T., resigned as Attorney Gene- Alabama, Senators and Representatives in 41st Con- Alabama Claims, President Grant on, 18; treaty! Alcorn, James L., Senator hi 42d Congress, 62. Allison, William B., Representative in 41st Con- Ambler, Jacob A., Representative in 41st Con- Amendments, proposed constitutional, 38-43; Ames, Adelbert, Senator in 41st Congress, 1; in Ames, Oakes. Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Amnesty, resolution respecting, and vote on, 36. Amnesty Bills, various, and votes on, 72, 73, 75-83; Anthony, Henry B., Senator in 41st Congress, 1; in Appointment To Office, proposed rules for, 66-69. Apportionment Of Rspresentation, 1860 and 1870, Arbitration, members of tribunal of, 106. Archer, Stevenson, Representative in 41st Con- Arizona, population of, (note,) 182; wealth, local Arkansas, Senators and Representatives in 41st Arlington Estate, the, proceedings respecting, Armstrong, William H., Representative in 41st Arnell, Samuel M., Representative in 41st Con- Arthur, William E., Representative in 42d Con- Ashley, James M., bill on reconstruction in 37th Asper, Joel ¥., Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Atwood, David, Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Ayerill, John T., Representative in 42d Con- 215 Axtell, Samuel B., Representative in 41st Con- Ayer, Richard S., Representative in 41st Congress, Bailey, Alexander H., Representative in 41st Ballot, Vote By, proposed amendment to provide Baltimore National Platform, 210. Banks, Nathaniel P., Representative in 41st Con- Barber, J. Allen, Representative in 42d Con- Barnum, William H., Representative in 41st Con- Barry, Henry W., Representative in 41st Congress, Bayard, James A., ballot for the Presidency, 210. Bayard, Thomas F., Senator in 41st Congress, 1; in Beaman, Fernando C, Representative in 41st Con- Beaman, Charles C, jr., solicitor for United States Beatty, John, Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Beck, James B., Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Belknap, William W., Secretary of War, 62. Bell, John, popular and electoral vote for, in 1860, Bell, Samuel N-, Representative in 42d Congress, Benjamin, John F., Representative in 41st Con- Bennktt, David Sm Representative in 41st Con- Benton, Jacob, Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Best, J. Milton, President Grant's veto of bill for Bethune, Marion, Representative in 41st Con- Beveridge, John L., Representative in 42d Con- Bigby, John S., Representative in 42d Congress, 63. Biggs. Benjamin T., Representative in 4ist Con- Bingham, John A., Representative in 41st Congress, Bird, John T., Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Black. Jeremiah S,, ballot for the Presidency, 210. Blaine, James Gm Speaker of the House of Repre- Blair. Austin, Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Blair, Francis P., jr., Senator in 41st Congress, 1 ,• Blair, James G., Representative in 42d Congress, 64. Boles. Thomas, Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Bonds, resolution on taxation of, 37. Booker, George W., Representative in 41st Con- Boreman, Arthur I., Senator in 41st Congress, 1; in Boundary, provisions in treaty of Washington rela- Bounties, amount paid in, (note, War Department,) Boutwkll, George S., Secretary of the Treasury, Bowen, Christopher C, Representative in 41st | Congress, 2. Boyd, Sempronius H., Representative in 41st Con- Braxton, Elliott M.. Representative in 42d Con- Breckinridge, John C, popular and electoral vote Bright, John M., Representative in 42d Con- Brooks. George M., Representative in 41st Con- Brooks. James, Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Brown, Benjamin Gratz, nomination for Vice Pres- Brownlow, William Gm Senator in 41st Congress, Buck, Alfred E., Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Buckingham, William A., Senator in 41st Con- Buckley, Charles W., Representative in 41st Con- Buffinton, James, Representative in 41st Congress, Burchard, Horatio C, Representative in 41st Con- Burdett, Samuel S., Representative in 41st Con- Burr, Albert G., Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Butler, Benjamin* F., Representative in 41st Con- Butler, Roderick R., Representative in 41st Con- Cabinet Of Ulysses S. Grant, President, 62. Cake, Henry L., Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Caldwell, Alexander, Senator in 42d Congress, 36. Caldwell, Robert P., Representative in 42d Con- California, Senators and Representatives in 41st Calkin, Hervey C, Representative in 41st Con- Cameron, Simon, Senator in 41st Congress, 1; in Captured And Abandoned Property, amount of, Campbell, Lewis D., Representative in 42d Con- Carpenter, Matthew H., Senator in 41st Congress, Carroll, John M„ Representative in 42d Con- Casserly, Eugene, Senator in 41st Congress, 1; in Cattell, Alexander G., Senator in 41st Con- Cessna, John, Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Chandler, Zachariah, Senator in 41st Congress, 1; Chase, Salmon P., ballots for the Presidency, 206. Churchill, John C, Representative in 41st Con- Cincinnati National Platform of 1872, 206-208. Civil List Expenditures, annual, Irom 1860 to Civil Rights, bills to secure equality of. and votes Civil Service, proposed amendments respecting, Civil Service Reform. President Grant on, 21, 27; Civil Tenure Act, bills to repeal the, 34, 127. Clark, William T., Representative in 41st Con- Clarke, Freeman, Representative in 42d Con- Clarke, Sidney, Representative in 41st Congress, 3. Clay, Cassius M., ballot for Vice President, 206. Clayton, Powell, Senator in 42J Congress, 63. Cleveland, Orestes, Representative in 41st Con- Coal, amendment to place on free list and vote on, Cobb, Amasa, Representative in 41st Congress, 2. Cobb, Clinton L., Representative in 41st Congress, Coburn, John, Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Cockburn, Sir Alexander, member of tribunal Coffee And Tea. (See tea and coffee.) Coghlan, John M., Representative in 42d Congress, Cole, Cornelius, Senator in 41st Congress, 1; in Colfax. Schuyler, Vice President, 1, 62; ballot Colorado, population of, (note,) 182; wealth, local Colored National Platform of 1872, 212, 213. Columbus National Platform of 1872, 211, 212. Comingo, Abram, Representative iu 42d Congress, Commerce, President Grant on revival of Amer- Common Schools, free, proposed amendment to Conger, Omar D., Representative in 41st Congress, i Congress, expenses of, from 1860 to 1871, inclusive, Conkling, Roscoe, Senator in 41st Congress, 1; Connecticut, Senators and Representatives in 41st Conner. John C, Representative in 41st Congress, 2; Constitutional Amendments, proposed, 38-43; Constitutional Tribunal, new, proposition to Constitutions. State,, amendments proposed and Contracts, proposed amendments to prohibit im- Conventions, National, 203-213; Republican, 203- Corbett, Henry W., Senator in 41st Congress, 1: Corker, Stephen A., Representative in 41st Con- |