Dickinson, Edward B., Stenographer; National Democratic Committee. Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention, Held in Chicago, ILL., July 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th, 1884 . New York: Douglas Taylor's Democratic Printing House, 1884. [format: book], [genre: proceedings]. Permission: Northern Illinois University
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=democrat1884.html

MR. CHAIRMAN: I am here to second a candidate whose name ought to be received with welcome in a Democratic Convention. I take this platform to second the nomination of a gentleman about whose ability to carry the critical State of New York no question can be raised by the majority of the Delegation from that State, and no question will be raised by the minority. I stand upon this platform in the name of the great constituency which I in part represent, to thank the members of this body for the generous disposition which has been manifested on the part of so many Delegations, to sacrifice all personal preferences, all personal prejudice, all questions of State pride or local advantage, for the grand purpose of carrying this country for the party, and which, subordinating every personal impulse to the welfare of the party, induces them to allow the State of New York to nominate the candidate. Gentlemen of the Convention, my purpose in taking this platform is to second the nomination of a man who will fill the very purpose for which you have made so many sacrifices in all your different States. It is to warn you, lest your magnanimity may degenerate into folly, and lest your generosity may become extravagance, that I, in behalf of the minority of the New York Delegation, desire to say to you a few words which may enlighten you on the condition of the party in that State, and thereby direct your eyes to the man who is properly —

GEN. BRAGG, of Wisconsin: I call the gentleman to order.

MR. COCKRAN: Will you let me finish one sentence, only as a matter of politeness?

GEN. BRAGG: You are out of order, and you might as well stop at one time as another.

MR. COCKRAN: No power on earth can make me stop except the direction of the Chair.

GEN. BRAGG: I insist that the gentleman is out of order. The point of order I make is that he has stated his purpose to be to second a nomination; and to go into a statement of the condition of politics in the State of New York is not a part of seconding a nomination.

MR. CLUNIE, of California: Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIR: The point of order is raised. I will hear no discussion.

MR. CLUNIE: I can be heard on a point of order.

THE CHAIR: The Chair is of the opinion that the point of order

is not well taken. He is making his own argument in his own way, in making or seconding a nomination, so long as he does not make it an attack on other candidates.

MR. CLUNIE: I would remind the gentleman of what Carter Harrison said, that the Catholic Church was against him, and the claim that the labor element was against him, and the charity institutions were against him, and why should not this man discuss the same things as well as Carter Harrison?

MR. COCKRAN: With many thanks to the Chairman, and also with the gracious permission of the great objector from Wisconsin (Gen. Bragg), I will give to this Convention a few words of sincere advice. Gentlemen, there is no person in this hall who feels more kindly to the gentleman who has been named as the candidate of the majority of the New York Delegation than I do. There is no person who would be more anxious to see him promoted to the place that his merits entitle him to fill, but I am too warm a friend of his to desire his promotion to an office for which I do not believe he has the mental qualifications, and where, too, it is designed, that he shall be the puppet of the gentlemen who have managed to capture the majority of the New York Delegation. Gentlemen, why should it be necessary for the members of this Convention to invade a State which does not want the assistance of the country to settle its own quarrels? Why should there be a disposition on the part of the Democracy of this country to subject the results of this great Presidential election to the hazard of a chance, and to trust to the protestations of certain persons as to the political condition of that State, instead of following the part of prudence, and choosing from the illustrious names which are the common property of our party, some candidate whose name will be an argument in his favor, whose history will be a platform, and whose record will be an advance, and a long step in advance, toward the confidence and support of the voters of this country. (Cries of "Name your Candidate!")

I will name a man who has never been concerned in a single act which could be termed as savoring of corporate influence. I will name a man who has never prostituted an executive pen to veto a bill conceived in the interest of labor. I will point to a man whose legislative career marks the first organization of the police power of the country in checking the encroachments of a ruthless corporation, and one who, if elected to power, can never be suspected of even a disposition to prohibit legislation that will bring railroad

fares within the reach of common laborers, and make the common necessaries of life less expensive to those who are the least able to defray them. I name you a man whose hairs have grown white in the service of his country — who, as each hair has glistened with age, and who, as the hoary locks have become more numerous on his brow, has added an additional page to the glorious history of our land — whose spirit breathes out from the statute books of the United States; whose name is a word that will rally to the support of the party all those who desire to see the country administered by one who has some knowledge of the principles of state-craft, and one who will restore to the Democratic column the State of Ohio, which has been too long lost from its support. I may, it is true, Mr. Chairman, in doing this, be violating some of the rules which have been laid down for the guidance of Delegates in this Convention. I am a Delegate who can speak, but who cannot vote. The rules of the Convention have disfranchised my constituency, and it is for that reason that I appeal here to the sound sense of the Democracy, and ask them by their nomination to go before the country with some apology for the action which they took yesterday, and which resulted in the gagging of a minority on the floor of this body. The gentleman who has preceded me, and who has placed Mr. Cleveland before this Convention, said a great many things, some of which were true, and some of which are possibly due to the poetic genius which is always an essential element of the character which goes to make up an orator; but when he declared that it was necessary for the Democracy to turn their backs upon statesmanship, to turn their backs upon those who have long and illustrious lives to which to point as an argument for the confidence of the country; to regard the men who had spent years in the service of this Nation, and had served it honorably, with distrust; that the unknown and untried political quantities should be selected as the leaders and the guides of this campaign, he said to you what the common sense of this Convention ought to condemn, and what the common sense of the voters will condemn if you follow his advice. I do not intend to delay this Convention to follow the gentleman from Erie County through all the devious mazes of his logic and of his rhetoric; but I ask if any reason has been given upon this platform which would justify the distrust with which you members of this Convention are expected to view the old and time-honored servants whose hairs have grown gray in your service, or why that very service should be a reason for you to visit them with dislike and

distrust, while years of effort, years of glorious toil, years which go to make up the history of our land and the Constitutional system under which we live, are to be trampled underfoot, that an obscure man from Erie County may be advanced to the Presidency of the United States. I have listened in this Convention, I have listened throughout the corridors of the hotels, I have read all the arguments that have been advanced in the press as to why the old servants of the party should be discarded and the new ones should be advanced to the highest places of trust, and I am free to confess that I have not yet discovered one which ought to control the action of a sensible man. On this question I challenge the judgment of this Convention; I challenge the recollection of every honest and every fair and impartial man within hearing of my voice — what reasons have been advanced in support of this change of leadership? Why are we asked to take this plunge in the dark, to subject the future fortunes of our party to the hazards of a lottery, to thrust our hands into a bag and bring out an unknown number, which may turn out a regenerator and a Moses for the party, or may turn out a false prophet that it would be much better we had never discovered? Why are we asked to close our eyes and jump blindly over a precipice, and trust to the hazards of fortune as to what may be the result? Why, we are told that some one candidate is available, we are told that he can carry the State of New York, and a judicious but ominous silence is preserved as to why he ought to carry any State, and why, above all, he should be selected as the standard-bearer of the Democracy of the Nation.

Now, gentlemen, I am almost through. I desire simply to say this: when you are told that this gentleman is so available, will you stop to inquire as to the reliability of your authority and ask why he is available? We are told that he could carry the State of New York, and there are many gentlemen upon the floor who will tell you that he cannot. (A voice: Who says so?) If I did not feel to some extent under restraint myself, I would probably answer the outsider, who yells from the place he occupies by courtesy, by telling him that I am one who says so and there are twenty-four more in the Delegation who say so, and these twenty-five, I am prepared to say in the hearing of this Convention, believing that Mr. Cleveland cannot carry the State of New York, protest solemnly against his nomination, and through the medium of the press my words will be scattered all over the length and breadth of this land and will reach your constituents, who will demand of you a day of reckoning if

you lend yourselves blindly to the passion of this hour. They will be told that in this Convention twenty-five men from the State of New York, nearly every one of them representing some portion of the only ten Democratic counties in that State, said that he cannot carry the State of New York; that he is viewed with distrust by the laboring classes, whose votes are the backbone of the Democratic party within that State. Now, gentlemen, we maybe wrong, or they may be wrong. One or the other must be making a mistake, and when we reflect that there has not been one argument advanced as to why this particular candidate should be chosen except his alleged availability, and that the question of his availability itself is open to dispute, will not his nomination be a repetition of that insanity, that folly, that fatuity which has beset the Democracy for twenty years, and which, after exposing them to the experiences of defeat, leaves them now in a condition where they are threatened with repeating the blunders that have brought about the recurring disasters of four Presidential elections? It is against the repetition of that folly that I desire here to raise my voice. The gentleman from Illinois, the distinguished Mayor of this city, whose appearance on this platform was greeted, I believe, by a large recruiting of the members in the gallery to whom the doors were thrown open by the acts of his police — the gentleman from Illinois, who knows Chicago well, has assumed to speak of the politics of New York State. Gentlemen, he may know something about these, but if he does he has carefully concealed the extent of his knowledge while he was upon this platform. He has assumed to speak for the Catholic Church, as if he were her eldest son. I, for my part, regret that the name of a religious body should even be breathed whithin this Convention. To me the altar of God is a place where peace should prevail and human passions be stilled; and, as a man who believes in his creed and hopes that the vast majority of this Convention are men of a Christian type of character, I trust that the cross will not appear here to be dragged in the mire of partisan discussion, and I sincerely trust, gentlemen, that question will not be launched into the politics of this campaign, whatever may be the result of this Convention. But when the gentleman from Illinois mentions it, it is at least an evidence that there is some suspicion throughout the land that some grave religious discussion will be engendered in these contentions, which are inevitable and inseparable from Presidential contests. The man, whose nomination I have seconded, in 1875, when sectarian bigotry ran riot through the State of Ohio, when lanterns bearing inscriptions calculated

to arouse the worst passions of the human heart were being borne over every highway, and the confidence of the people in the system of common school education was being disturbed by the most violent appeals to their passions — the grand old Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, stood like a lightning-rod amid the storm, and conducted it harmless into the ground. His was the first voice that was raised amidst the commotion, and caused it to be still and peace and confidence to prevail throughout the length and breadth of that community. And it is in the hope that this question, with all the other burning questions of factional contests in the State of New York, may be eliminated from this campaign, that I invoke you to pause before you invade our New York and rush to settle the quarrels which we had much better settle among ourselves. We of one organization have no fear of a contest which we are allowed to fight hand to hand, in the place where we are known, and only protest against this disposition to invade the State of New York, without any argument to justify it, without any crime that we have committed, without any reason that we have given, and force down the throats of a portion of the people a man against whose nomination we protest; while out in the State of Ohio stands a grand, colossal public figure, which will move before the Democratic party throughout this contest, if he be selected as the nominee, as the pillar of fire moved before the children of Israel in the dark, and will light you along the path which leads to victory, and will discover to your grateful and satisfied eyes, the White House, the ultimate goal of all Democratic effort, throughout this contest. Gentlemen, there is but one more question to which I think it proper to allude, and that is the old, old cry that has been repeated here ever since we came to Chicago, that Tammany Hall had opposed Tilden in 1876, and for that reason, all these leaders in the country must be ignored, in order that the man whom Tammany Hall opposes to-day shall be selected as the standard-bearer of the Democracy. I am told that Tammany Hall declared that the City of New York could not be carried for Tilden ; but let me remind you, gentlemen of the Convention, that the boast was made in behalf of Gov. Tilden in 1876, that he could carry the State outside of the City of New York. That was the boast which was echoed right and left, east and west, up and down, through all the streets and by-ways of the City of St. Louis. It was against that boast that Mr. Kelly entered his solemn protest upon the platform of the hall where the Convention met. Now, what are the facts? Did Mr. Tilden carry

the State of New York as his henchmen boasted he could; as his supporters declared he could; as all these gentlemen who are today the henchmen of the candidate whom we oppose, declared that he could? He was defeated in the State of New York, outside of the County of New York, by 25,000 majority. It was the 55,000 majority which was given to him within that city that delivered the electoral vote of the State to the support of the grandest statesman of modern times. So that, since Mr. Kelly and Tammany hall were respectively the only Democratic leader and only Democratic organization within the City or County of New York during that year, it follows that if Mr. Kelly had chosen to fulfill his prophecy of disaster he might have done so, and that in delivering to Mr. Tilden the great vote which his organization rolled up for him, he showed that he preferred doing his duty as a good Democrat to saving his reputation as a prophet. But, gentlemen of the Convention, Mr. Cleveland is not Mr. Tilden. Let us but have a chance to name the man whose wrongs committed against himself as well as against the party have sent him into the great martyrology of the Democracy, and then all, without distinction of party, and then all, without distinction of faction, then all, without distinction of Tammany Hall or anti-Tammany Hall, will rise as one man and accept the nomination as a revelation from Providence, and the means of escaping all the disasters which threaten our footsteps. But the majority of the New York Delegation are to-day silent — silent although Lieut.-Gov. Hill declared last night in the meeting of the Texas Delegation — and I call the attention of those gentlemen here to verify the truth of what I say — that, although Mr. Tilden wrote his letter of 1880, had the Democratic Convention named him, he would have been willing to accept. And what assurance have we, if he were to be named now, that he would not be equally willing to accept? Are we to be deprived of our birthright and denied the privilege to do justice where justice ought to be done, because a few gentlemen in New York have chosen to wander away in search of false gods and to worship the golden calf ? We, for our part, are still true, faithful to the traditions of the Democracy. We are faithful to principles. We are anxious for success. Since the majority of the Delegation prevent our naming Tilden, let us name the man who stands next to him in the eyes of the country, and in the eyes of the whole world. We have been told that the mantle of Tilden has fallen upon the shoulders of Cleveland. Gentlemen, when the mantle that fits the shoulders of a giant falls

on those of a dwarf, the result is disastrous to the dwarf. The shoulders of Mr. Cleveland cannot uphold that ample mantle. The shoulders of Allen G. Thurman can fill every crease, every fold and every part of that garment. Name him, gentlemen of the Convention, to the Democracy of this Nation; go before the people with a plain purpose declared and established by your act which will give them confidence, now that you are asking them to trust you, with accomplishing a complete revolution in the public affairs of the country. Do not ask to have all the financial relations of this country, to have all the delicate questions of foreign and domestic policy, which must be disturbed and readjusted with the coming of the Democracy into power, subjected to the uncertain chances of what may happen if an untried man be chosen for the Presidency. Give us a statesman in whose life we can show to the people that reason for their confidence which is essential to success. Do not trust so much to availability, or to the mere getting of votes. Try, for God's sake, try to deserve the votes, and I am satisfied that the votes will come.

And, gentlemen, if these last few words of warning, which are perhaps to be the last that will come from New York to this Convention — if they be heeded, as I believe they will be — you will find that every element of contest will be stilled; that although we may have been divided by the wild waves of factional tumult, as soon as the gavel of the Chairman declares the nomination made, we will become calm and placid as the bosom of a lake in Summer. Though we may have been divided before we entered these halls, we are but like the countless rivulets that go to make up a mighty stream, and which, though turbulent and violent while they are flowing in their separate courses, after they have passed the point of confluence, merge together and roll their united course to the sea in a majestic tide, all powerful in its strength, and resistless in its force. So with all these various conflicting elements of the party, divided by various preferences, divided by the hostilities of local factions, I believe, I implore, I pray and I trust to the wisdom of this Convention, that they will go out of these doors united in a mighty mass, sweeping on in its path to victory, resistless by reason of its very purpose, and grand by reason of the leadership which will be chosen by the body of this Convention. Then there will be no reason to fear any religious question; then will there be no reason to fear any labor question disturbing the plans and the harmony of the campaign. The moment that the choice is made, the choice which I have suggested —

as being the best which could be chosen after Gov. Tilden's declination — I believe that you will hear but one prayer uttered throughout the length and breadth of the land, one prayer which will come alike from persons of every creed, and rise from houses of every description of worship; one prayer which will ascend to heaven with the incense that is burned on the Catholic altar as well as with the orison that is breathed to God in the severer forms of worship adopted by other sects. It will be part of the liturgy of the Episcopalian, part of the invocation of the Methodist minister. It will mingle with the prayer that the Irish maiden will breathe to the Virgin at nightfall. And that prayer coming from so many thousands of hearts will be for the prosperity of our land. The prosperity of our land is involved in what this Convention will do. See to it, gentlemen, that you make no mistake by casting under the feet of mediocrity the golden prize that should be reserved for the contention of excellence. Treat the Presidency as a garland that will crown the brow that will be fit to wear it; and it is with the humblest and most complete confidence in the wisdom of this Convention that I suggest the grand old statesman from Ohio, Allen G. Thurman, as the one upon whom its choice should fall.

THE CHAIR: The gentleman from New York, Mr. E. K. Apgar, has the floor. I desire to state that Mr. Apgar will probably make, in brief remarks, the last speech that will be heard, as I understand it, from New York, on this question. I desire to add that Mr. Apgar's voice is somewhat wearied with much use, and he requests of the galleries if they do not hear him readily, that they will be patient that he may be heard by the Convention.

MR. E. A. NOONAN, of Missouri: I simply want to know whether this is a session of the New York Delegation at Albany, or whether we are here for the purpose of attending to business in the City of Chicago. We are tired of this thing.

THE CHAIR: The gentlemen is not in order. We shall be sooner through by keeping silent.