experiment which had been
successfully undertaken in the State of Missouri. The movement
assumed apparently large proportions, and for a time wore a threatening
look. On the surface it was more wide-spread than the Buffalo
Free-soil revolt which defeated the Democratic party in 1848; but its
development was different, and the conditions were wholly dissimilar.
Now, as then, there was a curious blending of principle and of personal
resentment, but the issue presented was less enkindling than the
sentiment of resistance to the aggressions of slavery. The element of
opposition in the impending schism was, therefore, not as strong at
the decisive point as in the earlier outbreak.

The National Convention of the Liberal Republicans, which was the first
public step in the fusion with the Democracy, was held at Cincinnati
on the first day of May (1872), under a call emanating from the
Liberal State Convention of Missouri. There were no organizations
to send delegates, and it was necessarily called as a mass convention.
The attendance was large, especially from the States immediately
adjoining the place of meeting and from New York. It was clear that
with an aggregate so large and numbers so disproportionate from the
different States the disorganized and irresponsible mass must be
resolved into some sort of representative convention, and those present
from the several States were left to choose delegates in their own
way. The New-York delegation included Judge Henry R. Selden, General
John Cochrane, Theodore Tilton, William Dorsheimer (who two years later
was elected Lieutenant-Governor on the Democratic ticket with Samuel
J. Tilden), and Waldo Hutchins, who has since been a Democratic member
of Congress.--David Dudley Field, though participating in the
preliminary consultations, was excluded from the delegation through the
influence of Mr. Greeley's friends, because of his free-trade attitude.

--Other leading spirits were Colonel McClure and John Hickman of
Pennsylvania; Stanley Matthews, George Hoadly, and Judge R. P. Spalding,
of Ohio; Carl Schurz, William M. Grosvenor, and Joseph Pulitzer,
of Missouri; John Wentworth, Leonard Swett, Lieutenant-Governor
Koerner, and Horace White, of Illinois; Frank W. Bird and Edward
Atkinson of Massachusetts; David A. Wells of Connecticut; and
John D. Defrees of the District of Columbia. Men less conspicuous
than these were present in large numbers from many States.--The
proporti