emacy. It was the outgrowth of the conflict of
irreconcilable moral, social, and political forces. Democracy had
its lot with the moral, social, and political forces of the cause
which was lost; the Republican party with those which triumphed and
survived. The preservation of the results of that victory devolves
upon us here and now. Democracy has no traditions of the past, no
impulses of the present, no aspirations for the future, fitting it
for this task. The reaction of 1874 has already spent itself in a
vain effort to realize the situation. It has simply demonstrated
that no change in the machinery of the government can be had
outside of the Republican party, without drawing with it a
practical nullification of the great work of reconstruction,
financial chaos, and administrative revolution. The present House
of Representatives has succeeded in nothing except the development
of its own incapacity."

The additional speeches delivered on the first day (which was devoted to
organization) were by Senator Logan, General Joseph R. Hawley,
Ex-Governor Noyes, Rev. Henry Highland Garnett, Ex-Governor Wm. A.
Howard, of Michigan, and Fred. Douglass.

Mr. Douglass was vociferously applauded, when he said:

"The thing, however, in which I feel the deepest interest, and the
thing in which I believe this country feels the deepest interest,
is that the principles involved in the contest which carried your
sons and brothers to the battle-field, which draped our Northern
churches with the weeds of mourning, and filled our towns and our
cities with mere stumps of men--armless, legless, maimed, and
mutilated--the thing for which you poured out your blood and piled
a debt for after-coming generations higher than a mountain of gold,
to weigh down the necks of your children and your children's
children--I say those principles, those principles involved in that
tremendous contest, are to be dearer to the American people in the
great political struggle now upon them than any other principles we
have."

The most significant event of the first day's proceedings was the
reading from the platform, by George William Curtis, of the outspoken
address of the Republican Reform Club of the city of New York.

The Hon. Edward McPherson, of Pennsylvania, was chosen permanent
chairman. The important events of the sec