al Committee that he was not
a candidate and that his name would not go before the convention.
President Harrison went ahead with his arrangements for renomination,
with no sign of opposition from Blaine. Then suddenly, on the eve of
the convention, something happened--exactly what has yet to be
discovered--which caused Blaine to resign the office of Secretary of
State. It soon became known that Blaine's name would be presented,
although he had not announced himself as a candidate. Blaine's health
was then broken, and it was impossible that he could have imagined that
his action would defeat Harrison. It could not have been meant for more
than a protest. Harrison was renominated on the first ballot with Blaine
a poor second in the poll.

In the Democratic convention, Cleveland, too, was renominated on the
first ballot, in the face of a bitter and outspoken opposition. The
solid vote of his own State, New York, was polled against him under the
unit rule, and went in favor of David B. Hill. But even with this large
block of votes to stand upon, Hill was able to get only 113 votes in
all, while Cleveland received 616. Genuine acceptance of his leadership,
however, did not at all correspond with this vote. Cleveland had come
out squarely against free silver, and at least eight of the Democratic
state conventions--in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada,
South Carolina, and Texas--came out just as definitely in favor of
free silver. But even delegates who were opposed to Cleveland, and who
listened with glee to excoriating speeches against him forthwith, voted
for him as the candidate of greatest popular strength. They then solaced
their feelings by nominating a free silver man for Vice-President, who
was made the more acceptable by his opposition to civil service reform.
The ticket thus straddled the main issue; and the platform was
similarly ambiguous. It denounced the Silver Purchase Act as "a cowardly
makeshift" which should be repealed, and it declared in favor of "the
coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination," with the
provision that "the dollar unit of coinage of both metals must be of
equal intrinsic and exchangeable value." The Prohibition party in that
year came out for the "free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold." A
more significant sign of the times was the organization of the "People's
party," which held its first convention and nominated the old Greenback
leader, James B. Weave