prepared for a successful appeal in behalf of anything like Free-Trade,
the next National Democratic Convention, (that of 1872), under the same
Southern inspiration, more cautiously declared, in its platform, that
"Recognizing that there are in our midst, honest but irreconcilable
differences of opinion, with regard to the respective systems of
Protection and Free-Trade, we remit the discussion of the subject to the
People in their Congressional districts, and to the decision of the
Congress thereon, wholly free from Executive interference or dictation."
The People, however, rebuked the moral cowardice thus exhibited by the
Democracy--in avoiding a direct issue on the doctrine which Democracy
itself had galvanized at least into simulated life,--by giving 286
electoral votes to the Republican candidate, to 63 for the Democratic,
--or in the proportion of nearly five to one.

Warned, by this overwhelming defeat, not to flinch from, or avoid, or
try to convert the great National question of Tariff, into a merely
local one, the National Democratic platform of 1876, at the instigation
of the old Rebel leaders of the now fast solidifying South, came out
flat-footedly again with the "demand that all Custom-house taxation
shall be only for revenue." This time, the electoral vote stood almost
evenly divided, viz.: for the Republican candidate, 185; for the
Democratic candidate, 184;--a result so extremely close, as to lead to
the attempted perpetration of great frauds against the successful
candidate; the necessary settlement of the questions growing out of
them, by an Electoral commission--created by Congress at the instance of
the Democratic Party; great irritation, among the defeated Democracy,
over the just findings of that august Tribunal; and to the birth of the
alleged Democratic "grievance," aforesaid.

The closeness of this vote--their almost triumph, in 1876,--encouraged