Page:Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention Held in Baltimore, July 9, 1872.pdf/3



The National Democratic Convention, to nominate candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States, assembled at Ford's Opera House, in the City of Baltimore, at 12 ., July 9, pursuant to the call of the National Democratic Executive Committee.

The Hon., Chairman of the National Democratic Committee, appeared upon the platform in the performance of his duty of calling the Convention to order, and was greeted with loud cheers. When quiet was restored he spoke as follows:

Speech of the Hon. August Belmont

, - It is again my privilege to welcome the delegates of the National Democracy, who have met in order to present to the American people the candidates for President and Vice President for whom they solicit the suffrage of the Democratic and Conservative voters of this great Republic. (Applause.) At our last National Convention, on the 4th of July, 1868, I predicted that the election of General Grant would result in the gradual usurpation of all functions of the Government by the Executive and by Congress, to be enforced by the bayonets of a military despotism. The vast majority of the people of the United States have witnessed, with grief and sorrow, the correctness of that prediction, and they look forward with fear and apprehension to the dangers which are threatening us if, by the re-election of Gen. Grant, the policy thus far pursued by the radical party can be continued. The thinking men of both parties have become alive to the fact that we are now living under a military despotism, overriding the civil authority in many States of the Union; that by the enactment of arbitrary and unconstitutional laws, through a depraved majority in Congress, the rights of these States are infringed and trampled upon, and that Cæsarism and centralization are undermining the very foundations of our Federal system, and are sweeping away the constitutional bulwarks erected by the wisdom of the fathers of the