Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[982] Convention at Chicago. I was very kindly received by the multitude attending that convention and was put upon a committee to report a platform for the party. There were very able men in that committee and men of very decided and somewhat discordant opinions.

We found no difficulty in coming together on most questions, but we divided nearly in the middle upon the question of the tariff. As I have stated before I had the strongest belief in the necessity for the protection of American labor, and I have always remained of that conviction. In the then state of the country I thought all other questions were subordinate to this one. On this question the committee remained in conference three days, and I may as well say nights. I could not agree that the Democratic party, which I supposed would be in the ascendant, could stand upon anything but the Jackson doctrine of a “judicious tariff,” a tariff to raise sufficient revenue for the wants of the country and to give American industry incidental protection against foreign labor. I was overruled and some mongrel resolution was adopted which meant anything or nothing as one chose to construe it.

The committee reported its resolution, and I made a report of the labor convention and received not so large a support as I could wish, but a very generous one. I said I could not support the nominee whoever he might be who stood upon such a platform as had been reported. I thought the nominee should be a western man, a man from a State where large American industries, beside agriculture, were carried on, and I hoped very much that Hendricks of Indiana would be the man Upon a conference with him I said I would support him if nominated notwithstanding the platform, because I knew how a man from a State like Indiana would construe it. But the delegation of the State of New York carried the nomination of Mr. Cleveland by insisting upon voting as a unit, by voting a majority, which States had not unfrequently done in the Democratic conventions before the war. I remember an instance of Virginia voting a great many times in the Baltimore convention which nominated Pierce in favor of Buchanan, although they stood eight to seven as between Buchanan and Douglas.

The nomination of Mr. Cleveland I looked upon as a victory of the free traders of New York City. The convention adjourned and