Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Development Of The Republican National NomiNating Machinery From 1864 To 1884 The Call. When the Republican party was formed as a national organization in 1856, "its mechanism was patterned and fashioned after that of the late Whig party." 1 In fact the men, who had resigned from the Whig party or the Douglas Democracy in order to enter its ranks, naturally carried with them into the new fold the practices and customs which they had pursued for years in the ranks of the old party. It was therefore only natural that, when the chairmen of the Republican State committees of Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin desired to call a preliminary gathering or convention to perfect the national organization of the then infant Republican party, they should have issued a call following the customary form adopted by the anti-Masonic party for its first national convention in 1831 and in the same year by the National Republican or Whig party and at regular intervals thereafter by the various national political organizations to summon the great quadrennial party conclave. With the growth of party organization, both the ' These words were used by General Stewart L. Woodford, in the course of an interview with the writer and are a faithful description by a living actor in the scenes of those days. manner of issuing the call and its form and provisions have assumed a regularity and system which were lacking in earlier times. The call for the first national convention ever held,—the anti-Masonic convention of 1831,—was in the form of a mere resolution of recommendation adopted by a sort of preliminary conference of delegates. Down to 1852 the call for a national convention was usually issued either by a congressiona...