" I said: "But, Edmunds,
just think of the fun you would have vetoing bills." He smiled,
and his countenance beamed all over with satisfaction at the
idea, and he replied, with great feeling: "Well, that would
be good fun."
So while, as I have said, the Massachusetts delegates, most
of them, supported Mr. Edmunds as a person likely to hold
some votes until the opposition to Grant might be concentrated
on some other candidate to be agreed on as the proceedings
of the convention went on, and while I think he would have
made an excellent President if he had been chosen, his candidacy
was never a very strong one.
This convention was menaced by a very serious peril. A plan
was devised which, if it had been successful, would, in my
judgment, have caused a rupture in the convention and the
defeat of the Republican Party in the election. The Chairman
of the Republican National Committee was Don Cameron of Pennsylvania,
then and for some years afterward a Senator of the United
States from that State. He was an ardent supporter of President
Grant and had been Secretary of War in his Cabinet, as his
father had been in the Cabinet of President Lincoln.
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