Such declaration today sounds radical but it must be remembered that the times so far as both the Democratic and the Republican parties were concerned were out of joint and there was more or less floundering on both sides. Mr. Pendleton was attacked as having been, during his service in the National House of Representatives, a pro-slavery advocate and an enemy of the Lincoln administration. This charge was not without some foundation in fact, for Mr. Pendleton as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 1864 stood upon a platform declaring the war a failure. Despite the onslaught made on Mr. Pendleton and the generally discouraging conditions following the declination of Gen. Rosecrans to accept the gubernatorial nomination, Pendleton was defeated by a plurality of but 7,515 by Gov. Hayes. The rest of the Democratic state ticket was defeated by about the same plurality but the Legislature was close, the Democrats of the Senate organizing that body with the help of independent Republicans and an Independent Republican being elected Speaker of the House. It is notable that in 1869 Francis B. Pond, of Jefferson County, was elected Attorney-General. In 1881, as a member of the Legislature he attracted attention as the author of what was known as the Pond Law, an act to regulate the liquor traffic by imposing an arbitrary tax of a stipulated sum upon those engaged in the business, but which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court early in 1882. The principal feature of this law, however, afterwards formed the basis of what was known as the Scott Law, which was also declared invalid, and the Dow and the Dow-Aiken Tax Laws of later and of present date.

The state campaign of 1870 was not of great and absorbing interest, the chief officers elected being Supreme Judge and Secretary of State. Gen. Isaac R. Sherwood, since then a Democratic Congressman, being reelected Secretary of State by the Republicans by a plurality of 16,695. The entire Republican state ticket was elected. The Democratic candidate for Secretary of State was Judge William Heisley. The Democrats elected four of the nineteen Congressmen.

It was in the gubernatorial campaign of 1871 that the Democratic Party of Ohio determined expressly and specifically to drop some of the issues arising from the Civil War. The idea originated in the

brain of the great Vallandigham. He saw clearer than all others that to continue to combat the amendments to the Constitution, fathered by a radical Republican Congress and unscrupulously forced upon the requisite majority of the states, would be worse than futile. He clearly perceived that if the country were ever to gain its right mind with respect to negro equality or inequality, from the standpoint of suffrage that period must come after the passions engendered by the Civil War had subsided and after the people's attention should have been deflected to other lines of statesmanship.

It was on the 20th day of May, 1871, that Mr. Vallandigham sprung what became famous as the "New Departure" at a convention held by the Democrats of Montgomery County. His determination to make the resolution adopted in that convention the creed of the Party in the state campaign was early apparent and afterward successful. The state convention that assembled at Columbus, June 1, 1871, was a strong one from the start with George H. Pendleton presiding and William Heisley as Secretary. The fight on the platform which was read by Gen. George W. Morgan involved some of the ablest leaders of the Party. Mr. Vallandigham powerfully advocated the adoption of the resolutions, that, while less definite in tone than those adopted by the convention at Dayton, contained essentially what he had striven for. He was opposed by the brilliant Frank H. Hurd and Daniel S. Uhl who attempted to secure the adoption of a minority report declaring that the Democracy of Ohio would never recognize the war amendments to the Constitution of the United States as valid, because they never had been legally ratified. The Vallandigham platform, however, was ratified by a vote of 365 yeas to 129 nays. The nominee of the convention for the governorship was the late versatile and talented Gen. Geo. W. McCook. His brilliant record as a fighter during the Civil War and his distinguished career as a lawyer, justified in every respect his nomination. Gen. Samuel F. Hunt, of Cincinnati, was the candidate nominated for the Lieutenant-Governorship. Another exceptionally well qualified candidate nominated was George W. Geddes, of Richland, for the Supreme Judgeship. Gen. McCook's failing health early in the campaign necessitated his retirement from active canvassing, but such distinguished Democrats as Vallandig

ham, Pendleton, Hurd, Thurman, Hunt, Payne, Durbin Ward, Morgan and others of a wondrous galaxy of leaders bore the brunt of battle. Gen. McCook's adversary in the campaign was Gen. Edward F. Noyes, of Hamilton County who was elected by a plurality of 20,168. While every candidate on the Republican state ticket was elected the Legislature was close, the Senate being a tie, eighteen Republicans and eighteen Democrats, while the House was composed of fifty-seven Republicans and forty-eight Democrats. This General Assembly, the Sixtieth, reelected John Sherman to the United States Senate, Gen. Morgan of Mt. Vernon being the Democratic Caucus

nominee.

GENERAL GEORGE W. McCook was a member of the celebrated clan known as the "Fighting McCooks," because so many of them were soldiers and notable warriors at that. George W. McCook was born at Canonsburg, Pa., November 2, 1821, and was educated at the Ohio University at Athens, of which he was a graduate. He studied law, was admitted to the bar, and afterwards became a partner of Edwin M. Stanton, the great War Secretary under President Lincoln. When the Mexican War broke out he enlisted in the Third Ohio Regiment and came home as a Colonel. He then resumed the practice of law, was elected Attorney General of Ohio and edited the first volume of the "Ohio State Reports." At the opening of the Civil War, he was made a brigadier-General and was one of the four Generals appointed by the Governor to command the troops from Ohio. The condition of his health, however, prevented him from taking any command that necessitated his absence from home, so he organized and commanded for short periods, several Ohio regiments. In 1871 he was the candidate of the Democracy of Ohio for Governor and was nominated, but his health broke down during the campaign and he was compelled to give up the contest, yet he was defeated by only twenty thousand votes in a period when the Democracy of Ohio was not entirely a harmonious unit besides bearing the reproach of a triumphant Republicanism that boasted that it had recently saved the nation.

The Ohio McCooks acquired a popular and lasting reputation during the Civil War as the "Fighting McCooks." There were two families of them, the heads of which were Mayor Daniel McCook and Dr. John McCook.

Of the first named family nine were soldiers in the War of the Rebellion, namely, the father, Mayor Daniel McCook and his eight sons, Surgeon Latimer, A. McCook, Gen. George W. McCook, Major General Robert L. McCook, Major General A. McD. McCook, General Daniel McCook, Jr., Major General Edwin Stanton McCook, Colonel John J. McCook and Private Charles M. McCook. Another son, J. J. McCook, was a midshipman in the naval service but died prior to the Rebellion.

John McCook's sons who served in the war of the Rebellion, were: Major General Edward M. McCook, General Anson T. McCook, Chaplain Henry C. McCook, Commander Roderick S. McCook, U. S. N., and Lieutenant John J. McCook. The two families were distinguished as the "Tribe of Dan," and the "Tribe of John."

The second "New Departure" of the Democracy of Ohio came in 1872 and resulted in the acquiescence of the vast majority of the Democrats of the nation in the nomination of Horace Greeley for President by both the Democrats and the Liberal Republican Party. The Vallandigham platform of 1871 had paved the way for the acceptance of the then recently liberalized Greeley whose attitude toward the South had become greatly modified and whose earnest liberality, from a sectional standpoint, had already been shown in his willingness to go on a bond for the liberation of Jefferson Davis.

Mr. Greeley also had become more effective than any public man of his time in exposing the venality and the corruption of Federal officials who, for a time, made the first Grant administration a stench and a by-word. Along with Schurz, Trumbull, Palmer, Sumner, B. Gratz Brown, Stanley Matthews, the late Gov. Geo. Hoadly, Gov. Curtin of Pennsylvania, Salmon P. Chase and scores of others equally prominent, he had come to the parting of the ways. It was in the campaign of 1872 that a multitude of men, who had been prominent in the prosecution of the war, found their places again in the ranks of the

National Democracy. The first organization of the Liberal Republicans against Gen. Grant's reelection was formed in Missouri in 1870 where the Liberals nominated and elected a state ticket headed by Gov. B. Gratz Brown. In response to the Missouri movement the Democracy of Ohio came to the front with the "New Departure" in 1871, and in the state convention held in Cleveland, June 27, 1872, acquiesced in the program set forth in a mass meeting held in Cincinnati, May 1st of the same year by the Liberal Republicans. Over the last named convention Stanley Matthews of Ohio was the temporary presiding officer. Mr. Matthews had been an ardent Grant Republic. an, but refused to stand for the excesses and the corruption of the Grant administration. Matthews, after the Liberal Republican movement had subsided became Republican United States Senator in 1877 by appointment to succeed John Sherman who had assumed the Portfolio of Treasury in the Hayes Cabinet. He was appointed to the Supreme Bench of the United States later, upon his defeat for the Senate by George H. Pendleton. Schurz, who was permanent chairman of the Republican bolters at Cincinnati afterward became Secretary of the Interior in the Hayes Cabinet.

The Democratic State Convention, held in Cleveland, in 1872, was dominated by Henry B. Payne, John A. McMahon, Chilton A. White and M. A. Daugherty, who were selected as delegates-at-large to the Democratic National Convention which assembled at Baltimore, July 9th of the same year and ratified the nomination of the GreeleyBrown ticket. The Democratic state ticket in 1872 was headed for Secretary of State by Gen. Aquila Wiley, of Wayne County, who, at the October election was defeated by Allen T. Wickoff (Republican) by a plurality of 14,147 votes. The Democrats of Ohio that year elected seven candidates for Congress and the Republicans thirteen. As a rule the Democrats of Ohio accepted the vote cast at that time, in the October election, as a fair test of strength for the election in the succeeding November, and the Republicans being elated over the result in October, spared no effort to increase their vote for Grant which was to be cast in November. It was pointed out by Republican leaders in Ohio to their National Committee that a margin of only 14,147 votes for the Republican ticket in October still argued the possibility of