In order that there might be no room for dispute he proposed that the platform should specifically say "the States as they were before 1865." To this however some of the members objected as impolitic and calculated to raise distrust, and it was accordingly dropped.
General Hampton then proposed to insert the declaration that the "Reconstruction Acts are unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void;" and the manner in which this suggestion was received is given by General Hampton himself: "When I presented that proposition every member, and the warmest were from the North, came forward and pledged themselves to carry it out." He further reported to his people that the Democratic leaders declared their "willingness to give us every thing we could desire; but they begged us to remember that they had a great fight to make at the North, and they therefore besought us not to load the platform with a weight that they could not carry against the prejudices which they had to encounter.

_Help them once to regain the power, and then they would do their utmost to relieve the Southern States and restore to us the Union and the Constitution as it had existed before the war_." This declaration received still further emphasis from at least one of the nominations to which the Convention was now ready to proceed.

The New-York delegation, which was believed to be friendly to Chief Justice Chase, had determined to mask itself for the present behind a local candidate, and it chose Sanford E.Church for that purpose.
Pennsylvania, whose ultimate design was less certain, put forward Asa Packer in the same way.

James E.English of Connecticut, Joel Parker of New Jersey, and several minor candidates, were presented as local favorites.

The first ballot verified the claims of Mr.Pendleton's friends, and showed him to be decisively in the lead, though still far short of the number necessary to nominate.