Conventions 1876-1928

Republican and Democratic convention proceedings and party handbooks serve as souvenirs, transactions, and campaign literature. They record the text of speeches, the names of delegates, and other information useful in reconstructing the political process by which candidates are declared, by their parties, to be official candidates for the office of President of the United States. Conventions are primarily forums for party loyalists, but occasionally they provide a platform for other voices. Three-time Democratic candidate and senior statesman William Jennings Bryan addressed the Democratic Convention in St. Louis in 1916, thirty years after his famous “cross of gold speech.” Abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass, who had run for president on the Equal Rights party ticket along with suffragist Victoria Woodhull in 1872, chastised the Republican Convention of 1876 in Cincinnati for the failures of reconstruction.

Items on this page:

[Republican and Democratic convention handbooks, variously titled], 1876-1928.

Excerpt from Proceedings of 1872 Republican Convention Gift of Harold Morowitz