On the first formal
ballot for nomination for President, Judge David Davis of Illinois, a
personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, received 88 votes, Wendell Phillips,
the abolitionist, 52, and the remainder scattered. On the third ballot
Davis was nominated. Governor J. Parker of New Jersey was nominated for
Vice-President. At first Judge Davis accepted the nomination, but
resigned after the Democrats had nominated Horace Greeley. The loss of
the candidate spelled the death of the party. The National Labor Union
itself had been only an empty shell since 1870, when the national trade
unions, disaffected with the turn towards politics, withdrew. Now, its
pet project a failure, it, too, broke up.
In 1873, on the eve of the financial panic, the national trade unions
attempted to reconstruct a national labor federation on a purely
trade-union basis in the form of a National Industrial Congress. But the
economic disaster of the panic nipped it in the bud just as it cut off
the life of the overwhelming majority of the existing labor
organizations. Another attempt to get together on a national basis was
made in the National Labor Congress at Pittsburgh in 1876.
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