Official proceedings of the National Democratic convention, held at New York, July 4-9, 1868.: Reported by George Wakeman, official reporter of the Convention.

''JFIFC.IAL PROCEEDINGS OF THE.
Letter of Acceptance from Gen. Frank P. Blair, Jr.
GENERAL,- I take the earliest opportunity of replying to your letter notifying me of my nomination for Vice-President of the United States, by the
National Democratic Convention recently held in the city of New York.
I accept, without hesitation, the nomination tendered in a manner so gratifying, and give you and the Commnittee my thanks for the very kind and complimentary language in which you have conveyed to me the decision of the
Convention.
I have carefully read the resolutions adopted by the Convention, and most
cordially concur in every principle and sentiment they announce.
My opinions upon all the questions which discriminate the great contending
parties have been freely expressed on all suitable occasions, and I do not
deem it necessary at this time to reiterate them.
The issues upon which the contest turns are clear, and cannot be obscured
or distorted by the sophistries of our adversaries. They all resolve themselves into the old and ever-recurring struggle of a few men to absorb the
political power of the nation. This effort, under every conceivable name and
disguise, has always characterized the opponents of the Democratic party,
but at no time has the attempt assumed a shape so open and daring as in this
contest. The adversaries of free and constitutional government, in defiance
of the express language of the Constitution, have erected a military despotism
in ten of the States of the Union, have taken from the President the power
vested in him by the supreme law, and have deprived the Supreme court of
its jurisdiction. The right of trial by jury, and the great writ of right, the
habeas corpus,- shields of safety for every citizen, which have descended to
us from the earliest traditions of our ancestors, and which our Revolutionary
fathers sought to secure to their posterity forever in the fundamental charter
of our liberties,- have been ruthlessly trampled under foot by the fragment
of a Congress; whole States and communities of people of our race have been
attauinted, convicted, condemned, and deprived of their rights as citizens,
without presentment, or trial, or witnesses, but by congressional enactment
of expost facto laws, and in defiance of the constitutional prohibition denying
even to a full and loyal Congress the authority to pass any bill of attainder
or expostfacto law. The same usurping authority has substituted as electors
in place of the men of our race, thus illegally attainted and disfranchised, a
host of ignorant negroes who are supported in idleness with the public money,
and are combined together to strip the white race of their birthright through
the management of freedmen's bureaus and emissaries of conspirators in
other States. And, to complete the oppression, the military power of the
nation has been placed at their disposal, in order to make this barbarism
supreme. The military leader, under whose prestige this usurping Congress
has taken refuge since the condemnation of their schemes by the free people
of the North, in the elections of the last year, and whom they have selected
as their candidate, to shield themselves from the result of their own wickedness and crime, has announced his acceptance of the nomination, and his
willingness to maintain their usurpations over eight millions of white people
at the South, fixed to the earth with his bayonets. He exclaims, "Let us
have peace!" "Peace reigns in Warsaw" was the announcement which
heralded thedoom of the liberties of a nation. "The empire is peace," ex
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