The 1880 Republican National Convention convened from June 2 to June 8, 1880 at the Interstate Exposition Building in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and nominated Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio and Chester A. Arthur of New York as the official candidates of the Republican Party for President and Vice President, respectively, in the 1880 presidential election.
Of the 14 people nominated for the Republican nomination, the three strongest candidates leading up to the convention were Ulysses S. Grant, James G. Blaine and John Sherman. Grant had served two terms as President from 1869 to 1877, and was seeking an unprecedented third term in office. He was backed by the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party, which supported political machines and patronage. Blaine was a senator and former representative from Maine who was backed by the Half-Breed faction of the Republican Party. Sherman, the brother of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, was the then Secretary of the Treasury under President Rutherford B. Hayes. A former senator from Ohio, he was backed by a delegation that did not support the Stalwarts or Half-Breeds.
On the first ballot, Sherman received 93 votes, while Grant and Blaine had 304 and 285, respectively. None of the candidates were close to victory, and the balloting continued in order to determine a winner. Many more ballots were taken, but no candidate prevailed. After the thirty-fifth ballot, Blaine and Sherman switched their support to the new "dark horse" candidate, James Garfield. On the next ballot, Garfield won the nomination by receiving 399 votes, 93 higher than Grant's total. Garfield's Ohio delegation chose Chester A. Arthur, a Stalwart, as Garfield's vice-presidential running mate. Arthur won the nomination by capturing 468 votes, and the longest-ever Republican National Convention was subsequently adjourned. The Garfield-Arthur Republican ticket later defeated Democrats Winfield Scott Hancock and William Hayden English in the close 1880 presidential election.
Read more about 1880 Republican National Convention: Background, Pre-convention Politics, The Convention, Aftermath
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