and became one of the candidate's floor managers. The second night featured a speech by the only living former president, Herbert Hoover, who hoped to stampede the convention to a third nomination. His address went almost unheard in the hall because of problems with the sound system. In the meantime, the Dewey campaign, faced with the German announcement that with France taken, Hitler's forces would sail on Britain, did its best to stem the flow of delegates to Willkie. Negotiations among Dewey, Taft, and Vandenberg came to nothing because none would accept less than the presidential nomination. A blaze of publicity followed Willkie wherever he went, as he caucused with delegates and appeared at press conferences with supporters, including the entire Connecticut delegation. A strong minority of African Americans still supported the Republicans, and Willkie met with a group of them, urging those delegates to visit him in the White House in 1941. Indiana Congressman Charles Halleck gave the nominating speech for Willkie on the evening of June 26, arguing that Willkie's recent conversion to the Republican Party was no reason not to nominate him, "is the Republican Party a closed corporation? Do you have to be born into it?" When Halleck mentioned Willkie's name, there were initially boos from some delegates, but they were quickly drowned out by those in the public balconies, who thunderously chanted, "We want Willkie!". Pryor had cut ticket allocations to delegations that were not for Willkie, and distributed thousands of standing room passes to Willkie partisans. The vocal support for Willkie among spectators led to complaints that other campaigns had been shorted in the distribution of tickets, but provided one of the convention's most dramatic moments. Dewey had predicted he would have 400 of the 501 votes needed to be nominated on the first ballot and he kept nothing in reserve so that he might show momentum in future ballots. When delegates first balloted on the afternoon of June 27, he had only 360 to 189 for Taft, 105 for Willkie, and 76 for Vandenberg. On the second ballot, Dewey began to slip, falling to 338 to Taft's 203 and 171 for Willkie. The losses greatly damaged Dewey's campaign, because other than the trivial losses suffered in the early rounds of balloting by Warren G. Harding in 1920, no Republican candidate had ever lost support from the previous ballot and won the nomination. Dewey