next president. The first ballot showed Grant leading with 304 votes to Blaine's 284, and Sherman's 93 votes placed him in a distant third. Subsequent ballots demonstrated a deadlock between Grant and Blaine, with neither having the 379 votes needed for nomination. Jeremiah McLain Rusk, a member of the Wisconsin delegation, and Benjamin Harrison, an Indiana delegate, sought to break the deadlock by shifting a few of the anti-Grant votes to a dark horse candidate—Garfield. Garfield gained 50 votes on the 35th ballot, and a stampede began. Garfield protested to the Ohio delegation that he did not seek the nomination and would not betray Sherman, but they overruled his objections and cast their ballots for him. In the next round of voting, nearly all the Sherman and Blaine delegates shifted their support to Garfield, giving him 399 votes, and the Republican nomination. Most of the Grant forces backed the former president to the end, creating a disgruntled Stalwart minority in the party. To obtain that faction's support for the ticket, Chester A. Arthur, a former New York customs collector and member of Conkling's political machine, was chosen as the vice presidential nominee. Campaign against Hancock Even with a Stalwart on the ticket, animosity between the Republican factions carried over from the convention, so Garfield traveled to New York to meet with party leaders. After convincing the Stalwart crowd to put aside their differences and unite for the coming campaign, Garfield returned to Ohio, leaving the active campaigning to others, as was traditional at the time. Meanwhile, the Democrats settled on their nominee, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania, a career military officer. Hancock and the Democrats expected to carry the Solid South, while much of the North was considered safe territory for Garfield and the Republicans; most of the campaign focused on a few close states, including New York and Indiana. Practical differences between the candidates were few, but Republicans began the campaign with the familiar theme of waving the bloody shirt. They reminded Northern voters the Democratic Party was responsible for secession and four years of civil war, and Democrats would reverse the gains of that war, dishonor Union veterans, and pay Confederate veterans pensions out of the federal treasury. Fifteen years had passed since the end of the war, and with Union generals at the head of both tickets, the bloody shirt was of diminishing value in