became clear that the convention was divided between the pro-Grant and anti-Grant factions. On the sixth day, James Garfield emerged as the consensus anti-Grant choice. He received the necessary majority on the thirty-sixth ballot of the convention, and Conkling moved to make his nomination unanimous. The Garfield campaign, seeking a Stalwart, first approached Levi P. Morton, who Conkling advised to decline, which he did. William Dennison Jr. of Ohio solicited Conkling’s choice for vice president on behalf of the Garfield campaign, and Conkling turned this choice over to the New York delegation, which selected Chester Arthur over Stewart Woodford. The convention nominated Arthur on the first ballot. Conkling advised Arthur to decline, but he did not. 1880 campaign During the general election campaign, Conkling conspicuously avoided Garfield, declining the nominee’s invitations to meet. When a conference of Republican leaders convened at the Fifth Avenue Hotel to meet with Garfield, Conkling left his seat conspicuously vacant. In response to entreaties from friends, he simply replied, "There are some matters which must be attended to before I can enter the canvass." This remark was widely reprinted in press throughout the North as evidence of Garfield’s weak position. Conkling only began to campaign actively after Grant and Arthur personally prevailed upon him to do so. Conkling gave a well-received speech at New York’s Academy of Music, then travelled west to deliver a series of speeches in Ohio alongside President Grant. At the insistence of Grant and Senator Cameron, they stopped at Garfield’s home in Mentor. During his entire visit, Conkling refused to be left alone with Garfield. He made four more speeches in Indiana, then returned to New York for the remainder of the campaign. Positions and views Conkling was a Radical Republican, favoring equal rights for ex-slaves and reduced rights for ex-Confederates. He was active in framing and pushing the legislation framing Reconstruction, including the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Conkling defended a proposal ordering the construction of a transcontinental telegraph to the Pacific Ocean. He also championed the broad interpretation of the ex post facto clause in the Constitution. (See Stogner v. California) Temperance Conkling was a moderate on the issue of alcohol. In 1873, Conkling submitted a resolution on behalf of the temperance movement within his district and spoke in support of the movement’s aims at the 1873 state convention, but denounced any "irrational effort" to ban alcohol as indefensible.