Dissatisfied with the Democratic nominee Horace Greeley, they held a convention on 16 August in Louisville, Kentucky; 604 delegates from all states attended.
[1] In a letter accepting his nomination, Adams provided a lengthy description of the party's philosophy: I was of those who hoped that genuine and homogenous movement in the direction of a radical reform in the administration of the General Government, and a return to the simplicity of function and strictly circumscribed activity to which the Constitution seems to me to restrict the Federal Government, might have been concerted between a large part of the Democratic Party and a considerable body of Republicans, who were known to be dissatisfied and alarmed by the course of the Administration.
There were several distinguished statesmen in that class who had debated with decency and differed with us with respect to measures rather than fundamental and essential principle, whom any honest and consistent Democrat could have followed naturally and cordially to such a path – men of tried and admitted fitness for the place.
But instead of such a man, a candidate was selected [Horace Greeley] whom no one had ever deemed peculiarly fitted for the Presidency – whom many thought curiously unfitted for it and a man, moreover, whose favorite style of controversy, as well as his cherished principles of government, rendered it almost impossible for any Democrat to support with self-respect, and whom no thoughtful Democrat could vote for without an apparent abandonment of the elementary and essential principles of his political faith.
[3] In the 1876 South Carolina gubernatorial election, the Straightout Democrats (no hyphen) were an activist faction that succeeded in taking control of the party.