Video: 'Democratic convention in New York City 1924'

(Wednesday, July 9, 1924, 3:38 p.m. EDT) — Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom John W. Davis of West Virginia was nominated for president of the United States today by delegates at the 1924 Democratic National Convention meeting at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The longest continuously running convention in United States political history took a record 103 ballots to nominate a presidential candidate.

Davis, a dark horse, won the nomination as a compromise candidate following a virtual war of attrition between front-runners former Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo of California and Governor Al Smith of New York (McAdoo defeated Smith on the first ballot by 431.5 to 241 votes but never reached the two-thirds majority required for the nomination in the balloting).

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On the final ballot, Davis defeated Senator Oscar Underwood of Alabama 844 to 102.5 votes.

For vice president, George Berry, a labor union leader from Tennessee, led Governor Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska by a vote of 263.5 to 238 on an unrevised first ballot.

Before the finalization of the first ballot, however, a cascade of switches from various candidates to Bryan took place, and Bryan was nominated with 740 votes to Berry’s 208.

Notably, Bryan remains, as of 2023, the only brother of a previous nominee (William Jennings Bryan) to be nominated by a major party.

The Davis-Bryan ticket would oppose the Republican ticket of President Calvin Coolidge-Charles G. Dawes (nominated in June 1924) in the 1924 general election.