XXIX. THE TILDEN RÉGIME ROUTED…

XXIX. THE TILDEN RÉGIME ROUTED

1877

The result at Rochester, so unsatisfactory to a large body of influential men to whom the President represented the most patriotic Republicanism, was followed at Albany by a movement no less disappointing to a large element of the Democratic party.[1588] In their zeal to punish crime Secretary of State Bigelow and Attorney-General Fairchild had made themselves excessively obnoxious to the predatory statesmen of the canal ring, who now proposed to destroy the Tilden régime. Back of them stood John Kelly, eager to become the master, and determined to accomplish what he had failed to do at St. Louis.

[Footnote 1588: The Democratic State convention met at Albany on October 3, 1877.]

As if indifferent to the contest Bigelow had remained in Europe with Tilden, and Fairchild, weary of the nervous strain of office-holding, refused to make an open canvass for the extension of his official life. Nevertheless, the friends of reform understood the importance of renominating the old ticket. It had stood for the interest of the people. Whatever doubt might have clouded the public mind as to Tilden's sincerity as an ardent, unselfish reformer, Republicans as well as Democrats knew that Bigelow and Fairchild represented an uncompromising hostility to public plunderers, and that their work, if then discontinued, must be shorn of much of its utility. Their friends understood, also, the importance of controlling the temporary organisation of the convention, otherwise all would be lost.

The result of the Presidential struggle had seriously weakened Tilden. In the larger field of action he had displayed a timid, vacillating character, and the boldest leaders of his party felt that in the final test as a candidate he lost because he hesitated. Besides, the immediate prospect of power had disappeared. Although Democrats talked of "the great Presidential crime," and seemed to have their eyes and minds fastened on offices and other evidences of victory, they realised deep in their hearts that Hayes was President for four years, and that new conditions and new men might be existent in 1880. Moreover, many Democratic leaders who could not be classed as selfish, felt that Tilden, in securing the advantageous position of a reformer, had misrepresented the real Democratic spirit and purpose in the State. They deeply resented his course in calling about him, to the exclusion of recognised and experienced party advisers, men whom he could influence, who owed their distinction to his favour, and who were consequently devoted to his fortunes. Upon some of these he relied to secure Republican sympathy, while he depended upon Democratic discipline to gain the full support of his party. If events favoured his designs and the exigencies of an exciting Presidential election concealed hostility, these conditions did not placate his opponents, who began plotting his downfall the moment the great historic contest ended. This opposition could be approximately measured by the fact that the entire party press of the State, with three exceptions, disclosed a distinct dislike of his methods.[1589]

[Footnote 1589: New York Tribune, September 1, 1877.]

Nevertheless, Tilden's friends held control. Governor Robinson, an executive of remarkable force, sensitively obedient to principles of honest government and bold in his utterances, remained at the head of a devoted band which had hitherto found its career marked by triumph after triumph, and whose influence was still powerful enough to rally to its standard new men of strength as well as old leaders flushed with recent victories. Robinson's courageous words especially engaged the attention of thoughtful Democrats. He did not need to give reasons for the opposition to John Bigelow, or the grievance against Charles S. Fairchild, whose court docket sufficiently exposed the antagonism between canal contractors and the faithful prosecutor. But in his fascinating manner he told the story of the Attorney-General's heroic firmness in refusing to release Tweed.[1590] In Robinson's opinion the vicious classes, whose purposes discovered themselves in the depredations of rings and weakness for plunder, were arrayed against the better element of the party which had temporarily deprived the wrong-doers of power, and he appealed to his friends to rescue administrative reform from threatened defeat.

[Footnote 1590: "The man who has been the most effective organiser of corruption strikes boldly for release. He is arrayed as an element in the combination which attacks the Governor and Democratic State officers, and which seeks to reverse their policy."--Albany Argus, October 4, 1877.]

The Governor was not unmindful of his weakness. Besides Tilden's loss of prestige, the renomination of the old ticket encountered the objection of a third term, aroused the personal antagonism of hundreds of men who had suffered because of its zeal, and arrayed against it all other influences that had become hostile to Tilden through envy or otherwise during his active management of the party. Moreover, he understood the cunning of John Kelly and the intrigue of his lieutenants. Knowing that contesting delegations excluded precincts from taking part in the temporary organisation, these men had sought to weaken Tilden by creating fictitious contests in counties loyal to him, thus offsetting John Morrissey's contest against Tammany. It was a desperate struggle, and the only gleam of light that opened a way to Tilden's continued success came from the action of the State Committee, which gave David B. Hill of Chemung 19 votes for temporary chairman to 14 for Clarkson N. Potter of New York. The victory, ordinarily meaning the control of the Committee on Credentials, restored hope if not confidence.

Hill was the friend of Robinson. Although his name had not then become a household word, he was by no means unknown throughout the State. He had come into public life as city attorney in 1864 at the age of twenty-one, and had shown political instincts for the most part admirable. Of those to go to the Assembly in 1871 to aid in the work of judicial purification, Hill was suggested by O'Conor and Tilden as one of the trustworthy lawyers, and in February, 1872, when the legislative committee began its investigation into the charges presented by the Bar Association against Judges Barnard, Cardozo, Ingraham, and McCunn with a view to their impeachment, Hill sat by the side of Tilden. It was recognised that he belonged to the coterie of able men who stood at the front of the reform movement.

His personal habits, too, commended him. He seems to have been absolved from the love of wine, and if the love of a good woman did not win him, he created a substantial home among his books, and worked while others feasted. He talked easily, he learned readily, and with the earnestness of one who inherited an ambition for public life he carefully equipped himself for a political as well as a professional career. He had a robust, straightforward nature. Men liked his courage, his earnestness, his effectiveness as a debater, and his declared purposes which were thoroughly in unison with the spirit of his party. But it was his boldness, tempered with firmness, which justified Robinson in singling him out for chairman. Still, the courage exhibited as a presiding officer in one of the stormiest conventions that ever assembled in the Empire State did not win him distinction.

The Kelly opposition raised no question of principle. The platform denounced the defeat of Tilden as due to fraud, applauded Hayes for his Southern policy, declared for reapportionment of the State, and bitterly assailed railroad subsidies. But it had no words of unkindness for Tilden and Robinson. Indeed, with a most sublime display of hypocrisy, Kelly pointed with pride to the fruits of their administrations, made illustrious by canal reforms, economy, and the relentless prosecution of profligate boards and swindling contractors, and vied with the apostles of administrative reform in calling them "fearless" and "honest," and in repudiating the suggestion of desiring other directing spirits. His only issue involved candidates. Should it be the old ticket or a new one? Should it be Bigelow for a third term, or Beach, the choice of the ring? In opposing the old ticket several delegates extended their hostility only to Bigelow; others included the attorney-general. Only a few demanded an entire change. But Tammany and the Canal ring tactfully combined these various elements with a skill never before excelled in a State convention. Their programme, sugar-coated with an alleged affection for Tilden, was arranged to satisfy the whim of each delegate, while Robinson's policy, heavily freighted with well doing, encountered the odium of a third-term ticket.

Nevertheless, the Governor's control of the chairmanship assured him victory unless Hill yielded too much. But Kelly was cunning and quick. After accepting Hill without dissent, he introduced a resolution providing that the convention select the committee on contested seats. To appoint this committee was the prerogative of the chairman, and Hill, following Cornell's bold ruling in 1871, could have refused to put the motion. When he hesitated delegates sprang to their feet and enthroned pandemonium.[1591] During the cyclone of epithets and invective John Morrissey for the last time opposed John Kelly in a State convention. His shattered health, which had already changed every lineament of a face that successfully resisted the blows of Yankee Sullivan and John C. Heenan, poorly equipped him for the prolonged strain of such an encounter, but he threw his envenomed adjectives with the skill of a quoit-pitcher.

[Footnote 1591: "How the Kelly faction got control of the Democratic convention and used it for the supposed benefit of Kelly is hardly worth trying to tell. A description of the intrigues of a parcel of vulgar tricksters is neither edifying nor entertaining reading."--The Nation, October 11, 1877.]

Distributed about the hall were William Purcell, DeWitt C. West, George M. Beebe, John D. Townsend, and other Tammany talkers, who had a special aptitude for knockdown personalities which the metropolitan side of a Democratic convention never failed to understand. Their loud voices, elementary arguments, and simple quotations neither strained the ears nor puzzled the heads of the audience, while their jibes and jokes, unmistakable in meaning, sounded familiar and friendly. Townsend, a lawyer of some prominence and counsel for Kelly, was an effective and somewhat overbearing speaker, who had the advantage of being sure of everything, and as he poured out his eloquence in language of unmeasured condemnation of Morrissey, he held attention if he did not enlighten with distracting novelty.

Morrissey admitted he was wild in his youth, adding in a tone of sincere penitence that if he could live his life over he would change many things for which he was very sorry. "But no one, not even Tweed who hates me," he exclaimed, pointing his finger across the aisle in the direction of Kelly, "ever accused me of being a thief." Morrissey's grammar was a failure. He clipped his words, repeated his phrases, and lacked the poise of a public speaker, but his opponents did not fail to understand what he meant. His eloquence was like that of an Indian, its power being in its sententiousness, which probably came from a limited vocabulary.

At the opening of the convention Robinson's forces had a clear majority,[1592] but in the presence of superior generalship, which forced a roll-call before the settlement of contests, Tammany and the Canal ring, by a vote of 169 to 114, passed into control. To Tilden's friends it came as the death knell of hope, while their opponents, wild with delight, turned the convention into a jubilee. "This is the first Democratic triumph in the Democratic party since 1873," said Jarvis Lord of Monroe. "It lets in the old set."[1593]

[Footnote 1592: New York Tribune, October 4, 1877.]

[Footnote 1593: New York Tribune, October 4.

"The defeat of Bigelow and Fairchild will be the triumph of the reactionists who think that the golden era of the State was in the days before thieves were chastised and driven out of the Capital and State House."--Albany Argus, October 4, 1877.]

The adoption of the Credentials Committee's report seated Tammany, made Clarkson N. Potter permanent chairman, and turned over the party machine. Pursuing their victory the conquerors likewise nominated a new ticket.[1594] Quarter was neither asked nor offered. Robinson had squarely raised the issue that refusal to continue the old officials would be repudiation of reform, and his friends, as firmly united in defeat as in victory, voted with a calm indifference to the threats of the allied power of canal ring and municipal corruptionists. Indeed, their boast of going down with colours flying supplemented the vigorous remark of the Governor that there could be no compromise with Tweed and canal thieves.[1595]

[Footnote 1594: Secretary of State, Allen C. Beach, Jefferson; Comptroller, Frederick P. Olcott, Albany; Treasurer, James Mackin, Dutchess; Attorney-General, Augustus Schoonmaker, Jr., Ulster; Engineer, Horatio Seymour, Jr., Oneida.

On October 6, a convention of Labor Reformers, held at Troy, nominated a State ticket with John J. Junio for Secretary of State. The Prohibition and Greenback parties also nominated State officers, Henry Hagner and Francis E. Spinner being their candidates for secretary of state. The Social Democrats likewise presented a ticket with James McIntosh at its head.]

[Footnote 1595: New York Tribune, October 4.]

This apparently disastrous result encouraged the hope that Republicans, in spite of Conkling's indiscretion at Rochester, might profit by it as they did in 1871. Upon the surface Republican differences did not indicate bitterness. Except in the newspapers no organised opposition to the Senator had appeared, and the only mass meeting called to protest against the action of the Rochester convention appealed for harmony and endorsed the Republican candidates.[1596] Even Curtis, the principal speaker, although indulging in some trenchant criticism, limited his remarks to a defence of the Administration. Nevertheless, the presence of William J. Bacon, congressman from the Oneida district, who voiced an intense admiration for the President and his policies, emphasised the fact that the Senator's home people had elected a Hayes Republican. Indeed, the Senator deemed it essential to establish an organ, and in October (1877) the publication of the Utica Republican began under the guidance of Lewis Lawrence, an intimate friend. It lived less than two years, but while it survived it reflected the thoughts and feelings of its sponsor.[1597]

[Footnote 1596: This meeting was held in New York City on October 10. See New York papers of the 11th.]

[Footnote 1597: "The Utica Republican is an aggressive sheet. It calls George William Curtis 'the Apostle of Swash.'"--New York Tribune, October 27.]

The campaign presented several confusing peculiarities. Governor Robinson in his letter to a Tammany meeting refused to mention the Democratic candidates, and Tilden, after returning from Europe, expressed the belief in his serenade speech that "any nominations that did not promise coöperation in the reform policy which I had the honour to inaugurate and which Governor Robinson is consummating will be disowned by the Democratic masses."[1598] This was a body-blow to the Ring. Its well-directed aim also struck the ticket with telling effect, for its election involved the discontinuance of Fairchild's spirited canal prosecutions. On the other hand, the adoption of the recent amendment, substituting for the canal commission a superintendent of public works to be appointed by the Governor, made the election of Olcott and Seymour especially desirable, since it would give Robinson and his reforms stronger support than Tilden had in the State board. Yet it could not be denied that the success of the Albany ticket would be construed as a defeat of Tilden's ascendency.

[Footnote 1598: Ibid., November 2.]

Similar confusion possessed the Republican mind. A large body of men, resenting the Rochester convention's covert condemnation of the President's policies, hesitated to vote for candidates whose victory would be attributed to Republican opposition to the Administration. This singular political situation made a very languid State campaign. An extra session of Congress called Conkling to Washington, Tilden retired to Gramercy Park, the German-Independent organisation limited its canvass to the metropolis, and the candidates of neither ticket got a patient hearing. Other causes contributed to the Republican dulness. Old leaders became inactive and government officials refused to give money because of their interpretation of the President's civil service order, while rawness and indifference made newer leaders inefficient. After the October collapse in Ohio conditions became hopelessly discouraging.[1599] The tide set more heavily in favour of the Democracy, and each discordant Republican element, increasing its distrust, practically ceased work lest the other profit by it.

[Footnote 1599: Democrats elected a governor by 22,520 plurality and carried the Legislature by forty on joint ballot.--Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1877, p. 621.]

Nevertheless, the hunt for State senators, involving the election of a United States Senator in 1879, provoked animated contests which centred about the candidacy of John Morrissey, whom Republicans and the combined anti-Tammany factions backed with spirit. Morrissey had carried the Tweed district for senator in 1874, and the taunt that no other neighbourhood would elect a notorious gambler and graduate of the prize-ring goaded him into opposing Augustus Schell in one of the fashionable districts of the metropolis. Schell had the advantage of wealth, influence, long residence in the precinct, and the enthusiastic support of Kelly, who turned the contest into a battle for the prestige of victory. For the moment the fierceness of the fight excited the hopes of Republicans that the State might be carried, and to spread the influence of the warring Democratic factions into all sections of the commonwealth, Republican journals made a combined attack upon Allen C. Beach.

Like Sanford E. Church, Beach was a courteous, good-natured politician, who tried to keep company with a canal ring and keep his reputation above reproach. But his character did not refine under the tests imposed upon it. His policy of seeming to know nothing had resulted in doubling the cost of canal repairs during his four years in office. A careful analysis of his record showed that only once did he vote against the most extravagant demands of the predatory contractors. This did not prove him guilty of corruption, "but when as the steady servant of the canal ring," it was asked, "he voted thousands and thousands of dollars, sometimes at the rate of a hundred thousand a day, into the pockets of men whom he knew to be thieves, and on claims which he must have known were full of fraud, was he not lending himself to corruption?"[1600] This charge his opponents circulated through many daily and scores of weekly papers, making the weakness of his character appear more objectionable.

[Footnote 1600: New York Tribune, November 3, 1877.]

To these attacks Beach affected an indifference which he did not really feel, for the pride of a candidate who desires the respect of his neighbours is not flattered by their distrust of his integrity. Church had felt the iron enter his soul, and had Tilden and the reformers rearoused the moral awakening that refused to tolerate the Chief Justice in 1874, Beach must have fallen the victim of his partiality to a coterie of political associates willing to benefit at the expense of his ruin. As it was he received a plurality of 11,000, while Seymour and Olcott, his associates upon the ticket, obtained 35,000 and 36,000 respectively.[1601]

[Footnote 1601: Total vote of John J. Junio (Labour Reformer), 20,282; Henry Hagner (Prohibitionist), 7,230; John McIntosh (Social Democrat), 1,799; Francis E. Spinner (Greenback), 997.--Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1877, p. 566.]

The election of State senators in which Conkling had so vital an interest exhibited the work of influential Hayes Republicans, who, openly desiring his destruction, defeated his candidates in Brooklyn, Rochester, and Utica.[1602] Nevertheless, by carrying eighteen of the thirty-two districts he saved fighting ground for himself in the succeeding year.[1603] Indeed, he was able to point to the popular vote and declare that he was as strong in New York as the President was in Ohio. It was known, too, that if Morrissey survived, the Senator would profit by the prize-fighter's remarkable majority of nearly 4,000 over Augustus Schell, a victory which ranked as the crowning achievement of the senatorial campaign.[1604] But Morrissey, prostrated by his exertions, did not live to reciprocate. He spent the winter in Florida and the early spring in Saratoga. Finally, after the loss of speech, his right arm, which had so severely punished Yankee Sullivan, became paralysed, and on May 1 (1878) Lieutenant-governor Dorsheimer announced his death to the Senate. "It is doubtful," added a colleague in eulogy, "if such boldness and daring in political annals were ever shown as he displayed in his last canvass."[1605]

[Footnote 1602: "We elected our district attorney by 2,336 majority, but the candidate for State senator, who was known to represent Senator Conkling, although personally popular and most deserving, was beaten by 1,133.... It is fair to say that the unpopularity of the federal office-holders, who are Mr. Conkling's most zealous supporters, is in part the cause of this remarkable result." Interview of Ellis H. Roberts.--New York Tribune, November 10, 1877.

"The energies of all the opposition to me were concentrated upon that district. I believe Tammany and the lofty coterie of Republican gentlemen in this city (New York) threw money into my district to carry it against me.... Had we been sufficiently aroused and sagacious we could have defeated this manoeuvre, but we found out too late. We sent the tickets to the polls, in the ward in which I live, at daylight, as did the Democrats. Not one of our tickets was found at the polls. They were all thrown into the canal." Interview with Conkling.--New York Herald, November 9, 1877.]

[Footnote 1603: The Legislature of 1878 had in the Senate: 18 Republicans, 13 Democrats, 1 Independent; in the Assembly: 66 Republicans, 61 Democrats, 1 Independent.]

[Footnote 1604: Tammany elected its entire county ticket. Its majority for the State ticket was 30,520.]

[Footnote 1605: New York Times, May 2, 1878.]

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XXX. GREENBACKERS SERVE REPUBLICANS

1878

While Democrats rejoiced over their victory in 1877, a new combination, the elements of which had attracted little or no attention, was destined to cause serious disturbance. Greenbackism had not invaded New York in 1874-5, when it flourished so luxuriantly in Ohio, Indiana, and other Western States. Even after the party had nominated Peter Cooper for President in 1876, it polled in the Empire State less than 1,500 votes for its candidate for governor, and in 1877, having put Francis E. Spinner, the well-known treasurer of the United States, at the head of its ticket, its vote fell off to less than 1,000.

Meantime the labour organisations, discontented because of long industrial inaction, had formed a Labour Reform party. This organisation gradually increased its strength, until, in 1877, it polled over 20,000 votes. Encouraged by success its leaders held a convention at Toledo, Ohio, on February 22 (1878), and resolved to continue the Cooper movement. It resented the resumption of specie payment, favoured absolute paper money, and demanded payment of the public debt in greenbacks. On May 10 the executive council, calling themselves Nationalists, coalesced with the Greenbackers, and issued a call for a National Greenback Labour Reform convention to assemble at Syracuse on July 25. This sudden extension of the movement attracted widespread attention, and although the convention was marked by great turbulence and guided by inconspicuous leaders, it seemed as if by magic to take possession of a popular issue which gathered about its standard thousands of earnest men. Gideon J. Tucker, a former Democratic secretary of state, who had led the Americans in 1859, was nominated for judge of the Court of Appeals. To its platform it added declarations favouring a protective tariff and excluding the Chinese.

The treatment of the Greenback question earlier in the year by the older parties had materially strengthened the Nationalists. Democratic conventions distinctly favoured their chief issue, and Republicans employed loose and vague expressions. So accomplished and experienced a politician as Thurlow Weed complimented the bold declarations of Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, who had left the Republicans to become the independent leader of a vast mass of voters that accepted his Greenback theories and joined in his sneers at honest money. Republican congressmen, returning from Washington, told how their party held Greenback views and why Greenbackers ought to support it. The Secretary of the Republican Congressional Committee practically announced himself a Greenback Republican, and Blaine's position seemed equivocal. During the entire financial debate in Congress, Conkling said nothing to mould public opinion upon the question of sound money, while the Utica Republican, his organ, thought it a "mistake to array the Republican party, which originated the Greenback, as an exclusively hard-money party.... It is not safe or wise to make the finances a party question."[1606] As late as July 30, the evening preceding the Maine convention, Blaine objected to the phrase "gold or its equivalent," preferring the word "coin," which subsequently appeared in the platform.

[Footnote 1606: The Utica Republican, July 1, 1878.]

The election in Maine, hailed with joy by every organ of the Greenback movement, showed how profound was the political disturbance. The result made it plain that the chief political issue was one of common honesty, and that an alliance of Democratic and Greenback interests threatened Republican ascendency. In the presence of such danger Republican leaders, recognising that harmony could alone secure victory, called a State convention to meet at Saratoga on September 26. As the time for this important event approached the impression deepened that real harmony must rest upon an acceptance of the President's plea for honest money and the honest payment of the nation's bonds. The word "coin" seemed insufficient, since both coin and currency should be kept at par with gold, and although this would make Republicans "an exclusively hard-money party," which Conkling's organ characterised as a "mistake," the common danger proved a sufficient magnet to unite the two factions on a platform declaring that national pledges should be redeemed in letter and spirit, that there should be no postponement of resumption, and that permanent prosperity could rest alone on the fixed monetary standard of the commercial world.

To further exclude just cause of offence Conkling, in accepting the chairmanship of the convention, broke his long silence upon the currency question, and without sarcasm or innuendo honoured the President by closely following the latter's clear, compact, and convincing speeches on hard money. George William Curtis led in the frequent applause. Speaking of convention harmony the Times declared that during the address "there seemed to be something in the air which made children of strong men. Many of the delegates were affected to tears."[1607] Curtis also stirred genuine enthusiasm. He had not been captious as to the form of the platform. To him it sufficed if the convention keyed its resolutions to the President's note for sound money, which had become the Administration's chief work, and although the spectacle of Curtis applauding and supplementing Conkling's speech seemed as marvellous as it was unexpected, it did not appear out of place. Indeed, the environment at Saratoga differed so radically from conditions at Rochester that it required a vivid fancy to picture these men as the hot combatants of the year before. The brilliant, closely packed Rochester audience, the glare of a hundred gas jets, and an atmosphere surcharged with intense hostility, had given place to gray daylight, a sullen sky, and a morning assemblage tempered into harmony by threatened danger. The absence of the picturesque greatly disappointed the audience. The labour of reading a speech from printed proofs marred Conkling's oratory, and Curtis' effort to compliment the President without arousing resentment spoiled the rhetorical finish that usually made his speeches enjoyable. But the prudence of the speakers and the cordial reception of the platform proved thoroughly acceptable to the delegates, who nominated George F. Danforth for the Court of Appeals and then separated with the feeling that the State might be redeemed.[1608]

[Footnote 1607: New York Times (correspondence), September 27.]

[Footnote 1608: A single roll-call resulted as follows: George F. Danforth, Monroe, 226; Joshua M. Van Cott, Kings, 99; George Parsons, Westchester, 79. The Prohibition State convention, which assembled at Albany on April 24, had nominated Van Cott.]

Meanwhile the Democratic State convention which assembled at Syracuse on September 25 became more violent and boisterous than its predecessor. Confident of defeat unless Tammany participated in the preliminary organisation, John Kelly, through his control of the State Committee, secured Albert P. Laning of Erie for temporary chairman. Laning ruled that the roll of delegates as made up by the State committee should be called except those from New York and Kings, and as to these he reserved his decision. In obedience thereto the vote of uncontested delegations stood 132 to 154 in favour of Tilden and Robinson, whereas the admission of Tammany and Kings would make it 181 to 195 in favour of Kelly. Would the chair include these contested delegations in the roll-call? To admit one side and exclude the other before the settlement of a contest was a monstrous proposition. The history of conventions did not furnish a supporting precedent. Nevertheless, Laning, wishing to succeed Dorsheimer as lieutenant-governor in 1879 and relying upon Tammany to nominate and elect him, had evidenced a disposition to rule in the Boss's favour, and when, at last, he did so, the angry convention sprang to its feet. For three hours it acted like wild men.[1609] Under a demand for the previous question Laning refused to recognise the Tilden delegates, and the latter's tumult drowned the voice of the chair. Finally, physical exhaustion having restored quiet, Kings County declined to vote and Tammany was added without being called. This left the result 154 to 195 in favour of John Kelly. An hour later Laning, hissed and lampooned, left the convention unthanked and unhonoured.

[Footnote 1609: "The Democratic convention at Syracuse was perhaps the noisiest, most rowdy, ill-natured, and riotous body of men which ever represented the ruling party of a great Commonwealth."--The Nation, October 3.]

But having gotten into the convention Tammany found it had not gotten into power. The Tilden forces endorsed Robinson's administration, refused to dicker with Greenbackers, whom Kelly was suspected of favouring, and assuaged their passion by nominating George B. Bradley of Steuben for the Court of Appeals. While Tammany was looking for votes to get in on, it bargained with St. Lawrence to support William H. Sawyer, whose success seemed certain. On the second ballot, however, Bradley's vote ran up to 194, while Sawyer's stopped at 183. This left Kelly nothing but a majority of the State committee, which was destined, in the hour of great need, to be of little service.

Throughout the State the several parties put local candidates in the field. The Greenbackers, exhibiting the activity of a young and confident organisation, uniformly made congressional and legislative nominations. In one congressional district they openly combined with the Democrats, and in several localities their candidates announced an intention of coöperating with the Democratic party. In the metropolis the various anti-Tammany factions supported independent candidates for Congress and combined with Republicans in nominating a city ticket with Edward Cooper for mayor.[1610] Kelly, acting for Tammany, selected Augustus Schell. This alignment made the leaders of the combined opposition sanguine of victory. It added also to the confidence of Republicans that the Greenbackers were certain to draw more largely from the ranks of the Democrats.

[Footnote 1610: Cooper had resigned from Tammany in 1877.]

The difference between the Syracuse and Saratoga platforms was significant. Democrats declared "gold and silver, and paper convertible into coin at the will of the holder, the only currency of the country."[1611] Convertible into what kind of coin? it was asked. Coin of depreciated value, or the fixed monetary standard of the commercial world? The Nation thought "this platform not noticeable for strength or directness of statement."[1612] The Republican plank was clearer. "We insist that the greenback shall be made as good as honest coin ... that our currency shall be made the best currency, by making all parts of it, whether paper or coin, equivalent, convertible, secure, and steady."[1613] As the campaign advanced a resistless tendency to force the older parties into the open made it plain that if the Democrats did not say just what they meant, the Republicans meant more than they said, for their speakers and the press uniformly declared that the greenback, which had carried the country triumphantly through the war, must be made as good as gold. Meantime the Democratic leaders realised that "fiat" money had a strange fascination for many of their party.

[Footnote 1611: Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1878, p. 624.]

[Footnote 1612: The Nation, October 3.]

[Footnote 1613: Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1878, p. 623.]

To add to Democratic embarrassment the Tribune, in the midst of the canvass, began its publication of the cipher despatches which had passed between Tilden's personal friends and trusted associates during the closing and exciting months of 1876.[1614] The shameful story, revealed by the Tribune's discovered key to the cipher, made a profound impression. As shown elsewhere the important telegrams passed between Manton Marble and Smith M. Weed on one side, and Henry Havermeyer and William T. Pelton, Tilden's nephew, on the other.[1615] Marble had called McLin of the Florida board an "ague-smitten pariah" for having charged him with attempted bribery, but these translated telegrams corroborated McLin. Moreover, notwithstanding Tilden's comprehensive and explicit denial, it sorely taxed the people's faith to believe him disconnected with the correspondence, since the corrupt bargaining by which he was to profit was carried on in his own house by a nephew, who, it was said, would scarcely have ventured on a transaction so seriously affecting his uncle's reputation without the latter's knowledge. "Of their [telegrams] effect in ruining Mr. Tilden's fortunes, or what was left of them," said the Nation, "there seems no doubt."[1616] Whatever of truth this prophecy contained, the revelation of the cipher despatches greatly strengthened the Republican party and brought to a tragic end Clarkson N. Potter's conspicuous failure to stain the President.[1617]

[Footnote 1614: New York Tribune, October 8 and 16.]

[Footnote 1615: See Chapter XXVII., pp. 350, 351, note.]

[Footnote 1616: October 24, 1878.]

[Footnote 1617: On May 13, 1878, Congressman Potter of New York secured the appointment of a committee of eleven to investigate alleged frauds in the Florida and Louisiana Returning Boards, with authority to send for persons and papers. He refused to widen the scope of the investigation to include all the States, presumably to avoid the damaging evidence already known relating to Pelton's effort to secure a presidential elector in Oregon. The Tribune's timely exposure of the telegrams turned the investigation into a Democratic boomerang.]

The result of the October elections likewise encouraged Republicans. It indicated that the Greenback movement, which threatened to sweep the country as with a tornado, had been stayed if not finally arrested, and thenceforth greater activity characterised the canvass. Conkling spoke often; Woodford, who had done yeoman service in the West, repeated his happily illustrated arguments; and Evarts crowded Cooper Union. In the same hall Edwards Pierrepont, fresh from the Court of St. James, made a strenuous though belated appeal. Speaking for the Democrats, Kernan advocated the gold standard, declaring it essential to commercial and the workingmen's prosperity. Erastus Brooks shared the same view, and Dorsheimer, with his exquisite choice of words, endeavoured to explain it to a Tammany mass meeting. John Kelly, cold, unyielding, precise, likewise talked. There was little elasticity about him. He dominated Tammany like a martinet, naming its tickets, selecting its appointees, and outlining its policies. Indeed, his rule had developed so distinctly into a one-man power that four anti-Tammany organisations had at last combined with the Republicans in one supreme effort to crush him, and with closed ranks and firm purpose this coalition exhibited an unwavering earnestness seldom presented in a local campaign.[1618] It was intimated that Kelly having in mind his reappointment as city comptroller in 1880, sought surreptitiously to aid Cooper.[1619] Kelly saw his danger. He recognised the power of his opponents, the weakness of Schell whom he had himself named for mayor, and the strength of Cooper, a son of the distinguished philanthropist, whose independence of character had brought an honourable career; but the assertion that the Boss, bowing to the general public sentiment, gave Cooper support must be dismissed with the apocryphal story that Conkling was in close alliance with Tammany. Doubtless Kelly's disturbed mind saw clearly that he must eventually divide his foes to recover lost prestige. Nevertheless, it was after November 5, the day of Tammany's blighting overthrow, that he shaped his next political move.

[Footnote 1618: In reference to Kelly's despotic rule see speeches of Anti-Tammany opponents in New York Tribune (first page), October 31, 1878.]

[Footnote 1619: Myers, History of Tammany, p. 310.]

The election returns disclosed that the greatly increased Greenback-Labour vote, aggregating 75,000, had correspondingly weakened the Democratic party, especially in the metropolis, thus electing Danforth to the Court of Appeals, Cooper as mayor, the entire anti-Tammany-Republican ticket, a large majority of Republican assemblymen, and twenty-six Republican congressmen, being a net gain of eight.[1620] Indeed, the divisive Greenback vote had produced a phenomenal crop of Republican assemblymen. After the crushing defeat of the Liberal movement in 1872 the Republicans obtained the unprecedented number of ninety-one. Now they had ninety-eight, with nineteen hold-over senators, giving them a safe working majority in each body and seventy-six on joint ballot. This insured the re-election of Senator Conkling, which occurred without Republican opposition on January 21, 1879. One month later the Utica Republican closed its career. While its existence probably gratified the founder, it had done little more than furnish opponents with material for effective criticism.

[Footnote 1620: Danforth, Republican, 391,112; Bradley, Democrat, 356,451; Tucker, National, 75,133; Van Cott, Prohibitionist, 4,294. Assembly: Republicans, 98; Democrats, 28; Nationals, 2. Congress: Republicans, 26; Democrats, 7. Cooper over Schell, 19,361.]

The Democrats, who supported Lieutenant-governor Dorsheimer for United States senator, protested against granting Conkling a certificate of election because no alteration of senate or assembly districts had occurred since the enumeration of 1875, as required by the constitution, making the existing legislature, it was claimed, a legislature de facto and not de jure. This was a new way of presenting an old grievance. For years unjust inequality of representation had fomented strife, but more recently the rapid growth of New York and Brooklyn had made the disparity more conspicuous, while continued Republican control of the Senate had created intense bitterness. In fact, a tabulated statement of the inequality between senatorial districts enraged a Democrat as quickly as a red flag infuriated the proverbial bull.[1621] Although the caucus refused to adopt the protest, it issued an address showing that New York and Kings were entitled to ten senators instead of seven and forty-one assemblymen instead of thirty-one. These additional members, all belonging to Democratic districts, said the address, are now awarded to twelve counties represented by Republicans. The deep indignation excited throughout the State by such manifest injustice resulted in a new apportionment which transferred one assemblyman from each of six Republican counties to New York and Kings. This did not correct the greater injustice in the senatorial districts, however, and in permitting the measure to become a law without his signature Governor Robinson declared that the "deprivation of 150,000 inhabitants in New York and Kings of their proper representation admits of no apology or excuse."[1622]

[Footnote 1621: The following table gave great offense:

+------------+-----------+-------------+ | Democratic | | | | Districts. | Counties. | Population. | +------------+-----------+-------------+ | 3d | Kings | 292,258 | | 8th | New York | 235,482 | | 7th | New York | 173,225 | | 2d | Kings | 172,725 | | 9th | New York | 167,530 | +------------+-----------+-------------+

+------------+------------------------+-------------+ | Republican | | | | Districts. | Counties. | Population. | +------------+------------------------+-------------+ | 20th | Herkimer, Otsego | 89,338 | | 18th | Jefferson, Lewis | 90,596 | | 26th | Ontario, Yates, Seneca | 91,064 | | 16th | Clinton, Essex, Warren | 101,327 | | 27th | Cayuga, Wayne | 106,120 | +------------+------------------------+-------------+]

[Footnote 1622: Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1879, p. 672.]

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XXXI. REMOVAL OF ARTHUR AND CORNELL

1878-9

One week before the election of 1877 President Hayes nominated Theodore Roosevelt for collector of customs, L. Bradford Prince for naval officer, and Edwin A. Merritt for surveyor, in place of Chester A. Arthur, Alonzo B. Cornell, and George H. Sharpe.[1623] The terms of Arthur and Cornell had not expired, and although their removal had been canvassed and expected for several months, its coming shocked the party and increased the disgust of the organisation. George William Curtis, with the approval of Evarts, urged the promotion of James L. Benedict for collector, a suggestion which the Secretary of the Treasury stoutly opposed. If Arthur, the latter argued, was to be removed because of his identification with a system of administration which the President desired to abolish, no reason existed for promoting one who had made no effort to reform that system. No one questioned Roosevelt's ability, high character, and fitness for the place, but to those who resented the removal of Arthur his nomination was an offence.

[Footnote 1623: Sharpe's term having expired he had withdrawn his application for reappointment.]

Chester A. Arthur had succeeded Thomas Murphy as collector of the port in November, 1871. He was then forty-seven years old, a lawyer of fair standing and a citizen of good repute. He had studied under the tuition of his clergyman father, graduated at Union College, taught school in his native Vermont, cast a first vote for Winfield Scott, and joined the Republican party at its organisation. At the outbreak of the rebellion Governor Morgan appointed him quartermaster-general, his important duties, limited to the preparation and forwarding of troops to the seat of war, being performed with great credit. When Seymour succeeded Morgan in 1863 Arthur resumed his law practice, securing some years later profitable employment as counsel for the department of city assessments and taxes.

From the first Arthur showed a liking for public life. He was the gentleman in politics. The skill of an artist tailor exhibited his tall, graceful figure at its best, and his shapely hands were immaculately gloved. His hat advertised the latest fashion just as his exquisite necktie indicated the proper colour.[1624] He was equally particular about his conduct. Whatever his environment he observed the details of court etiquette. His stately elegance of manner easily unbent without loss of dignity, and although his volatile spirits and manner of living gave him the appearance of a bon vivant, lively and jocose, with less devotion to work than to society, it was noticeable that he attracted men of severer mould as easily as those vivacious and light-hearted associates who called him "Chet." While Fenton, after Greeley's failure as a leader, was gathering the broken threads of party management into a compact and aggressive organisation, Arthur enjoyed the respect and confidence of every local leader, who appreciated his wise reticence and perennial courtesy, blended with an ability to control restless and suspicious politicians by timely hints and judicious suggestions. Indeed, people generally, irrespective of party, esteemed him highly because of his kindness of heart, his conciliatory disposition, his lively sense of humour, and his sympathetic attention to the interests of those about him. He was neither self-opinionated, argumentative, nor domineering, but tactful, considerate, and persuasive. There was also freedom from prejudice, quickness of decision, a precise knowledge of details, and a flexibility of mind that enabled him to adapt himself easily to changing conditions.

[Footnote 1624: "You remember, don't you, what Orville Baker told us about Arthur's two passions, as he heard them discussed at Sam Ward's dinner in New York? New coats being one, he then having ordered twenty-five from his tailor since the New Year came in."--Mrs. James G. Blaine, Letters (January 28, 1882), Vol. 1, p. 294.]

When Conkling finally wrested the Federal patronage from Fenton and secured to himself the favour and confidence of the Grant administration, Arthur bivouacked with the senior Senator so quietly and discreetly that Greeley accepted his appointment as collector without criticism. "He is a young man of fair abilities," said the editor, "and of unimpeached private character. He has filled no such rôle in public affairs as should entitle him to so important and responsible a part, but as things go, his is an appointment of fully average fitness and acceptability. With the man we have no difference; with the system that made him collector we have a deadly quarrel. He was Mr. Murphy's personal choice, and he was chosen because it is believed he can run the machine of party politics better than any of our great merchants."[1625]

[Footnote 1625: New York Tribune, November 22, 1871. See also, Ibid., November 21.]

In party initiative Arthur's judgment and modesty aided him in avoiding the repellent methods of Murphy. He did not wait for emergencies to arise, but considering them in advance as possible contingencies, he exercised an unobtrusive but masterful authority when the necessity for action came. He played an honest game of diplomacy. What others did with Machiavellian intrigue or a cynical indifference to ways and means, he accomplished with the cards on the table in plain view, and with motives and objects frankly disclosed. No one ever thought his straightforward methods clumsy, or unbusinesslike, or deficient in cleverness. In like manner he studied the business needs of the customs service, indicating to the Secretary of the Treasury the flagrant use of backstair wiles, and pointing out to him ways of reform.[1626] He sought in good faith to secure efficiency and honesty, and if he had not been pinioned as with ball and chain to a system as old as the custom-house itself, and upon which every political boss from DeWitt Clinton to Roscoe Conkling had relied for advantage, he would doubtless have reformed existing peculation and irregularities among inspectors, weighers, gaugers, examiners, samplers, and appraisers.[1627] Until this army of placemen could be taken out of politics Secretary Sherman refused to believe it possible to make the custom-house "the best managed business agency of the government," and as Arthur seemed an inherent part of the system itself, the President wished to try Theodore Roosevelt.[1628] It is safe to conclude, judging the father's work by the later achievements of his illustrious son, that the Chief Executive's choice would have accomplished the result had Conkling allowed him to undertake it.

[Footnote 1626: See his letters to the Secretary of the Treasury, New York Tribune, January 28, 1879.]

[Footnote 1627: In his testimony before the Jay Commission, Arthur spoke of "10,000 applicants," backed and pressed upon him with unabated energy by the most prominent men "all over the country."--New York Tribune, July 28, 1877.]

[Footnote 1628: Arthur was offered an appointment as consul-general to Paris.--See Theodore E. Burton, Life of John Sherman, p. 294.]

When Conkling felt himself at ease, in congenial society, he displayed his mastery of irony and banter, neither hesitating to air his opinion of persons nor shrinking from admissions which were candid to the verge of cynicism. At such times he had not veiled his intense dislike of the Administration. After Hayes's election his conversation discovered as aggressive a spirit as he had exhibited at Rochester, speaking of the Secretary of State as "little Evarts," and charging the President with appointing "a Democratic cabinet," whose principal labour had been "to withdraw Republican support from me." Apropos of Schurz, he told a story of the man who disbelieved the Bible because he didn't write it. He criticised the Republican press for praising Tilden as governor and "lampooning" him as a candidate for the presidency, pronounced Packard's title as good as Hayes's, and declared the President's "objectionable and dishonourable" record consisted not in the withdrawal of the troops but in bargaining with Southerners. "Every man knows," he said, "that on the face of the returns Packard was more elected than Hayes. You cannot present those returns in any form that will not give more legality to Packard as Governor than to Hayes as President. People say this man assumes all the virtues of reform in an office which he has gained by the simple repudiation of the ladder that lifted him. It is the general record of usurpers that though sustained they do their favours to the other side.... I have no faith in a President whose only distinct act is ingratitude to the men who voted for him and to the party which gave him its fealty. In the domain and forum of honour that sense of Mr. Hayes's infidelity stands forward and challenges him. It is felt by honest men all over the country. He smiles and showers on the opposition the proofs of a disturbed mind."

Speaking of the civil service order the Senator was no less severe. "That celebrated reformatory order was factional in its intent, made in the interests of envious and presuming little men. Sherman (secretary of the treasury) goes out to Ohio and makes speeches in defiance of it; McCrary (secretary of war) goes to Iowa and manages a convention in spite of it; and Devens (attorney-general) says the order meant itself to be disobeyed, and that the way to obey it was to violate it."[1629]

[Footnote 1629: New York Herald, November 9, 1877. Respecting this interview Conkling made a personal explanation in the Senate, in which he said: "Though some of the remarks in question may at some time have been made in private casual conversations, others of them never proceeded from me at any time."--New York Tribune, November 13. It is assumed that the portions quoted above, taken from a three-column interview, are substantially correct, since they are corroborated by several persons now living (1908) who heard the Senator's expressions. See, also, Alfred R. Conkling, Life of Conkling, pp. 552-554.

"Mr. Conkling, in all his conversations, seemed to consider men who differed from him as enemies of the human race."--White, Autobiography, Vol. 1, p. 188.

"Conkling spoke with great severity of President Hayes, and said he hoped it would be the last time that any man would attempt to steal the presidency."--Hoar, Autobiography, Vol. 2, p. 44.]

Conkling's criticism of the fitful execution of the civil service order was not too severe. Instead of justifying the expectations he had aroused by vigorously enforcing the principles of his letter of acceptance and inaugural address, the President, as if inthralled by some mysterious spell, had discredited his professions by his performances. The establishment of a real change in the system of appointments and of office-holding control invited a severe contest, and success depended upon the courage and conviction of the Administration itself. For firmness, however, Hayes substituted hesitation, compromise, and in some instances surrender. Numerous cases were cited in proof of this criticism, notably the reappointment of Chauncey I. Filley, postmaster at St. Louis, whom George William Curtis pronounced the most conspicuous office-holder in the country for his active manipulation of politics. "He is a shining example of 'the thing to be reformed.'"[1630]

[Footnote 1630: Harper's Weekly, December 8, 1877.]

The President's removal of Arthur and Cornell, it was argued, was no less irrational. In failing to charge them with inefficiency he subjected himself to the graver charge of inconsistency, since his letter of acceptance and inaugural address declared in substance that efficient officers would be retained. The President meant, his friends assumed, that political activity nullified efficiency, to which opponents replied that the President, after inviting Arthur to carry out the recommendations of the Jay Commission, had condoned the collector's wrong-doing if any existed, making him an agent for reform, and that his subsequent removal was simply in the interest of faction. Cornell's case likewise presented a peg upon which to hang severe criticism, since the Administration, when asked for the reason of his removal, dodged the decisive one. Such inconsistency showed timidity and confusion instead of courage and conviction, disappointing to friends and ridiculous to opponents.

Conkling made use of these and other points. Indeed, for more than six weeks after Congress convened he bent all his energies and diplomacy to defeat the confirmation of Roosevelt and Prince. That a Republican senator might be substituted for a Democrat on the commerce committee, of which he was chairman and to which the nominations were referred, he delayed action until a reorganisation of the Senate. Finally, in a forceful and pathetic speech, regarded by colleagues as his most impressive address,[1631] he illuminated what he deemed an act of injustice to Arthur and Cornell. It was less bitter perhaps than that in the contest with Fenton over the confirmation of Thomas Murphy, but no less carefully worked up and quite as successful. To the consternation of the Administration, which relied upon a solid Democratic party, the Senator won by a decisive vote, having the support of several Democrats and of all the Republicans except five.

[Footnote 1631: Conkling, Life of Conkling, p. 373.]

It was an important victory for Conkling, who must soon begin another canvass for members of the Legislature. It sent a thrill of joy through the ranks of his friends, renewed the courage of office-holding lieutenants, and compelled the Administration's supporters to admit that the President was "chiefly to blame."[1632] Moreover, the cordial support given Conkling by Blaine created the impression that it had led to their complete reconciliation, a belief strengthened by a conversation that subsequently occurred between them on the floor of the Senate Chamber in full view of crowded galleries. David Davis had added to the tableau by putting an arm around each, thus giving the meeting the appearance of an unusually friendly one.[1633]

[Footnote 1632: Harper's Weekly, December 22, 1877.]

[Footnote 1633: New York Tribune, December 17, 1878.]

But the President, if he had previously omitted to say what he meant, determined not to surrender, and on July 11 (1878), after the adjournment of Congress, he suspended Arthur and Cornell and appointed Edwin A. Merritt and Silas W. Burt. Arthur's suspension did not involve his integrity. Nor was any distinct charge lodged against Cornell. Their removal rested simply upon the plea that the interests of the public service demanded it, and the death of Roosevelt very naturally opened the way for Merritt.[1634]

[Footnote 1634: Theodore Roosevelt died on February 9.]

All his life Merritt had been serviceable and handy in politics. After holding successively several local offices in St. Lawrence, the people sent him to the Assembly in 1859 and in 1860. When the rebellion began he entered the quartermaster's and commissary departments, and at its close served as quartermaster-general of the State until appointed naval officer in 1869, an office which he lost in 1870 when Conkling got control of the patronage. Then he followed Fenton and Greeley into the Liberal party, but returning with other leaders in 1874, he accepted the nomination for State treasurer in 1875, the year when administrative reform accelerated Tilden's run for the White House. This made him eligible for surveyor, an office to which he had been confirmed in December, 1877. His unsought promotion to the collectorship, however, was a testimonial to his ability. Whatever Merritt touched he improved. Whether quartermaster, naval officer, or surveyor, he attended rigorously to duty, enforcing the law fairly and without favour, and disciplining his force into a high state of efficiency, so that revenues increased, expenses diminished, and corruption talk ceased. In selecting him for collector, therefore, the President had secured the right type of man.

Nevertheless, Hayes's action roiled the political waters. Conkling's friends accused the President of violating his own principles, of endeavouring to set up a new machine, and of grossly insulting the Senator. On the other hand, Administration supporters maintained that the law authorising removals was as obligatory as that empowering a senator to advise and consent to appointments, and that in removing Arthur the President did not insult Conkling any more than Conkling insulted the President by rejecting the nomination of Roosevelt. This renewal of an ugly quarrel was auguring ill for the Republicans, when the organisation of the National Greenback-Labour-Reform party, suddenly presenting a question which involved the integrity and welfare of the country, put factional quarrels and personal politics into eclipse.

Conkling had exhibited both tact and skill in that campaign. He did not lead the gold column. In fact, it was not until the last moment that the Saratoga committee on resolutions which he dominated, substituted "the fixed monetary standard of the commercial world" for the word "coin." But after the guide-boards pointed the way he became a powerful champion of hard money. Besides, the moderation and good temper with which he discussed the doctrine of the inflationists did much to hold dissenters within the party and justly entitled him to high praise. His unanimous re-election to the Senate followed as a matter of course. Not that unanimity of action implied unanimity of feeling. It was rather, perhaps, a yielding to the necessity of the situation.[1635]

[Footnote 1635: The strength of the anti-Conkling sentiment was clearly shown in the contest for speaker of the Assembly. Thomas G. Alvord received 52 votes to 43 for George B. Sloan of Oswego. Although Sloan and his supporters declared for Conkling, Alvord was confessedly the Conkling candidate.]

Nevertheless, to all appearances Conkling had recovered the prestige lost at Rochester. His conduct at the convention and in the campaign excited the hope, also, that he would drop his opposition to Merritt and Burt. Such a course commended itself to the judgment of a large majority of the New York delegation in Congress as well as to many stout legislative friends; but re-election seemed to have hardened his heart, and when, ten days after that event, he rose in the Senate to defeat confirmation he exhibited the confidence of the man of Gath.[1636]

[Footnote 1636: New York Tribune (correspondence), February 1, 1879.]

Prior to his re-election Conkling had not voluntarily moved in the matter. To him the settlement of one thing at a time sufficed. Early in January, however, the Secretary of the Treasury, on his own initiative and with the skill of a veteran legislator, had addressed the President of the Senate, setting forth that Arthur's conduct of the custom-house was neither efficient nor economical. To this Arthur answered, denying inattention to business or loss of revenue, and affirming that he had recommended a system of reform upon which the Secretary had not acted.[1637] After the reception of this letter Conkling demanded immediate action. But the Senate, by two majority, preferred to wait for Sherman's replication, and when that statement came the Senate again, by a vote of 35 to 26, put off action until the document, with its many exhibits, could be carefully examined.[1638] These delays augured ill for the Senator. It appeared that a Democratic member of his own committee had left him, and on the day fixed for consideration other Democrats, while calmly discussing the matter, disclosed a disposition to desert. Alarmed at their loss Conkling suddenly moved to recommit, which was carried by a viva voce vote amidst shouts of approval and whispered assurances that further action should be deferred until a Democratic Senate convened on March 4. Then some one demanded the yeas and nays.

[Footnote 1637: Ibid., January 28.]

[Footnote 1638: These exhibits made a document of 423 pages, of which 308 were extracts from the testimony taken by the Jay Commission, then published for the first time.]

Believing the matter practically settled, Conkling, to improve the last chance "of freeing his mind," he said, unexpectedly took the floor, and for more than an hour, with a bitterness and eloquence not excelled at Rochester, assailed the President and those associated with him. To illustrate the insincerity of the Administration's desire to reform the civil service he read several place-seeking letters addressed to Arthur while collector and written by the President's private secretary, by a member of the Cabinet, and other reformers. One letter sought a position for the son of Justice Bradley, who had figured conspicuously on the Electoral Commission. Such a scene had never before been witnessed in the Senate. Exclamations of mock surprise followed by fun-making questions and loud laughter added to the grotesque exhibition. It was so ludicrous as to become pitiful and painful. Although no particular harm was done to anybody, the Government for the moment was made ridiculous.

At times Conkling was blessed with the gift of offence, and on this occasion he seems to have exercised it to its full capacity. Before he began speaking the Senate exhibited a readiness to recommit the nominations, but as he proceeded he lost ground, and when he finished several Republican senators, unwilling to afford another opportunity for such a scene, demanded that the matter be disposed of at once and forever. Each succeeding name, as the roll-call proceeded on the motion to recommit, showed more and more the change that had taken place in senators' feelings. Failure to recommit turned defeat into confusion, and confusion into disaster. When the three roll-calls were over it was found that Merritt had been confirmed by 33 to 24 and Burt by 31 to 19. An analysis of the "pairs" increased the rout, since it disclosed that twenty-five Democrats and fifteen Republicans favoured confirmation, while only seven Democrats and twenty-three Republicans opposed it. In other words, the Administration required only five Democratic votes to match the strength of the dissatisfied Republicans. Kernan, although he had spoken slightingly of Merritt, refused to vote, but Blaine, who had joined heartily in the laughter provoked by Conkling's thrusts as he read the letters, antagonised the President. This noticeable desire of the Maine statesman to attach his fortunes to those of the New York Senator neither escaped the attention nor faded from the memory of Secretary Sherman.

The next morning everybody knew what had happened. Although secrecy was removed only from the vote, nothing of the seven hours' conflict remained untold, the result of which to all New Yorkers proved a great surprise. They had supposed Conkling invincible in the Senate. Nevertheless, to most Republicans, whether friends or foes, his defeat on February 3 was a great relief. Merritt had made an excellent collector, and a feeling existed, which had crystallised into a strong public sentiment, that it was unwise to force into his place an official unsatisfactory to the Secretary of the Treasury.

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XXXII. JOHN KELLY ELECTS CORNELL

1879

If threatened danger had bred an artificial harmony among the Republican factions of the State in 1878, the presence of a real peril, growing out of the control of both branches of Congress by the Democrats, tended to bring them closer together in 1879. During a special session of the Forty-sixth Congress the Democratic majority had sought, by a political rider attached to the army appropriation bill, to repeal objectionable election laws, which provided among other things for the appointment of supervisors and deputy marshals at congressional elections. This law had materially lessened cheating in New York City, and no one doubted that its repeal would be followed in 1880 by scenes similar to those which had disgraced the metropolis prior to its enactment in 1870.

But the attempt to get rid of the objectionable Act by a rider on a supply bill meant more than repeal. It implied a threat. In effect the Democrats declared that if the Executive did not yield his veto power to a bare majority, the needed appropriations for carrying on the government would be stopped. This practically amounted to revolution, and the debate that followed reawakened bitter partisan and sectional animosities. "Suppose in a separate bill," said Conkling, "the majority had, in advance of appropriations, repealed the national bank act and the resumption act, and had declared that unless the Executive surrendered his convictions and yielded up his approval of the repealing act, no appropriations should be made; would the separation of the bills have palliated or condoned the revolutionary purpose? When it is intended that, unless another species of legislation is agreed to, the money of the people, paid for that purpose, shall not be used to maintain their government, the threat is revolution and its execution is treasonable." Then he gave the mortal stab. Of the ninety-three senators and representatives from the eleven disloyal States, he said, eighty-five were soldiers in the armies of the rebellion, and their support of these "revolutionary measures is a fight for empire. It is a contrivance to clutch the national government. That we believe; that I believe."[1639] The President, by advising the country through his spirited veto messages of the desperate tactics invoked by the majority, added to Northern indignation.

[Footnote 1639: Cooper, American Politics, Book 3, pp. 176-186.]

It was a losing battle to the Democrats. The longer they insisted the more the Southern brigadiers were held up to public scorn as if they had again betrayed their country, and when, finally, the appropriation bills were passed without riders, it left Republicans more firmly united than at the beginning of the Hayes administration.[1640]

[Footnote 1640: The extra session of Congress adjourned July 1, 1879.]

Two months later the Republican State convention, held at Saratoga (September 3), evidenced this union.[1641] Every distinguished Republican of the State was present save Thurlow Weed, whose feebleness kept him at home. Conkling presided. With fine humour, George William Curtis, the sound of whose flute-like voice brought a burst of applause, asked that the crowded aisles be cleared that he might see the chairman. Conkling's speech excited close attention. It was freer and more vivid because of more human interest than his address of the year before, and his appeal for harmony, his denunciation of revolutionary methods in Congress, and his demand that freedmen be protected in their rights, brought strenuous, purposeful applause from determined men. The principles thus felicitously and rhetorically stated formed the basis of the platform, which pledged the party anew to national supremacy, equal rights, free elections, and honest money. It also thanked the President for his recent attitude.

[Footnote 1641: On August 29, the State convention of Nationals assembled at Utica, and nominated Harris Lewis of Herkimer, for governor. The platform opposed National banks and demanded an issue of greenbacks at the rate of $50 per capita, at least. Lewis, who had been a member of the Assembly twenty years before, was president of the Farmers' Alliance.

The State Prohibition convention met at Syracuse, September 3, and nominated a full State ticket, with John W. Mears of Oneida, for governor. The platform declared the license system the cornerstone of the liquor traffic and favoured woman suffrage.]

Nevertheless, a disposition to contest the strength of the organisation and its methods boldly asserted itself. For months Cornell had been Conkling's candidate for governor. A searching canvass, extended into all sections of the State and penetrating the secrets of men, had been noiselessly and ceaselessly carried on. Indeed, a more inquisitorial pursuit had never before been attempted, since the slightest chance, the merest accident, might result, as it did in 1876, in defeating Cornell.

So much depended upon the control of the temporary organisation that the anti-Conkling forces begged the Vice-President to stand for temporary chairman. They could easily unite upon him, and the belief obtained that he could defeat the Senator. But Wheeler, a mild and amiable gentleman, whose honours had come without personal contests, was timid and unyielding.[1642] What the opposition needed was a real State leader. It had within its ranks brilliant editors,[1643] excellent lawyers, and with few exceptions the best speakers in the party, but since Fenton lost control of the organisation no man had arisen capable of crossing swords with its great chieftain.

[Footnote 1642: "The only complaint that his friends have ever made of Mr. Wheeler is that his generous nature forbids him, politically, to fight. Had he been willing to lead in the State convention in 1879, it would have had a different result."--Harper's Weekly, March 26, 1881.]

[Footnote 1643: Among the more influential Republican editors, who wrote with rare intelligence, representing both factions of the party, may be mentioned Charles E. Smith, Albany Journal; Carroll E. Smith, Syracuse Journal; Ellis H. Roberts, Utica Herald; James N. Matthews, Buffalo Express; S. Newton Dexter North, Albany Express; Whitelaw Reid, New York Tribune; John H. Selkreg, Ithaca Journal; John M. Francis, Troy Times; Beman Brockway, Watertown Times; Charles E. Fitch, Rochester Democrat-Chronicle; George William Curtis, Harper's Weekly; Charles G. Fairman, Elmira Advertiser; William Edward Foster, Buffalo Commercial; George Dawson, Albany Journal; Lewis J. Jennings, New York Times.]

Of the four pronounced candidates for governor Frank Hiscock of Syracuse divided the support of the central counties with Theodore M. Pomeroy of Cayuga, while William H. Robertson of Westchester and John H. Starin of New York claimed whatever delegates Cornell did not control in the metropolis and its vicinity. Among them and their lieutenants, however, none could dispute leadership with Conkling and his corps of able managers. Starin had pluck and energy, but two terms in Congress and popularity with the labouring classes, to whom he paid large wages and generously contributed fresh-air enjoyments, summed up his strength.[1644] Pomeroy was better known. His public record, dating from the famous speech made in the Whig convention of 1855, had kept him prominently before the people, and had he continued in Congress he must have made an exalted national reputation. But the day of younger men had come. Besides, his recent vote for John F. Smyth, the head of the Insurance Department, injured him.[1645] Robertson, as usual, had strong support. His long public career left a clear imprint of his high character, and his attractive personality, with its restrained force, made him a central figure in the politics of the State.

[Footnote 1644: The sale of a condition powder for cattle started Starin on the road to wealth, which soon discovered itself in the ownership of canal, river, and harbour boats, until he became known as High Admiral of the Commerce of New York. Like success attended his railroad operations.]

[Footnote 1645: Pomeroy was district-attorney of his County, 1851-56; in the Assembly, 1857; in Congress, 1861-69, being elected speaker in place of Colfax on the day the latter retired to be sworn in as Vice-President; mayor of Auburn, 1875-76; State Senate, 1878-79.]

Hiscock was then on the threshold of his public career. He began life as the law partner and political lieutenant of his brother, Harris, an adroit politician, whose violent death in 1867, while a member of the constitutional convention, left to the former the Republican leadership of Onondaga County. If his diversion as a Liberal temporarily crippled him, it did not prevent his going to Congress in 1876, where he was destined to remain for sixteen years and to achieve high rank as a debater on financial questions. He was without a sense of humour and possessed rather an austere manner, but as a highly successful lawyer he exhibited traits of character that strengthened him with the people. He was also an eminently wary and cautious man, alive to the necessity of watching the changeful phases of public opinion, and slow to propound a plan until he had satisfied himself that it could be carried out in practice. It increased his influence, too, that he was content with a stroke of practical business here and there in the interest of party peace without claiming credit for any brilliant or deep diplomacy.

It is doubtful, however, if the genius of a Weed could have induced the disorganised forces, representing the four candidates, to put up a single opponent to Cornell. Such a course, in the opinion of the leaders, would release delegates to the latter without compensating advantage. It was decided, therefore, to hold the field intact with the hope of preventing a nomination on the first ballot, and to let the result determine the next step. In their endeavour to accomplish this they stoutly maintained that Cornell, inheriting the unpopularity of the machine, could not carry the State. To win New York and thus have its position defined for 1880 was the one great desire of Republicans, and the visible effect of the fusionists' attack, concededly made with great tact and cleverness, if without much effort at organisation, turned Conkling's confidence into doubt. Then he put on more pressure. In the preceding winter Pomeroy's vote and speech in the State Senate had saved John F. Smyth from deserved impeachment, and he now counted confidently upon the Commissioner's promised support of his candidacy. But Conkling demanded it for Cornell, and Smyth left Pomeroy to care for himself.

It is seldom that a roll-call ever proceeded under such tension. Nominating speeches were abandoned, cheers for the platform faded into an ominous silence, and every response sounded like the night-step of a watchful sentinel. Only when some conspicuous leader voted was the stillness broken. A score of men were keeping count, and halfway down the roll the fusionists tied their opponents. When, at last, the call closed with nine majority for Cornell, the result, save a spasm of throat-splitting yells, was received with little enthusiasm.[1646] On the motion to make the nomination unanimous George William Curtis voted "No" distinctly.[1647]

[Footnote 1646: Whole number of votes cast, 450. Necessary to a choice, 226. Cornell received 234; Robertson, 106; Starin, 40; Pomeroy, 35; Hiscock, 34; Sloan, 1.]

[Footnote 1647: Harper's Weekly, October 25, 1879.]

It was a Conkling victory. For three days delegates had crowded the Senator's headquarters, while in an inner room he strengthened the weak, won the doubtful, and directed his forces with remarkable skill. He asked no quarter, and after his triumph every candidate selected for a State office was an avowed friend of Cornell. "It would have been poor policy," said one of the Senator's lieutenants, "to apologise for what he had done by seeming to strengthen the ticket with open enemies of the chief candidate."[1648]

[Footnote 1648: New York Sun, September 8.

The following candidates were nominated: Governor, Alonzo B. Cornell, New York; Lieutenant-Governor, George G. Hoskins, Wyoming; Secretary of State, Joseph B. Carr, Rensselaer; Comptroller, James W. Wadsworth, Livingston; Attorney-General, Hamilton Ward, Allegany; Treasurer, Nathan D. Wendell, Albany; Engineer, Howard Soule, Onondaga.]

The aftermath multiplied reasons for the coalition's downfall. Some thought the defeat of Cornell in 1876 deceived the opposition as to his strength; others, that a single candidate should have opposed him; others, again, that the work of securing delegates did not begin early enough. But all agreed that the action of George B. Sloan of Oswego seriously weakened them. Since 1874 Sloan had been prominently identified with the unfettered wing of the party. Indeed, his activity along lines of reform had placed him at the head and front of everything that made for civic betterment. In character he resembled Robertson. His high qualities and flexibility of mind gave him unrivalled distinction. He possessed a charm which suffused his personality as a smile softens and irradiates a face, and although it was a winsome rather than a commanding personality, it lacked neither firmness nor power. Moreover, he was a resourceful business man, keen, active, and honest--characteristics which he carried with him into public life. His great popularity made him speaker of the Assembly in the third year of his service (1877), and his ability to work tactfully and effectively had suggested his name to the coalition as a compromise candidate for governor. He had never leaned to the side of the machine. In fact, his failure to win the speakership in the preceding January was due to the opposition of Cornell backed by John F. Smyth, and his hopes of future State preferment centred in the defeat of these aggressive men. Yet at the critical moment, when success seemed within the grasp of his old-time friends, he voted for Cornell. For this his former associates never wholly forgave him. Nor was his motive ever fully understood. Various reasons found currency--admiration of Conkling, a desire to harmonise his party at home by the nomination of John C. Churchill for State comptroller, and weariness of opposing an apparently invincible organisation. But whatever the motive the coalition hissed when he declared his choice, and then turned upon Churchill like a pack of sleuth-hounds, defeating him upon the first ballot in spite of Conkling's assistance.

Tammany's threat to bolt Robinson's renomination may have encouraged Cornell's nomination, since such truancy would aid his election. John Kelly was in extremis. Tammany desertions and the election of Mayor Cooper had shattered his control of the city. To add to his discomfiture the Governor had removed Henry A. Gumbleton, charged with taking monstrous fees as clerk of New York County, and appointed Hubert O. Thompson in his place. Gumbleton was Kelly's pet; Thompson was Cooper's lieutenant. Although the Governor sufficiently justified his action, the exercise of this high executive function was generally supposed to be only a move in the great Presidential game of 1880. His failure to remove the Register, charged with similar misdoings, strengthened the supposition that the Tilden camp fires were burning brightly. But whatever the Governor's motive, Kelly accepted Gumbleton's removal as an open declaration of war, and on September 6 (1879), five days before the Democratic State convention, Tammany's committee on organisation secretly declared "that in case the convention insists upon the renomination of Lucius Robinson for governor, the Tammany delegation will leave in a body."[1649] In preparation for this event an agent of Tammany hired Shakespeare Hall, the only room left in Syracuse of sufficient size to accommodate a bolting convention.[1650]

[Footnote 1649: New York Star, Sept. 17, 1879.]

[Footnote 1650: New York Sun, Sept. 12.]

The changes visible in the alignment of factions since the Democrats had selected a candidate for governor in Syracuse reflected the fierce struggle waged in the intervening five years. In 1874 Tweed was in jail; Kelly, standing for Tilden, assailed Sanford E. Church as a friend of the canal ring; Dorsheimer, thrust into the Democratic party through the Greeley revolt, was harvesting honour in high office; Bigelow, dominated by his admiration of a public servant who concealed an unbridled ambition, gave character to the so-called reform; and Charles S. Fairchild, soon to appreciate the ingratitude of party, was building a reputation as the undismayed prosecutor of a predatory ring. Now, Tweed was in his grave; Kelly had joined the canal ring in sounding the praises of Church; Dorsheimer, having drifted into Tammany and the editorship of the Star, disparaged the man whom he adored as governor and sought to make President; and Bigelow and Fairchild, their eyes opened, perhaps, by cipher telegrams, found satisfaction in the practice of their professions.

But Tilden was not without friends. If some had left him, others had grown more potent. For several years Daniel E. Manning, known to his Albany neighbours as a youth of promise and a young man of ripening wisdom, had attracted attention by his genius for political leadership.[1651] He seems never to have been rash or misled. Even an exuberance of animal vitality that eagerly sought new outlets for its energy did not waste itself in aimless experiments. Although possessing the generosity of a rich nature, he preferred to work within lines of purpose without heady enthusiasms or reckless extremes, and his remarkable gifts as an executive, coupled with the study of politics as a fine art, soon made him a manager of men. This was demonstrated in his aggressive fight against Tweedism. Manning was now (1879) forty-eight years old. It cannot be said that he had then reached the place filled by Dean Richmond, or that the Argus wielded the power exerted in the days of Edwin Croswell; but the anti-ring forces in the interior of the State cheerfully mustered under his leadership, while the Argus, made forceful and attractive by the singularly brilliant and facile pen of St. Clair McKelway, swayed the minds of its readers to a degree almost unequalled among its party contemporaries.[1652]

[Footnote 1651: In the early forties Manning began as an office-boy on the Albany Atlas, and in 1865, as associate editor of the Argus, he dominated its policy. Upon the death of James Cassidy, in 1873, he succeeded to the presidency of the company with which he continued throughout his life.]

[Footnote 1652: After service on the New York World, and the Brooklyn Eagle, McKelway became chief editor of the Argus in 1878. He rejoined the Eagle in 1885. Among other accomplished editors who made their journals conspicuous in party (Democratic) and State from 1865 to 1880, may be mentioned William Cassidy, Albany Argus; Thomas Kinsella, Brooklyn Eagle; Joseph Warren and David Gray, Buffalo Courier; Samuel M. Shaw, Cooperstown Freeman's Journal; James and Erastus Brooks, New York Express; Benjamin Wood, New York News; Manton Marble and Joseph Pulitzer, New York World; William Purcell, Rochester Union-Advertiser; Henry A. Reeves, Greenport Republican Watchman; E. Prentiss Bailey, Utica Observer. Although previously of Democratic tendencies, the New York Herald, by 1865, had become wholly independent.]

Manning took charge of the interests of Robinson, who did not attend the convention, receiving Kelly's tactful and spirited assault with fine courage. The Governor's enemies were more specific than Cornell's. They predicted that Robinson's renomination would lose twenty thousand votes in New York City alone, and an ingenious and extensively circulated table showed that the counties represented by his delegates had recently exhibited a Democratic loss of thirty thousand and an increased Republican vote of forty thousand, while localities opposed to him revealed encouraging gains. Mindful of the havoc wrought in 1874 by connecting Church with the canal ring, Kelly also sought to crush Robinson by charging that corporate rings, notably the New York Mutual Life Insurance Company, had controlled his administration, and that although he had resigned from the Erie directorate at the time of his election, he still received large fees through his son who acted as attorney for the road. Moreover, Kelly intimated, with a dark frown, that he had another stone in his sling. This onslaught, made upon every country delegate in town, seemed to confuse if not to shake the Tilden men, whose interest centred in success as well as in Robinson. The hesitation of the Kings County delegation, under the leadership of Hugh McLaughlin, to declare promptly for the Governor, and the toying of Senator Kernan with the name of Church while talking in the interest of harmony, indicated irresolution. Even David B. Hill and Edward K. Apgar, who desired to shape affairs for a pledged delegation to the next national convention, evidenced weariness.

Manning steadied the line. In proclaiming Robinson's nomination on the first ballot he anticipated every movement of the enemy. He knew that Henry W. Slocum's candidacy did not appeal to McLaughlin; that Chief Justice Church's consent rested upon an impossible condition; and that Kelly's threatened bolt, however disastrously it might end in November, would strengthen Robinson in the convention. Nevertheless, unusual concessions showed a desire to proceed on lines of harmony. Tammany's delegation was seated with the consent of Irving Hall; John C. Jacobs, a senator from Brooklyn, was made chairman; the fairness of committee appointments allayed suspicion; a platform accepted by if not inoffensive to all Democrats set forth the principles of the party,[1653] and an avoidance of irritating statements characterised the speeches placing Robinson's name in nomination.

[Footnote 1653: The platform, which dealt mainly with State issues, repeated the fraud-cry of 1876, advocated hard money, and upheld the Democratic programme in Congress.--See Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1879, p. 680.]

Tammany's part was less cleverly played. Its effort centred in breaking the solid Brooklyn delegation, and although with much tact it presented Slocum as its candidate for governor, and cunningly expressed confidence in Jacobs by proposing that he select the Committee on Credentials, two Bowery orators, with a fierceness born of hate, abused Robinson and pronounced Tilden "the biggest fraud of the age."[1654] Then Dorsheimer took the floor. His purpose was to capture the Kings and Albany delegations, and walking down the aisles with stage strides he begged them, in a most impassioned manner, to put themselves in Tammany's place, and to say whether, under like circumstances, they would not adopt the same course. He did it very adroitly. His eyes blazed, his choice words blended entreaty with reasoning, and his manner indicated an earnestness that captivated if it did not convert. His declaration, however, that Tammany would bolt Robinson's renomination withered the effect of his rhetoric. Kelly had insinuated as much, and Tammany had flouted it for two days; but Dorsheimer's announcement was the first authoritative declaration, and it hardened the hearts of men who repudiated such methods.

[Footnote 1654: See New York papers of September 12, 1879.]

Then the tricksters had their inning. Pending a motion that a committee of one from each county be appointed to secure harmony, a Saratoga delegate moved that John C. Jacobs be nominated for governor by acclamation. This turned the convention into a pandemonium. In the midst of the whirlwind of noise a Tammany reading clerk, putting the motion, declared it carried. Similar tactics had won Horatio Seymour the nomination for President in 1868, and for a time it looked as if the Chair might profit by their repetition. Jacobs was a young man. Ambition possessed and high office attracted him. But if a vision of the governorship momentarily unsettled his mind, one glance at McLaughlin and the Brooklyn delegation, sitting like icebergs in the midst of the heated uproar, restored his reason. When a motion to recess increased the tumult, Rufus H. Peckham, a cool Tilden man, called for the ayes and noes. This brought the convention to earth again, and as the noise subsided Jacobs reproved the clerk for his unauthorised assumption of the Chair's duties, adding, with a slight show of resentment, that had he been consulted respecting the nomination he should have respectfully declined.

At the conclusion of the roll-call the Tammany tellers, adding the aggregate vote to suit the needs of the occasion, pronounced the motion carried, while others declared it lost. A second call defeated a recess by 166 to 217. On a motion to table the appointment of a harmony committee the vote stood 226 to 155. A motion to adjourn also failed by 166 to 210. These results indicated that neither tricks nor disorder could shake the Robinson phalanx, and after the call to select a nominee for governor had begun, Augustus Schell, John Kelly, William Dorsheimer, and other Tammany leaders rose in their places. "Under no circumstances will the Democracy of New York support the nomination of Lucius Robinson," said Schell; "but the rest of the ticket will receive its warm and hearty support." Then he paused. Kelly, standing in the background of the little group, seemed to shrink from the next step. Regularity was the touchstone of Tammany's creed. Indifference to ways and means gave no offence, but disobedience to the will of a caucus or convention admitted of no forgiveness. Would Kelly himself be the first to commit this unpardonable sin? He could invoke no precedent to shield him. In 1847 the Wilmot Proviso struck the keynote of popular sentiment, and the Barnburners, leaving the convention the instant the friends of the South repudiated the principle, sought to stay the aggressiveness of slavery. Nor could he appeal to party action in 1853, for the Hunkers refused to enter the convention after the Barnburners had organised it. Moreover, he was wholly without excuse. He had accepted the platform, participated in all proceedings, and exhausted argument, diplomacy, trickery, and deception. Not until certain defeat faced him did he rise to go, and even then he tarried with the hope that Schell's words would bring the olive-branch. It was a moment of intense suspense. The convention, sitting in silence, realised that the loss meant probable defeat, and anxious men, unwilling to take chances, looked longingly from one leader to another. But the symbol of peace did not appear, and Schell announced, as he led the way to the door: "The delegation from New York will now retire from the hall." Then cheers and hisses deadened the tramp of retreating footsteps.

After the bolters' departure Irving Hall took the seats of Tammany, and the convention quickly closed its work. The roll-call showed 301 votes cast, of which Robinson received 243 and Slocum 56. Little conflict occurred in the selection of other names on the ticket, all the candidates save the lieutenant-governor being renominated.[1655]

[Footnote 1655: The ticket presented was as follows: Governor, Lucius Robinson, Chemung; Lieutenant-Governor, Clarkson N. Potter, New York; Secretary of State, Allen C. Beach, Jefferson; Comptroller, Frederick P. Olcott, New York; Treasurer, James Mackin, Dutchess; Attorney-General, Augustus Schoonmaker, Ulster; State Engineer, Horatio Seymour, Jr., Oneida.]

In the evening Tammany occupied Shakespeare Hall. David Dudley Field, formerly a zealous anti-slavery Republican, and more recently Tilden's counsel before the Electoral Commission, presided; Dorsheimer, whose grotesque position must have appealed to his own keen sense of the humorous, moved the nomination of John Kelly for governor; and Kelly, in his speech of acceptance, prophesied the defeat of Governor Robinson. This done they went out into darkness.

Throughout the campaign the staple of Republican exhortations was the Southern question and the need of a "strong man." Even Conkling in his one speech made no reference to State politics or State affairs. When Cornell's election, midway in the canvass, seemed assured, Curtis argued that his success would defeat the party in 1880, and to avoid such a calamity he advocated "scratching the ticket."[1656] Several well-known Republicans, adopting the suggestion, published an address, giving reasons for their refusal to support the head and the tail of the ticket. They cited the cause of Cornell's dismissal from the custom-house; compared the cost of custom-house administration before and after his separation from the service; and made unpleasant reference to the complicity of Soule in the canal frauds, as revealed in the eleventh report of the Canal Investigating Committee.[1657] Immediately the signers were dubbed "Scratchers." The party press stigmatised them as traitors, and several journals refused to publish their address even as an advertisement. So bitterly was Curtis assailed that he thought it necessary to resign the chairmanship of the Richmond County convention. Party wits also ridiculed him. Henry Ward Beecher said, with irresistible humour, that scratching is good for cutaneous affections. Martin I. Townsend declared that no Republican lived in Troy who had any disease that required scratching. Evarts called it "voting in the air." To all this Curtis replied that the incessant fusillade proved his suggestion not so utterly contemptible as it was alleged to be. "If the thing be a mosquito, there is too much powder and ball wasted upon it."[1658]

[Footnote 1656: Harper's Weekly, October 4, 1879.]

[Footnote 1657: New York papers, October 10, 1879.]

[Footnote 1658: Harper's Weekly, November 8, 1879.]

Nevertheless, the speech of the Secretary of State cut deeply. Evarts represented an Administration which had removed Cornell that "the office may be properly and efficiently administered." Now, he endorsed him for governor, ridiculed Republicans that opposed him, and pointed unmistakably to Grant as the "strong man" who could best maintain the power of the people.[1659] The Nation spoke of Evarts' appearance as "indecent."[1660] Curtis was not less severe. "Both his appearance and his speech are excellent illustrations of the reason why the political influence of so able and excellent a man is so slight. Mr. Evarts, musing on the folly of voting in the air, may remember the arrow of which the poet sings, which was shot into the air and found in the heart of an oak. It is hearts of oak, not of bending reeds, that make and save parties."[1661]

[Footnote 1659: Cooper Union speech, October 21.]

[Footnote 1660: October 23.]

[Footnote 1661: Harper's Weekly, November 8.]

Talk of a secret alliance between Tammany and the Cornell managers began very early in the campaign. Perhaps the fulsome praise of John Kelly in Republican journals, the constant support of John F. Smyth by Tammany senators, and Kelly's avowed intention to defeat Robinson, were sufficient to arouse suspicion. Conkling's sudden silence as to the danger threatening free elections, of which he declaimed so warmly in April, seemed to indicate undue satisfaction with existing conditions. To several newspapers the action of two Republican police commissioners, who championed Tammany's right to its share of poll inspectors, pointed unmistakably to a bargain, since it gave Tammany and the Republicans power to select a chairman at each poll.[1662] Evidence of a real alliance, however, was nebulous. The defeat of Robinson meant the election of Cornell, and Republicans naturally welcomed any effort to accomplish it. They greeted Kelly, during his tour of the State, with noise and music, crowded his meetings, and otherwise sought to dishearten Robinson's friends. Although Kelly's speeches did not compare in piquancy with his printed words, his references to Tilden as the "old humbug of Cipher Alley" and to Robinson as having "sore eyes" when signing bills, kept his hearers expectant and his enemies disturbed. The World followed him, reporting his speeches as "failures" and his audiences as "rushing pell-mell from the building."[1663]

[Footnote 1662: The Nation, September 25 and October 23, 1879; New York Times, September 19, 20, 24, 25.]

[Footnote 1663: New York World, October 11, 14, 16, 17.

"John Kelly. Oh! John Kelly! We read you like a book; We've got plain country common-sense, Though homely we may look; And we know each vote you beg, John, Is only begged to sell; You are but the tool of Conkling, And bargained to Cornell." --New York World, October 17.]

Kelly did not mean to dish the whole Democratic ticket. He expected to elect the minor State officers. But he learned on the morning after election that he had entirely miscalculated the effect of his scheme, since every Democrat except the nephew of Horatio Seymour rested in the party morgue by the side of Lucius Robinson.[1664] In the city Kelly also disappointed his followers. His own vote ran behind Robinson's, and all his friends were slaughtered. Indeed, when Tammany surrendered its regularity at Syracuse it lost its voting strength. Even Cornell whom it saved ran 20,000 behind his ticket. The election was, in fact, a triumph for nobody except Conkling. He had put into the highest State office a personal adherent, whom the Administration had stigmatised by dismissal; he had brought to New York his principal opponents in the Cabinet (Evarts and Sherman) to speak for his nominee and their dismissed servant; and he had induced the Administration to call for a "strong man" for the Presidency.[1665]

[Footnote 1664: The election held on November 4, resulted as follows: Governor, Cornell, 418,567; Robinson, 375,790; Kelly, 77,566; Lewis (National), 20,286; Mears (Prohibition), 4,437. Lieutenant-Governor, Hoskins, 435,304; Potter, 435,014. Secretary of State, Carr (Republican), 436,013; Beach (Democrat), 434,138. Comptroller, Wadsworth, 438,253; Olcott, 432,325. Treasurer, Wendell, 436,300; Mackin, 433,485. Attorney-General, Ward, 437,382; Schoonmaker, 433,238. Engineer and Surveyor, Soule, 427,240; Seymour, 439,681. Legislature: Assembly, Republicans, 92; Democrats, 35; National, 1; Senate (elected the previous year), Republicans, 25; Democrats, 8.]

[Footnote 1665: To criticisms of his course in taking part in the campaign, Sherman replied; "We must carry New York next year or see all the result of the war overthrown and the constitutional amendments absolutely nullified. We cannot do this if our friends defeat a Republican candidate for governor, fairly nominated, and against whom there are no substantial charges affecting his integrity."--Burton, Life of Sherman, p. 296.]

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XXXIII. STALWART AND HALF-BREED

1880

While General Grant made his tour around the world there was much speculation respecting his renomination for the Presidency. Very cautiously started on the ground of necessity because of the attitude of the Southerners in Congress, the third-term idea continued to strengthen until the widespread and deep interest in the great soldier's home-coming was used to create the belief that he was unmistakably the popular choice. Grant himself had said nothing publicly upon the subject except in China, and his proper and modest allusions to it then added to the people's respect. But during the welcome extended him at Philadelphia, the Mayor of that city disclosed a well-laid plan to make him a candidate. This frank declaration indicated also that Grant expected the nomination, if, indeed, he was not a party to the scheme for securing it.

The question of discrediting the traditions quickly became a serious one, and its discussion, stimulated by other aspirants for the Presidency, took a wide range. The opponents of a third term did not yield to any in their grateful remembrance and recognition of what Grant had done for the country, but they deemed it impolitic upon both public and party grounds. If the tradition of two terms be overthrown because of his distinguished service, they argued, his election for a fourth term, to which the Constitution offered no bar, could be urged for the same reason with still more cogency. Such apparently logical action would not only necessarily familiarise the public mind, already disturbed by the increasing depression to business caused by the turmoil incident to quadrennial elections, with the idea of a perpetual Presidency, but it would foster confidence in personal government, and encourage the feeling that approved experience, as in the case of trusted legislators, is necessary to the continuance of wise administration.

Party reasons also furnished effective opposition. German voters, especially in New York and Wisconsin, early disclosed an indisposition to accept Grant even if nominated, while the Independent or Scratcher voiced a greater hostility than the Cornell nomination had excited. Never before had so much attention been given to a political question by persons ordinarily indifferent to such speculation. Anti-Grant clubs, springing up in a night, joined the press in ridiculing the persistent talk about the need of "a strong man," and charged that the scheme was conceived by a coterie of United States senators, managed by former office-holders under President Grant, and supported by men who regarded the Hayes administration as an impertinence. Matthew Hale, in accepting the presidency of the Albany Club, declared the movement to be at war with American traditions and with the spirit of American institutions.[1666]

[Footnote 1666: The Albany Club was organised early in January, 1880.]

Such acrimonious antagonism quickly uncovered the purpose of the Stalwarts, who now sought to control the nomination regardless of opposition. For this purpose unusually early conventions for the selection of delegates to the National Convention, to be held at Chicago on June 2, were called in Pennsylvania, New York, and other States. Pennsylvania's was fixed for February 4 at Harrisburg, and New York's for the 25th at Utica. Like methods obtained in the selection of delegates. At Albany John F. Smyth issued a call in the evening for primaries to be held the next day at noon, and furnished his followers with pink coloured tickets, headed "Grant." Smyth was already in bad odour. Governor Robinson had accused him of compelling illegal payments by insurance companies of a large sum of money, to which he replied that the act making it illegal was unconstitutional, although no court had so pronounced. His misdemeanour was confirmed in the public mind by the fact, elicited on the impeachment trial, that the money so obtained had been divided among agents of the Republican organisation. Indeed, the Times charged, without reservation, that in one case the place of division was in none other than the house of Cornell himself.[1667] Although the Senate of 1878 and of 1879 failed to remove Smyth, the Senate of 1880, notwithstanding his reappointment by Governor Cornell, refused to confirm him.[1668] In the presence of such a sorry record the ostracised Albany Republicans were not surprised at his attempt to cheat them at the primaries, and their indignation at the shameless procedure resounded through the State. At the end of a week Charles Emory Smith, the gifted editor of the Albany Journal, who headed the delegation thus selected, deemed it expedient to withdraw. Five associates did likewise. Nevertheless, the opponents of a third term refused to participate in a second election, called to fill the vacancies, since it did not remove the taint from the majority who refused to resign.

[Footnote 1667: New York Times (editorial), February 18, 1880.]

[Footnote 1668: "The Governor showed his contempt for public opinion by nominating John F. Smyth, while the Senate had self-respect enough to refrain from confirming him."--Ibid., May 28, 1880.]

In reward for his defence of Smyth, if not to express contempt for the Albany malcontents, Charles Emory Smith was made chairman of the Utica convention. This evidenced Conkling's complete control. Smith had lived in Albany since early boyhood. He passed from its Academy to Union College, thence back to the Academy as a teacher, and from that position to the editorship of the Express. In a few years his clear, incisive English, always forcible, often eloquent, had advanced him to the editorship of the Evening Journal. Singularly attractive in person, with slender, agile form, sparkling eyes, and ruddy cheeks, he adorned whatever place he held. Indeed, the beauty and strength of his character, coupled with the esteem in which Republican leaders held him as a counsellor, gave him in the seventies a position in the politics of the State somewhat akin to that held by Henry J. Raymond in the sixties. He did not then, if ever, belong in Raymond's class as a journalist or as an orator. Nor did he possess the vehement desire for office that distinguished the brilliant editor of the Times. But Smith's admirable temper, his sweet disposition, and his rare faculty for saying things without offence, kept him, like Raymond, on friendly terms with all. His part was not always an easy one. Leaders changed and new issues appeared, yet his pen, though sometimes crafty, was never dipped in gall. While acting as secretary for Governor Fenton he enjoyed the esteem of Edwin D. Morgan, and if his change from the Albany Express to the Albany Journal in 1870, and from the Journal to the Philadelphia Press in 1880, carried him from Fenton's confidence into Conkling's embrace and converted him from an ardent third-termer to a champion of Blaine, the bad impression of this prestidigitation was relieved, if not excused or forgotten, because of his journalistic promotion.

In State conventions, too, Smith played the part formerly assigned to Raymond, becoming by common consent chairman of the Committee on Resolutions. His ear went instinctively to the ground, and, aided by Carroll E. Smith of the Syracuse Journal, he wrote civil service reform into the platform of 1877, the principle of sound money into that of 1878, and carefully shaded important parts of other platforms in that eventful decade.[1669] In like manner, although a pronounced champion of Conkling and the politics he represented, Smith encouraged moderate policies, urged frank recognition of the just claims of the minority, and sought to prevent the stalwart managers from too widely breaching the proprieties that should govern political organisations. If his efforts proved unavailing, it seemed that he had at least mastered the art of being regular without being bigoted, and of living on good terms with a machine whose methods he could not wholly approve. Nevertheless, there came a time when his associations, as in the career of Raymond, seriously injured him, since his toleration and ardent defence of John F. Smyth, besides grieving sincere friends and temporarily clouding his young life,[1670] dissolved his relations with a journal that he loved, and which, under his direction, had reminded its readers of the forceful days of Thurlow Weed. Fortunately, the offer of the editorship of the Philadelphia Press, coming contemporaneously with his separation from the Albany Journal, gave him an honourable exit from New York, and opened not only a larger sphere of action but a more distinguished career.[1671]

[Footnote 1669: "Mr. Smith is one of the happily diminishing class of amphibious editors, one-third journalist, two-thirds 'worker,' who consult with the Bosses in hotels all over the State about 'fixing things,' draw fustian platforms for State conventions, embody the Boss view of the nation and the world in 'editorials,' and supply the pure milk of the word to local committees and henchmen, and 'make it hot' for the Democrats during the canvass."--The Nation, March 4, 1880.]

[Footnote 1670: Smith was then thirty-eight years of age.]

[Footnote 1671: "Mr. Smith's partners in the Journal had become enraged in the course of a factional controversy over public appointments, in particular that of Smyth to be the Insurance Commissioner. At a conference Mr. Smith's partners desired to get editorial control at once and to terminate his connection with the Journal."--Philadelphia Press, January 20, 1908.

"The first response of the conscience and courage of the party was the prompt change of the Albany Evening Journal, probably the most influential party paper in the State, from the position of a thick-and-thin machine organ to that of an advocate of sound and independent Republicanism."--Harper's Weekly, March 13, 1880.]

Having control of the convention Conkling boldly demanded the adoption of a resolution instructing "the delegates to use their most earnest and united efforts to secure the nomination of Ulysses S. Grant." The admirers of Blaine seemed unprepared for such a contest. The meagre majority given Grant at the Pennsylvania convention had greatly encouraged them, but the intervening three weeks afforded insufficient time to gather their strength. Besides, no one then suspected the overwhelming public sentiment against a third term which was soon to sweep the country. As it was no one seemed to have definite plans or a precise knowledge of how to proceed or what to do, while local leaders frittered away their strength in petty quarrels which had little bearing upon the question of Presidential candidates. Finally, an amendment simply endorsing the nominee of the Chicago convention was offered as a substitute for the Grant resolution.

The Stalwarts, with the steadiness of veterans conscious of their strength, deftly, almost delicately, in fact, silenced the minority. Only once, when the reader of the resolutions hesitated over an illegible word, did the dramatic happen. At that moment a thin voice in the gallery exclaimed, "Hurrah for Blaine!" Instantly the audience was on fire. The burst of applause brought out by Smith's opening reference to the "never vanquished hero of Appomattox" had been disappointing because it lacked spontaneity and enthusiasm, but the sound of the magic word "Blaine," like a spark flying to powder, threw the galleries into a flame of cheering which was obstinate in dying out. Conkling, in closing the debate on the resolution, showed his customary audacity by hurling bitter sarcasm at the people who had presumed to applaud. It was in this address that he recited Raleigh's famous line from The Silent Lover: "The shallows murmur but the deeps are dumb."[1672]

[Footnote 1672:

"Passions are likened best to flowers and streams; The shallows murmur but the deeps are dumb." --Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, Vol. 8, p. 716 (Oxford, 1829).]

Conkling's purpose was to put district delegates upon their honour to obey the convention's instructions regardless of the preference of their districts. He did it very adroitly, arguing that a delegate is an agent with a principal behind him, whom he represents if he is faithful. "For what is this convention held?" he asked. "Is it merely to listen while the delegates from the several congressional districts inform the convention who the districts are going to send to the national convention? Is it for that five hundred men, the selected pride of the Republican party of this State, have come here to meet together? I think not. Common sense and the immemorial usages of both parties answer the question. What is the use of a delegate? Is it a man to go to a convention representing others, and then determine as he individually prefers what he will do? Let me say frankly that if any man, however much I respect him, were presented to this convention who would prove recreant to its judgment, I would never vote for him as a delegate to any convention."[1673]

[Footnote 1673: New York Tribune, February 26, 1880.]

Earlier in the day Newton M. Curtis of St. Lawrence, the one-eyed hero of Fort Fisher, had insisted with much vehemence that district delegates represented the views of their immediate constituents and not those of the State convention. Others as stoutly maintained the same doctrine. But after Conkling had concluded no one ventured to repeat the claim.[1674] Indeed, when the several districts reported their delegates, the Stalwarts openly called upon the suspected ones to say whether they submitted to the instructions. Woodin and Curtis voluntarily surrendered. Thus the Grant forces accomplished by indirection what prudence deterred them from doing boldly and with a strong hand.[1675]

[Footnote 1674: The vote on the resolution endorsing Grant, stood 216 to 183.]

[Footnote 1675: Roscoe Conkling, Alonzo B. Cornell, Chester A. Arthur, and James D. Warren, were selected as delegates-at-large.]

What the managers gained by indirection, however, they lost in prestige. If the Harrisburg convention punctured the assumption that the people demanded Grant's nomination, the Utica assembly destroyed it, since the majority of thirty-three indicated an entire absence of spontaneity. Moreover, the convention had scarcely adjourned before its work became a target. George William Curtis declared the assertion "audacious" and "ridiculous" that a district delegate was an agent of the State convention, claiming that when the latter relinquished the right to select it abandoned the right to instruct. Furthermore, the National Convention, the highest tribunal of the party, had decided, he said, that State instructions did not bind district delegates.[1676] The Tribune, voicing the sentiment of the major part of the Republican press, thought the convention had clearly exceeded its power. "It was the right of the majority to instruct the delegates-at-large," it said, "but it had no right to compel district delegates to vote against their consciences and the known wishes of their constituents." This led to the more important question whether delegates, pledged without authority, ought to observe such instructions. "No man chosen to represent a Blaine district can vote for Grant and plead the convention's resolution in justification of his course," continued the Tribune, which closed with serving notice upon delegates to correct their error as speedily as possible, "since a delegate who disobeys the instructions of his constituents will find himself instantly retired from public life."[1677]

[Footnote 1676: Harper's Weekly, March 13, 20, April 3, 1880.]

[Footnote 1677: New York Tribune, February 26.]

As the campaign waxed warmer and the success of Grant seemed more certain if Pennsylvania and New York voted under the unit rule, the pressure to create a break in those States steadily increased. The Stalwarts rested their case upon the regularity of the procedure and the delegates' acceptance of the instructions after their election. "They accepted both commissions and instructions," said the Times, "with every protestation that they were bound by their sacred honour to obey the voice of the people as expressed by the traditional and accepted methods."[1678] On the other hand, the Blaine delegates relied upon the decision of the last National Convention, which held that where a State convention had instructed its delegation to vote as a unit, each delegate had the right to vote for his individual preference. "My selection as a delegate," said Woodin, "was the act of the delegates representing my congressional district, and the State convention has ratified and certified that act to the National Convention. Our commissions secure the right to act, and our conventions guarantee freedom of choice without restraint or fetters."[1679]

[Footnote 1678: New York Times, May 8.]

[Footnote 1679: From speech made in the Senate on May 7.--New York Tribune, May 8.]

Woodin was the most courageous if not the ablest opponent of Conkling in the convention. He may not have been an organiser of the machine type, but he was a born ruler of men. Robust, alert, florid, with square forehead, heavy brows, and keen blue eyes, he looked determined and fearless. His courage, however, was not the rashness of an impetuous nature. It was rather the proud self-confidence of a rugged character which obstacles roused to a higher combative energy. He was not eloquent; not even ornate in diction. But his voice, his words, and his delivery were all adequate. Besides, he possessed the incomparable gift of reserved power. During his career of ten years in the State Senate he was unquestionably the strongest man in the Legislature and the designated as well as the real leader for more than half a decade. He was not intolerant, seldom disclosing his powers of sarcasm, or being betrayed, even when excited, into angry or bitter words. Yet he was extremely resolute and tenacious, and must have been the undisputed leader of the anti-Conkling forces save for the pitch that many said defiled him. If he yielded it was not proven. Nevertheless, it tended to mildew his influence.

It was evident from the speech of Woodin that the anti-Grant forces had the reasonableness of the argument, but the acceptance of the Utica instructions put delegates in a delicate position. To say that Conkling had "tricked" them into a pledge which the convention had no authority to exact,[1680] did not explain how a personal pledge could be avoided. Finally, William H. Robertson, a delegate from the Twelfth District, who had not appeared at Utica, published a letter that he should vote for Blaine "because he is the choice of the Republicans of the district which I represent."[1681] Two days afterwards John Birdsall of the First District and Loren B. Sessions of the Thirty-third announced on the floor of the Senate that they should do likewise. Woodin said that as he could not reconcile a vote for some candidate other than Grant with his attitude voluntarily taken at Utica he should let his alternate go to Chicago.[1682] From time to time other delegates followed with declarations similar to Robertson's.

[Footnote 1680: Harper's Weekly, May 29.]

[Footnote 1681: Letter dated May 6.--See Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1880, p. 575.]

[Footnote 1682: New York Tribune, May 8.]

As expected, this disobedience drew a volley of anathemas upon the offending delegates, who became known as "Half-breeds."[1683] The Times thought Robertson's "tardy revolt" dictated by "self-interest," because "the pliant politician from Westchester had chafed under a sense of disappointed ambition ever since the defeat of his nomination for governor in 1872."[1684]

[Footnote 1683: Everit Brown, A Dictionary of American Politics, p. 372; Harper's Weekly, February 5, 1881.]

[Footnote 1684: New York Times, May 16.]

Upon Sessions and Woodin it was more severe. "We have never regarded State Senator Sessions as a type of all that is corrupt in politics at Albany," it said, "and we have steadily defended Mr. Woodin against the attacks made upon him on the testimony of Tweed. But if these recent accessions to the Blaine camp are half as bad as the Tribune has painted them in the past, that journal and its candidate must have two as disreputable allies as could be found outside of state prison."[1685] Woodin's manner of avoiding his Utica pledge seemed to arouse more indignation than the mere breaking of it. The Times called it "a sneaking fashion,"[1686] and charged lack of courage. "He does not believe that he who performs an act through another is himself responsible for the act."[1687]

[Footnote 1685: Ibid.]

[Footnote 1686: Ibid., June 2.]

[Footnote 1687: Ibid., May 8.]

At Chicago the principle of district representation became the important question. It involved the admission of many delegates, and after two days of debate the convention sustained it by a vote of 449 to 306.[1688] To complete the overthrow of the unit-rule a resolution was also adopted providing that when any delegate excepted to the correctness of a vote as cast by the chairman of a delegation, the president of the convention should direct a roll-call of the delegation. This practically settled the result. Nevertheless, the belief obtained, so strong was the Stalwarts' faith in their success, that when the Blaine and Sherman forces broke to a compromise candidate, Grant would gain the needed additional seventy-four votes.

[Footnote 1688: The minority, representing fourteen States and ably led by Benjamin F. Tracy, sustained the authority of State conventions to overrule the choice of the districts.]

Conkling had never before attended a national convention. Indeed, he had never been seen at a great political gathering west of the Alleghanies. But he now became the central figure of the convention, with two-fifths of the delegates rallying under his leadership. His reception whenever he entered the hall was the remarkable feature of the great gathering. Nothing like it had occurred in previous national conventions. Distinguished men representing favourite candidates had been highly honoured, but never before did the people continue, day after day, to welcome one with such vociferous acclaim. It was not all for Grant. The quick spontaneous outburst of applause that shook the banners hanging from the girders far above, had in it much of admiration for the stalwart form, the dominant spirit, the iron-nerved boss, who led his forces with the arrogance of a gifted, courageous chieftain. His coming seemed planned for dramatic effect. He rarely appeared until the audience, settled into order by the opening prayer or by the transaction of business, might easily catch sight of him, and as he passed down the long aisle, moving steadily on with graceful stride and immobile face, a flush of pride tinged his cheeks as cheer after cheer, rolling from one end of the amphitheatre to the other, rent the air. He sat in the front row on the centre aisle, and about him clustered Chester A. Arthur, Levi P. Morton, Benjamin F. Tracy, Edwards Pierrepont, George H. Sharpe, and the boyish figure of Charles E. Cornell, a pale, sandy, undersized youth, the son of the Governor, who was represented by an alternate.[1689]

[Footnote 1689: "Suggestions were made that the substitution of Mr. Conkling for General Grant would give him the nomination, and there was a moment when General Garfield apprehended such a result. There was, however, never a time when it was possible. The 306 would never have consented unless Grant's name were first withdrawn by his authority. A firmer obstacle would have been Conkling's sturdy refusal to allow the use of his name under any circumstances."--Boutwell, Reminiscences, Vol. 2, p. 269.]

Conkling's presentation of Grant was largely relied upon to gain the needed votes. Prior to 1876 little importance attached to such speeches, but after the famous oration of Robert G. Ingersoll at Cincinnati, which became influential almost to the point of success, the solicitude exhibited in the selection of dominating speakers constituted a new phase in convention politics and added immeasurably to the popular interest. By common consent Conkling was named to present the Stalwarts' choice, and in most of the qualities desirable in such an address his was regarded the best of the day.

The lines of Private Miles O'Reilly,[1690] suggested to the Senator on the evening before he spoke, caught the convention as quickly as did Ingersoll's opening sentences in 1876, and all that followed, save his sarcasm and flashes of scorn, held the closest attention. "His unmatched eloquence," said Brandegee of Connecticut.[1691] This was the judgment of an opponent. "It had the warmth of eulogy, the finish of a poem, the force and fire of a philippic," said the Inter-Ocean.[1692] This was the judgment of a friend. All the art of which he was master found expression in every sentence, polished and balanced with rhetorical skill, and delivered with the emphasis and inflection of a great orator. One critic thought it a revelation to find a man who could be eloquent with studied composure, who could be fervid without wildness, and who could hold imagery and metaphor to the steady place of relentless logic without detracting from their special and peculiar character.

[Footnote 1690:

"When asked what State he hails from, Our sole reply shall be, He comes from Appomattox And its famous apple-tree."]

[Footnote 1691: From his speech nominating Elihu B. Washburne.--Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1880.]

[Footnote 1692: Chicago Inter-Ocean, June 7, 1880.]

Not content with reciting the achievements of his own candidate, Conkling seriously weakened his oration as a vote-making speech by launching shafts of irony first into Sherman and then into Blaine. "Nobody is really worried about a third term," he said in conclusion, "except those hopelessly longing for a first term. Without patronage, without telegraph wires running from his house to this convention, without election contrivances, his name is on the country's lips. Without bureaus, committees, officers, or emissaries to manufacture sentiment in his favour, without intrigue or effort, Grant is the candidate whose supporters stand by the creed of the party, holding the right of the majority as the very essence of their faith, and meaning to uphold that faith against the charlatans and guerillas, who, from time to time, deploy and forage between the lines."[1693] As these sabre-cuts, dealt with the emphasis of gesture and inflection, flashed upon the galleries, already charmed with the accomplishment of his speech and the grace of his sentiment, loud hisses, mingled with distracting exclamations of banter and dissent, proclaimed that the spell of his magic was broken.

[Footnote 1693: New York Times, June 7.]

Balloting for a candidate began on the fifth day. Many rumours preceded Conkling's method of announcing New York's vote, but when his turn came, he explained that although he possessed full instructions concerning the true condition of the vote, he thought it better to call the roll, since several of the delegates preferred to speak for themselves. This plan, so adroitly submitted, made it impossible to conceal one's vote behind an anonymous total, and compelled John Birdsall, the Queens County senator, to lead in the disagreeable duty of disobeying the instructions of the State convention. Birdsall rose with hesitation, and, after voting for Blaine in a subdued voice, dropped quickly into his seat as if anxious to avoid publicity. Then the convention, having listened in perfect silence, ratified his work with a chorus of hisses and applause. Gradually the anti-third termers exhibited more courage, and after Robertson and Husted had called out their candidate with an emphasis that indicated pride and defiance, the applause drowned the hisses. Woodin's conduct contrasted sharply with his usual courage. He was an aggressive member of the opposition, but at this moment, when brave hearts, unflinching resolve, and unruffled temper were needed, he stood at the rear of the hall, while Leander Fitts, his alternate, upon whom he cast the responsibility of violating a solemnly uttered pledge, feebly pronounced the name "Blaine." The result of the roll-call gave Grant 51, Blaine 17, and Sherman 2.[1694] On the seventeenth ballot Dennis McCarthy, a State senator from Onondaga, changed his vote from Grant to Blaine. Thus modified the New York vote continued until the thirty-sixth ballot, when the Blaine and Sherman delegates united, recording twenty votes for Garfield to fifty for Grant. On this roll-call Grant received 306 votes to 399 for Garfield.[1695] Thus by a strange coincidence the Stalwarts registered the fateful number that marked their strength when the unit rule was defeated. During the thirty-six roll-calls Grant's vote varied from 302 to 313, but in the stampede, when two hundred and fifteen Blaine men and ninety-six supporters of Sherman rushed into line for Garfield, the faithful 306 went down in defeat together. These figures justly became an insignia for the heroic.[1696]

[Footnote 1694: The first ballot was as follows: Grant, 304; Blaine, 284; Sherman, 93; Edmunds, 34; Washburne, 30; Windom, 10. Whole number of votes, 755; necessary to a choice, 378.]

[Footnote 1695: Thirty-fifth ballot: Grant, 313; Blaine, 257; Sherman, 99; Edmunds, 11; Washburne, 23; Windom, 3; Garfield, 50. Thirty-sixth ballot: Grant, 306; Blaine, 42; Sherman, 3; Washburne, 5; Garfield, 399.

Conkling's peculiar manner of announcing New York's vote excited criticism. "Two delegates," he declared, "are said to be for Sherman, eighteen for Blaine, and fifty are for Grant." The chairman of the West Virginia delegation, whom the Senator had sought to unseat, mimicking the latter's emphasis, announced: "One delegate is said to be for Grant, and eight are known to be for Blaine."]

[Footnote 1696: Some months later Chauncey I. Filley, a delegate from St. Louis, caused the Grant medals to be struck for the 306, on which was emblazoned "The Old Guard."]

After Garfield's nomination the Stalwarts of the New York delegation did not conceal their disappointment. When everybody else was cheering they kept their seats, and while others displayed Garfield badges, they sullenly sought their headquarters to arrange for the Vice-Presidency. Leaders of the Garfield movement, now eager to strengthen the ticket, looked to them for a candidate. New York belonged in the list of doubtful States, and to enlist the men who seemed to control its destiny they instinctively turned to the defeated faction. William M. Dennison, a former governor of Ohio, promptly made their wishes known, confidently counting upon Conkling's coöperation, since the Senator had been the first on his feet to make Garfield's nomination unanimous. In doing so he expressed the hope that the zeal and fervour of the convention would characterise its members "in bearing the banner and carrying the lances of the Republican party into the ranks of the enemy."

Conkling's treatment of Dennison's request has been variously reported. One version is that he demanded the nomination of Chester A. Arthur; another, that he sternly refused to make any suggestion. Contemporary press reports confirm the first, basing it upon his desire to vindicate Arthur and humiliate Sherman; the second is supported by Alfred R. Conkling's biography of his uncle.[1697] But neither report is correct. Conkling bitterly resented Garfield's nomination, predicted his defeat at the polls, and did not hesitate to dissuade friends from accepting the nomination for Vice-President. "The convention has nominated a candidate, but not a President," he said to Stewart L. Woodford. "Since the nomination I have heard from an influential friend at Albany, who declares that Garfield cannot carry New York. Now, the question is, whom shall we place upon the altar as a vicarious sacrifice? Mr. Morton has declined. Perhaps you would like the nomination for Vice-President?" Being assured that Woodford would accept it if tendered to him, Conkling added: "I hope no sincere friend of mine will accept it."[1698]

[Footnote 1697: "It has been asserted that this nomination was a boon to Roscoe Conkling to secure his support of Garfield. To deny this is almost supererogatory. He sternly refused to make any suggestion."--Conkling, Life of Conkling, p. 607-608.]

[Footnote 1698: Woodford's interview with the writer, October 4, 1908.]

In the event of Grant's nomination Levi P. Morton had been prominently mentioned as a proper candidate for Vice-President. He was then fifty-six years of age, and had achieved high reputation in banking and financial circles. Though not eloquent according to the canons of oratory, he spoke with clearness, was widely intelligent, and had given careful attention to public questions. Conservative in his nature and sturdy in his principles, he always advised against rashness and counselled firmness. A single session in Congress had proven his zeal in the performance of public duty, and his fitness for Vice-President was recognised then as it was eight years later when he became the running mate of Benjamin Harrison. Upon his nomination, therefore, Garfield, before the convention had recessed, sent word by Dennison that he desired Morton nominated for second place. Morton, answering that his nomination must not be made without previous consultation with his associates, immediately informed Conkling of Garfield's desire. Conkling replied, "If you think the ticket will be elected; if you think you will be happy in the association, accept." To this Morton answered, "I have more confidence in your judgment than in my own." Conkling then added: "Governor Boutwell of Massachusetts is a great friend of yours. Why don't you talk with him?" Acting upon this suggestion Morton sought Boutwell, who advised against it. Morton acquiesced and refused the use of his name.[1699]

[Footnote 1699: Mr. Morton's letter to the author, dated September 14, 1908.]

After returning to their headquarters at the hotel the Stalwarts, upon the suggestion and insistence of George H. Sharpe, quickly agreed upon Chester A. Arthur, who gave an affirmative response to their appeal. Conkling was not present at the time, but subsequently in Arthur's room, where Howard Carroll and several other delegates lingered, he bitterly opposed placing a Stalwart upon the ticket and expressed in unmeasured terms his disapprobation of Arthur's acceptance.[1700] On their way to the convention Sharpe told Woodford of the pungent flavour of Conkling's invective, and of Arthur's calm assertion of the propriety of his action. At the wigwam Conkling refused Sharpe's request to place Arthur in nomination.[1701]

[Footnote 1700: Letter of Howard Carroll to the author, dated October 15, 1908.]

[Footnote 1701: Interview of author with General Woodford.]

Upon the reassembling of the convention California presented Elihu B. Washburne for Vice-President, a nomination which Dennis McCarthy of New York, amidst cordial and hearty applause from the galleries, seconded in a forceful speech. This indicated that Arthur was persona non grata to the anti-Grant delegates of the Empire State. Jewell of Connecticut, Ferry of Michigan, Settle of North Carolina, and Maynard of Tennessee, were likewise presented. As the call of States proceeded New York made no response in its turn, but when Woodford subsequently proposed the name of Arthur, Dennison responded with a spirited second, followed by delegates from New Jersey, Illinois, Mississippi, Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. This array of backing brought McCarthy to his feet, who withdrew his second to Washburne and moved that Arthur's nomination, under a suspension of the rules, be made by acclamation. This required a two-thirds vote and was lost. Then Campbell of West Virginia, amidst the loudest cheers of the evening, seconded the nomination of Washburne. "Let us not do a rash thing." he said. "The convention has passed a resolution favouring civil service reform. Let us not stultify ourselves before the country."[1702]

[Footnote 1702: New York Tribune, June 9.]

At first Arthur's strength was confined to the Grant delegation, twenty-five States showing an increase of only seventy votes, thirty of which came from the South. But as the roll-call proceeded New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania brought other States into line, the ballot giving Arthur 468, Washburne 193, and other favourite sons 90.

Arthur's nomination was a distinct disappointment. To many it was an offence. Within the State leading Republican journals resented it by silence, while others were conspicuously cold; without the State it encountered even greater disadvantages, since his dismissal as collector of customs had advertised him as the enemy of reform, the apostle of bossism, and the friend of whatever was objectionable in politics.[1703] Yet his friends found a creditable record. He had successfully opposed the well-known action of Jonathan Lemmon, who sought to recover eight slaves which he incautiously brought into New York on his way from Virginia to Texas; he had established the right of coloured people to ride in the street-cars; and he had rendered valuable service in the early years of the war as engineer-in-chief and quartermaster-general on the staff of Governor Morgan. He possessed, too, an inherited instinct for keeping faith with men. In his relations with politicians of high or low degree there was not a trace of dissimulation or double-dealing. His career is a study of the evolution of character. It is not strange, perhaps, that in the days of custom-house investigations and bitter partisan strife, when he was known as an henchman of Conkling, there was a lack of public appreciation of the potentialities of a unique personality, but the Arthur heritage included then as afterward absolute truthfulness, shrewdness of judgment, high-minded patriotism, and consciousness of moral obligation.[1704]

[Footnote 1703: After the nomination John Sherman wrote to a personal friend: "The nomination of Arthur is a ridiculous burlesque, inspired, I fear, by a desire to defeat the ticket. His nomination attaches to the ticket all the odium of machine politics, and will greatly endanger the success of Garfield. I cannot but wonder how a convention, even in the heat and hurry of closing scenes, could make such a blunder."--Burton, Life of Sherman, p. 296.]

[Footnote 1704: "I do not think he [Arthur] knows anything. He can quote a verse of poetry, or a page from Dickens and Thackeray, but these are only leaves springing from a root out of dry ground. His vital forces are not fed, and very soon he has given out his all." Mrs. James G. Blaine, Letters (February 21, 1882), Vol. 1, p. 309.]

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XXXIV. TILDEN, KELLY, AND DEFEAT

1880

The defeat of Governor Robinson did not apparently change party sentiment respecting Tilden's renomination for the Presidency. No other candidate was seriously discussed. Indeed, the Democratic press continued to treat it as a matter of course, coupling with it the alleged subversion of an election, transcending in importance all questions of administration, and involving the vital principle of self-government through elections by the people. This new issue, dwarfing all other policies, had been for three years the cornerstone of every Democratic platform in state, county, or congressional convention. No argument seemed to weaken it, no event could destroy it. The Republican claim that the vote of three Southern States, as declared at the polls, was the result of terrorism and did not in any sense represent an honest expression of the popular will, made no impression upon it. The well-known fact that Congress, because of the confusion of the situation, had wisely sought a remedy in the Electoral Commission, which was passed by Democratic rather than Republican votes, in nowise weakened the force of its appeal. Not even did the disclosure that Tilden's house had become the headquarter of confidential agents, who sought to corrupt the electors, produce any change in it. The one declaration, patiently and persistently kept before the people, was that Tilden had been elected by the popular vote and defrauded by a false count of the electoral vote, and that the supreme issue in 1880 must be whether "this shall be a government by the sovereign people through elections, or a government by discarded servants holding over by force and fraud."[1705] The reiteration of this proposition made Tilden, it was claimed, the necessary and inevitable candidate of the Cincinnati convention, called to meet on June 22. The party seemed to believe, what Tilden himself had announced from his doorstep three years before, that the country would "never condone fraud," and it did not propose to sacrifice a winning issue.[1706]

[Footnote 1705: Tilden's letter of June 18, 1880.--Public Writings and Speeches, Vol. 2, pp. 502-506.]

[Footnote 1706: "If the Democrats do not nominate Mr. Tilden, they do relinquish the fraud issue--the strength of their canvass."--New York Sun, June 22, 1880.]

Nevertheless, many New York Democrats disliked Tilden. Their number, which the cipher disclosures materially increased, grew into threatening proportions after Kelly's dissatisfaction had settled into a relentless feud. This condition made Tilden's chances of carrying the State uncertain if not absolutely nil, and encouraged his critics to magnify his weaknesses until the belief generally obtained that serious, perhaps fatal opposition would array itself at the State convention on April 20. Statements as to Tilden's ill-health likewise found currency. When not displaying evidence of unimpaired mental vigour in the courtroom, he was said to be on the verge of total paralysis.[1707] To his burdens the government also added another by pursuing his income tax. This suit, commenced in January, 1877, and destined to drag through five years until dismissed by the prosecution without costs to either party, was fixed for the April term in 1880, although the United States attorney admitted his unpreparedness for trial.[1708] "Thus was he persecuted with unrelenting virulence by the Administration," says his biographer, "and by the Republican press, which neglected no opportunity of refreshing the memory of its readers in regard to his imputed capacities for wickedness."[1709]

[Footnote 1707: The Nation, April 22.]

[Footnote 1708: See district attorney's letter, Bigelow, Life of Tilden, Vol. 2, pp. 254-259, 264.]

[Footnote 1709: Ibid.]

Meanwhile, to escape interruptions to which Gramercy Park exposed him, Tilden settled in the summer of 1879 at Greystone on the Hudson, three miles beyond the northernmost limit of the city, on the highest ground south of the Highlands. Here he brought a portion of his library; here he mingled with his flocks and herds; and here in the seclusion of a noble estate, with the comforts of a palatial stone dwelling, he discoursed with friends, who came from every part of the country to assure him that he alone could keep the party together. Ever silent as to his own intentions Tilden talked of the crime of 1876 until his visitors, imbued with his own spirit, left him thoroughly impressed with the importance of his renomination.

But Tilden did not trust the result to sentiment. Throughout New York Daniel E. Manning and other lieutenants held a tight rein, and when the Syracuse convention assembled an early roll-call, on a resolution to determine the character of the Committee on Credentials, showed 295 votes for Tilden to 80 against him. If this overwhelming majority shocked the dissenters, it was not less a surprise to the regulars. In the convention of 1876 Tilden mustered, including Tammany, only 201 out of 375; now, after his enemies had exhausted their opposition, he proved stronger than in the closing months of his famous career as a reform governor. The result of this vote settled all controversies, leaving the convention free to appoint electors and to select delegates to Cincinnati.[1710] It was not to adjourn, however, until it had shown a serene and polite contempt for John Kelly. During the morning John B. Haskin, on behalf of the Tammany convention, had presented a resolution expressing a desire for the union of the party and asking the appointment of a harmony committee. Ignoring the assembly from which he came, the convention treated the resolution as a personal communication from Haskin, whom it assured, after politely reciprocating his desire for the union of the Democratic party, "that the deliberative wisdom of the national convention will result in such action as will secure the triumph of the Democratic party in the ensuing election."[1711] This bitter rebuff, coupled with the overwhelming majority for Tilden, indicated a conscious strength which deeply impressed the party in other States, and greatly aided in demoralising opposition in New York.

[Footnote 1710: Delegates-at-large: Lucius Robinson, Calvin E. Pratt, Rufus W. Peckham, and Lester B. Faulkner. The last named was chairman of the Democratic State committee.]

[Footnote 1711: New York Tribune, April 21.]

Nor did the convention adjourn until its Committee on Resolutions sprung a further surprise. The delegates anticipated and applauded an elaborate statement of the fraud issue, but the presentation of Tilden as a candidate for President came with the suddenness of his unexpected majority. Manning did not intend to go so far. His courage came with his strength. Proof of this, if any were needed, existed in the fact that the endorsement was in manuscript, while the rest of the platform was read from a printed slip. To define the situation more clearly the committee submitted a unit rule, declaring "that in case any attempt is made to dismember or divide the delegation by contesting the seats of a portion of the delegates, or if delegates countenance such an attempt by assuming to act separately from the majority, or fail to coöperate with such majority, the seats of such delegates shall be deemed to be vacated."[1712] Never did convention adopt a more drastic rule. The reading of these ball and chain provisions provoked hisses and widened the chasm between Tilden's convention and John Kelly's side-show.

[Footnote 1712: New York Sun, April 21.]

Kelly's bolt in 1879 had proved his power to destroy; yet to his friends, if not to himself, it must have been deeply humiliating to see the fierce light of public interest turned entirely on Tilden. Kelly also realised the more poignant fact that jealousy, distrust, and accumulated resentment lined the way he had marked out for himself. Nevertheless, he walked on apparently heedless of the signs of conflict. Since the regular Democratic convention would not admit him, he threateningly assembled one of his own in Shakespeare Hall, to be used, if the party did not yield, in knocking at the door of the Cincinnati convention. William Dorsheimer acted as its temporary chairman. Dorsheimer had become a political changeling. Within a decade he had been a Republican, a Liberal, and a Democrat, and it was whispered that he was already tired of being a Kellyite. His appeal for Horatio Seymour indicated his restlessness. The feuds of Tilden and Church and Kernan and Kelly and Robinson had left Seymour the one Democrat who received universal homage from his party, and it became the fashion of Tilden's enemies to refer to the Oneidan as the only one who could unite the party and carry the State. It did not matter to Dorsheimer that Seymour, having retired from active politics in 1868, was placidly meditating at Deerfield, devoted to agricultural and historical interests. Nor did his clamour cease after the bucolic statesman had declared that if he must choose between a funeral and a nomination he would take the first,[1713] since the mention of Seymour's name always waked an audience into cheers. Later in the day Amasa J. Parker, on taking the chair as president, artfully made use of the same ruse to arouse interest.

[Footnote 1713: Letter to Dr. George L. Miller, New York Tribune, June 21, 1880.]

It was not an enthusiastic convention. Many delegates had lost heart. Kelly himself left the train unnoticed, and to some the blue badges, exploiting the purpose of their presence, indicated a fool's errand. In the previous September they had refused to support Robinson, and having defeated him they now returned to the same hall to threaten Tilden with similar treatment. This was their only mission. Humiliation did not possess them, however, until John B. Haskin reported that the regulars refused to recognise their existence. Then John Kelly threw off his muzzle, and with the Celtic-English of a Tammany brave exhibited a violent and revolutionary spirit. "Tilden was elected by the votes of the people," said Kelly, "and he had not sufficient courage after he was elected to go forward, as a brave man should have gone forward, and said to the people of the country, 'I have been elected by the votes of the people, and you see to it that I am inaugurated.' Nothing of the like did Mr. Tilden."[1714]

[Footnote 1714: New York Sun, April 21, 1880.]

In other words, Kelly thought Tilden an unfit candidate because he did not decide for himself that he had been elected and proceed to take his seat at the cost of a tremendous civil convulsion. Perhaps it was this policy more than Kelly's personality which had begun to alienate Dorsheimer. One who had been brought up in the bosom of culture and conservatism could have little confidence in such a man. The platform, though bitter, avoided this revolutionary sentiment. It protested against the total surrender of the party to one man, who has "cunning" and "unknown resources of wealth," and who "attempts to forestall public opinion, to preoccupy the situation, to overrule the majority, and to force himself upon the party to its ruin." It declared that "Tildenism is personalism, which is false to Democracy and dangerous to the Republic," and it pronounced "Tilden unfit for President" because "his political career has been marked with selfishness, treachery, and dishonour, and his name irretrievably connected with the scandals brought to light by the cipher despatches."[1715] Haskin proposed a more compact statement, declaring that "the Democratic party does not want any such money-grabber, railroad wrecker, and paralytic hypocrite at the helm of State."[1716]

[Footnote 1715: New York Times, April 21.]

[Footnote 1716: New York Times, April 21.

For delegate-at-large to Cincinnati the convention selected the following: Amasa J. Parker of Albany, William Dorsheimer of New York, Jeremiah McGuire of Chemung, George C. Green of Niagara.]

After the two conventions adjourned the question of chiefest interest was, would Tilden seek the nomination at Cincinnati? The action of the convention demonstrated that the regular party organisation was unaffected by the Kelly bolt, that Tilden controlled the party in the State, and that his nomination was a part of the programme. Moreover, it showed that the New York Democracy did not intend asking support upon any principle other than the issue of fraud. But intimations of Tilden's purpose to decline a nomination found expression in the speech and acts of men presumedly informed. Lester B. Faulkner's statement, in calling the convention to order, that he did not know whether the Governor would accept a renomination, coupled with the convention's reply to Haskin, expressing confidence that the action at Cincinnati would result in the Democracy's carrying New York, had made a deep impression. To many these insinuations indicated that because of his health or for some unknown cause he was not seriously a candidate. Others found reason for similar belief in the indisposition of prominent delegates to resent such a suggestion. One veteran journalist, skilled in reading the words and actions of political leaders, asserted with confidence that he would not be a candidate. To him Tilden's name concealed a strategic movement, which, in the end, would enable his friends to control the nomination for another.[1717]

[Footnote 1717: New York Tribune (correspondence), April 21.]

Such interpretation found hosts of doubters. Without Tilden, it was said, the fraud issue would lose its influence. Besides, if he intended to withdraw, why did Kelly assemble his convention? Surely some one, said they, would have given him an inkling in time to save him from the contempt and humiliation to which he had subjected himself. There was much force in this reasoning, and as the date of the national convention approached the mystery deepened.

Tilden was not a paralytic, as Haskin proclaimed. He could not even be called an invalid. His attention to vexatious litigation evidenced unimpaired mental power, and his open life at Greystone proved that his physical condition did not hide him from men. He undoubtedly required regular rest and sleep. His nervous system did not resist excitement as readily as in the days of his battle with Tweed and the Canal ring. It is possible, too, that early symptoms of a confirmed disease had then appeared, and that prudence dictated hygienic precautions. Once, in December, 1879, when contemplating the strain of the campaign of 1876, he questioned his ability to go through another. Again, in the early spring of 1880, after prolonged intellectual effort, he remarked in rather a querulous tone, "If I am no longer fit to prepare a case for trial, I am not fit to be President of the United States." Such casual remarks, usually made to a confidential friend, seemed to limit his references to his health.[1718] He doubtless felt disinclined, as have many stronger men, to meet the strain that comes when in pursuit of high public office, but there is no evidence that ill-health, if it really entered into his calculations, was the determining factor of his action. Conditions in the Republican party had changed in the Empire State since the nomination of Garfield. Besides, the cipher disclosures had lost him the independent vote which he received in 1876. This left only the regulation party strength, minus the Kelly vote. In 1876 Tilden's majority was 26,568, and in 1879 Kelly polled 77,566. If Kelly's bolt in 1880, therefore, should carry one-half or only one-quarter of the votes it did in 1879, Tilden must necessarily lose New York which meant the loss of the election. These were conditions, not theories, that confronted this hard-headed man of affairs, who, without sentiment, never failed to understand the inexorable logic of facts. Nevertheless, Tilden wanted the endorsement of a renomination. This would open the way for a graceful retreat. Yet, to shield him from possible defeat, he secretly gave Manning a letter, apparently declining to run again, which could be used if needed.

[Footnote 1718: John Bigelow, Life of Tilden, Vol. 2, pp. 265, 271.]

On reaching Cincinnati Manning found that a multiplicity of candidates made it difficult to determine Tilden's strength. The ranks of the opposition, based on cipher disclosures and Kelly's threats, rapidly strengthened, and although many friends of other candidates thought it less hazardous to nominate him than to repudiate him, ominous warnings piled up like thunder clouds on a summer day. Meantime New York's active canvass for Henry B. Payne of Ohio seemed to conflict with Tilden's candidacy, while Tilden's remarks, spoken in moments of physical discouragement, added to the impression that he did not seek the nomination. But why did he not say so? Manning, supposing he was the sole possessor of the letter and believing the time not yet ripe for producing it, kept his own counsels. Tilden, however, had given a duplicate to his brother Henry, who now announced through the press that Tilden had forwarded a communication. This reached Cincinnati on the eve of the convention.

It was long and characteristic. He recalled his services as a private citizen in overthrowing the Tweed ring and purifying the judiciary, and as governor of the State in breaking up the Canal ring, reducing the taxes, and reforming the administration. He told the familiar story of the "count out"; maintained that he could, if he pleased, have bought "proof of the fraud" from the Southern returning boards; and accused Congress of "abdicating its duty" in referring the count to the Electoral Commission. Since 1876, he said, he had been "denied the immunities of private life without the powers conferred by public station," but he had done all in his power to keep before the people "the supreme issue" raised by the events of that year. Now, however, he felt unequal to "a new engagement which involves four years of ceaseless toil. Such a work of renovation after many years of misrule, such a reform of systems and policies, to which I would cheerfully have sacrificed all that remained to me of health and life, is now, I fear, beyond my strength."[1719]

[Footnote 1719: Tilden's Public Writings and Speeches, Vol. 2, pp. 502-506.]

Tilden did not intend this to be a letter of withdrawal. With the hope of stimulating loyalty he sought to impress upon the delegates his vicarious sacrifice and the need of holding to the fraud issue. This was the interpretation quickly given it by his enemies. Kelly declared it a direct bid for the nomination. But a majority of the New York delegation regretfully accepted it as final. Nevertheless, many ardent Tilden men, believing the letter had strengthened him, insisted upon his nomination. The meeting of the delegation proved a stormy one. Bold charges of infidelity to Tilden reacted against Payne, and to escape controversy Manning indiscreetly asked if he might yield to the pressure which his letter had stimulated. To this Tilden could make but one reply: "My action is irrevocable. No friend must cast a doubt on my sincerity."[1720]

[Footnote 1720: John Bigelow, Life of Tilden, Vol. 2, p. 272.]

There is something pathetic in this passing of Tilden, but there seems no reason for surprise. Tilden was essentially an opportunist. He attacked the Tweed ring after its exposure; he made war upon the Canal ring after its record had become notorious; and he reduced the State taxes after the war debt had been paid. Upon these reforms he rode into power, and upon the cry of fraud he hoped to ride again to success. He was much too acute not to know that the cipher disclosures had robbed him of the rôle of reformer, but he seems to have been blind to the obvious fact that every one else was also aware of it. Besides, he lacked boldness and was at times the victim of indecision. He was singularly unfortunate, moreover, in failing to attract a circle of admirers such as usually surround public men of great prominence. Nevertheless, the opinion then obtained, and a quarter of a century perhaps has not changed it, that had Manning, when he reached the convention city, boldly and promptly demanded Tilden's nomination it could have been secured. Whether, if tendered him, he would have accepted it, "no one," says Bigelow, "is competent to affirm or deny. He probably did not know himself."[1721]

[Footnote 1721: Ibid.]

Meanwhile, New York lost whatever prestige it had inherited through him. Payne had the support of barely a majority of the delegation,[1722] Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania, who had relied upon it, was angry, and the first roll-call showed that Winfield S. Hancock and Thomas F. Bayard held the leading places.[1723] This contrasted sharply with its early success. George Hoadley of Ohio, Tilden's devoted friend, had been made temporary chairman; Kelly, rising to address the convention, had felt most keenly the absence of a friend in the chair; and a two-thirds majority excluded the Shakespeare Hall delegation. Such influence, however, was at an end. The delegation affected control when Rufus H. Peckham declared from the platform that as Tilden had renounced all claims New York would support Randall; but the convention failed to join in the excited cheers of the Philadelphians, while the roll-call soon disclosed Hancock as the favourite. Before the result was announced officially Wisconsin asked permission to change its twenty votes to the soldier, and in the twinkling of an eye the stampede began. At the conclusion of the changes Hancock had received all the votes cast save 33.[1724] William H. English of Indiana, a rich man, who had served four terms in Congress during the administrations of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, was nominated for Vice-President. The platform favoured a tariff for revenue only, exploited the election fraud, demanded honest money of coin or paper convertible into coin, and stoutly opposed Chinese immigration.

[Footnote 1722: The vote of the delegation stood as follows: Paine, 38; Tilden, 11; English, 11; Bayard, 6; Hancock, 3; Randall, 1. Under the unit rule this gave Payne the entire number, 70.]

[Footnote 1723: The first ballot gave Hancock, 171; Bayard, 153-1/2; Payne, 81-1/2; Thurman, 68-1/2; Field, 65; Morrison, 62; Hendricks, 49-1/2; Tilden, 38; with a few votes to minor candidates. Whole number of votes, 728. Necessary to a choice, 486.]

[Footnote 1724: Before changes were made the second ballot gave Hancock 319; Randall, 129-1/2; Bayard, 113; Field, 65-1/2; Thurman, 50; Hendricks, 31; English, 19; Tilden, 6; scattering, 3. After the changes the result was as follows: Hancock, 705; Hendricks, 30; Tilden, 1; Bayard, 2.]

After Hancock's nomination Kelly's inning began. The convention had treated him coldly. On the first day, when New York was called, desiring to protest against seating a member of the regular delegation, he sought recognition from a seat among the alternates, but Hoadley, without the slightest sign of seeing or hearing him, ordered the roll-call to proceed. The overwhelming rejection of his delegation was not less crushing. The vote combined a compliment to Tilden and an official utterance against the action of his great enemy, and as the States, answering promptly and sharply, dealt death to bolting and paralysis to Tammany it became evident to the blindest that Tilden possessed the confidence of his party. In spite of the friendly relations between Hendricks and Kelly, Indiana voted a solid No. Nine other States, including Kentucky, Louisiana, and North Carolina, did likewise. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of the Southern delegates ranged themselves against the Boss. To add to the public proof of Kelly's weakness New York asked to be excused from voting.[1725]

[Footnote 1725: The vote stood, without New York, 205 to 457 in favor of rejecting the Shakespeare Hall delegation. With New York it would have been thirty-nine more than a two-thirds majority.]

Nevertheless, Kelly had his friends. They were not as strong in numbers or in voice as those who cheered Conkling at Chicago, but in the absence of a master-mind the galleries seized upon the Tammany leader and cheered whenever he appeared. To give greater spectacular effect to his first greeting, Wade Hampton of South Carolina got upon his crutches and stumped down the aisle to shake him solemnly by the hand. Kelly, however, did not reach the culminating point of his picturesque rôle until Hancock's nomination. After Randall, Hampton, and others had spoken, cries for Kelly brought to the platform a delegation of Tammany leaders walking arm in arm, with John Kelly, Augustus Schell, Amasa J. Parker, and George C. Green in front. The convention, save the New York delegation, leaped to its feet, and when Kelly declared that hereafter whoever alluded to the differences which had heretofore existed in the New York Democracy should be considered a "traitor to his party," the great enthusiasm forced cheers from one-half of the New York delegation. To make the love-feast complete, John R. Fellows, finally responding to impatient calls from all parts of the hall, also took the platform.

Fellows, still in his forties, had had a varied, perhaps a brilliant career. Born in Troy he found his way in early boyhood to Arkansas, joined the Confederate army, fought at Shiloh, escaped from Vicksburg, surrendered at Port Hudson, and remained a prisoner of war until June, 1865. Returning to Arkansas he served in the State Senate, and in 1868 came to New York, where he secured an appointment in the office of the District Attorney. Public attention became instantly fixed on the attractive figure of the intrepid young assistant. He leaped into renown. He soon became the principal Democratic speaker in the city, and from the first followed the fortunes of the pale, eager form of the distinguished reform Governor. At Cincinnati he represented the conservative Tilden men, and although upon reaching the platform he faced a man of greater force, he betrayed no docile character, ready to receive passively whatever the Boss might allot. His speech was cleverly framed. He expressed no desire that Tilden Democrats be forgiven for the political sins which their opponents had committed; neither did he mar the good feeling of the occasion. But when, at the conclusion of his remarks, John Kelly stepped forward, seized his hand, and began working it up and down like a handle, Fellows stood stiffly and passionlessly as a pump, neither rejecting nor accepting the olive branches thrust upon him. Thus ended the great scene of the reconciliation of the New York Democracy.

When plucked the fruit of this reunion was found not to be very toothsome. Returning to New York, Tammany held a ratification meeting (July 1) in which the regulars would not unite. Subsequently the regulars held a meeting (July 28) at which Tilden presided, and which Tammany did not attend. Similar discord manifested itself respecting the choice of a chief judge for the Court of Appeals. The Republican State Committee had chosen Charles J. Folger, but when the regulars advocated the same method of selection Kelly defiantly issued a call (August 14) for a State convention. Such bossism, the product of a strange, fitful career, was only less dramatic than that of Tweed. At a subsequent conference Kelly submitted a letter stating that if a convention were regularly summoned and Tammany given its full share of delegates and committeemen, his call would be withdrawn.[1726] To this the regulars finally yielded, and a State convention, held at Saratoga on September 28, made Kelly its head and front. His advent evoked the loudest cheers, his demand for five members of the State committee met little resistance, and Dorsheimer, besides serving as chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, presented the name of Charles J. Rapallo, who became the nominee for chief judge of Appeals. Thus within a few months Kelly had defeated Robinson for governor, prevented Tilden's nomination for President, and imposed his will upon the regular organisation.

[Footnote 1726: For a copy of this letter, see New York Tribune, August 28.]

In the selection of municipal candidates he was not less successful. Irving Hall insisted upon naming the mayor, and for many weeks the bickering and bargaining of conference committees resulted in nothing. Finally, Kelly proposed that the regulars select several satisfactory persons from whom he would choose. Among those submitted was the name of William Russell Grace, a respected merchant, a native of Ireland, a Roman Catholic in religion, and a man of large wealth, but without official experience of any kind. This was better, it was said, than official experience of the wrong kind. Irving Hall included his name with considerable reluctance. It distrusted his loyalty, since a rumour, too well founded not to cause alarm, revealed Kelly's interest in him. But Kelly's cunning equalled his audacity. He had secured the nomination of Rapallo by voting for William C. Ruger of Onondaga, and he now caused it to be understood that under no circumstances would Grace be acceptable. The merchant's name once upon the list, however, the Boss snapped it up with avidity, while the Germans muttered because three of the five city candidates were Irishmen. Thus the campaign opened badly for the Democrats.

Nor did it open more auspiciously for the Republicans. Garfield's part in the Crédit Mobilier scandal was reviewed without regard to the vindicatory evidence, while Nast's incriminating cartoon of 1873[1727] emphasised the failure of the great artist to introduce the Republican candidate into his campaign pictures of 1880. It advertised the fact that Nast retained his early opinion of the nominee's conduct. Further to alienate the independent vote it was charged that Garfield, during the visit of Grant and Conkling at Mentor (September 28), had surrendered to the Stalwarts. Appearances did not discourage such a belief. Conkling's hostility disclosed at Chicago was emphasised by his withdrawal from New York City on the day that Garfield entered it (August 5). Subsequently, in his initial speech of the campaign (September 17), Conkling's first important words were a sneer at Hayes and an implied threat at Garfield.[1728] Yet two weeks later the Senator, while on a speaking tour through Ohio and Indiana, went out of his way, riding three-fourths of a mile through a heavy rain, to call upon Garfield. This looked as if somebody had surrendered. As a matter of fact Conkling did not meet Garfield in private, nor did they discuss any political topic,[1729] but the apparent sudden collapse of Conkling's dislike supplied Garfield's opponents with abundance of powder. Meantime the loss of the September election in Maine crushed Republican hope. A victory had been confidently expected, and the failure to secure it, although the adverse majority was less than two hundred, sent a chill to every Republican heart.

[Footnote 1727: Harper's Weekly, May 15, 1873.]

[Footnote 1728: Conkling's speech is printed in full in the New York Tribune of September 18, 1880.]

[Footnote 1729: Alfred R. Conkling, Life of Roscoe Conkling, pp. 623-625.

"I was informed by Mr. Conkling that he had not been alone one minute with General Garfield, intending by that care-taking to avoid the suggestion that his visit was designed to afford an opportunity for any personal or party arrangement."--Boutwell, Reminiscences, Vol. 2, p. 272.]

Spurred to greater effort by this blighting disappointment, the Republicans regained courage by a spirited presentation of the industrial question, which was strongly reinforced by returning activity in trade and commerce. To offset its effect and to win the industrial masses to Democratic support, lithographic copies of the so-called "Morey letter," approving Chinese immigration, which purported to be written by Garfield, were spread broadcast (October 20) over the country. Garfield promptly branded it a forgery. Though the handwriting and especially the signature resembled his, accumulating evidence and the failure to produce the man to whom the letter purported to be addressed, rapidly made clear its fictitious character. Nevertheless, many Democratic journals and orators, notably Abraham S. Hewitt, assuming its genuineness, used it with tremendous force as favouring Chinese competition with home labour.

To add to the slanderous character of the closing days of the campaign John Kelly, through the New York Express, rained fierce personal assaults upon the distinguished editor of the New York Herald, who opposed Grace. In bitterness the mayoralty fight surpassed the presidential contest. Hints of a division of public money for sectarian purposes had deeply stirred the city and given prominence to William Dowd, the Republican candidate, whose interest in the common schools characterised his public activities. Dowd had the support of many members of Irving Hall, who, as they gnashed their teeth in resentment of Kelly's cunning, became unweariedly active in combining the strange and various elements of opposition. Not Daniel himself was more uncomfortably encompassed than Grace.

The October elections in Ohio and Indiana plainly indicated the trend of public opinion, and on November 3 the Republicans carried New York and the country.[1730] The significant point in the State returns, however, was the severe punishment administered to Kelly. Whomsoever he supported suffered humiliation. Hancock received 21,000 votes less than Garfield, Rapallo 55,000 less than Folger, and Grace 38,000 less than Hancock. In the presence of such a showing the Brooklyn Eagle, a Democratic journal friendly to Tilden, thus philosophised: "Bosses and thorough organisation are incompatible. The success of organisation depends upon reason. The success of the boss is due to underhand arts. No young man can hope for the favour of a boss who does not begin by cultivating the temper of a lick-spittle."[1731]

[Footnote 1730: Garfield, 555,544; Hancock, 534,511; Weaver (Greenback), 12,373. Judge of Appeals: Folger, 562,821; Rapallo, 517,661; Armstrong (Greenback), 13,183. Mayor of New York: Grace, 101,760; Dowd, 98,715. Legislature: Assembly, Republicans, 81; Democrats, 47. Senate (hold over): Republicans, 32; Democrats, 18. Republican majority on joint ballot, 52.]

[Footnote 1731: November 6, 1880.]

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XXXV. CONKLING DOWN AND OUT

1881

In the speakership contest of January, 1881, the anti-Conkling leaders discovered a disposition to profit by the election of Garfield. They wanted to learn their voting strength, and to encourage assemblymen to oppose George H. Sharpe, the Stalwart candidate, the Tribune, in double-leaded type, announced, apparently with authority, that the President-elect would not allow them to suffer.[1732] This sounded a trifle warlike. It also quickly enhanced the stress between the opposing factions, for those who are themselves not averse to wire-pulling are morbidly suspicious of intrigue in others.

[Footnote 1732: New York Tribune (editorial), January 3, 1881.]

But nothing came of the Tribune's announcement. Sharpe's creditable service on Grant's staff, his cleverness as a Stalwart manager, and his acceptability as a speaker of the preceding Assembly, brought him troops of friends. Although making no pretensions to the gift of oratory, he possessed qualities needed for oratorical success. He was forceful, remarkably clear, with impressive manners and a winning voice. As a campaign speaker few persons in the State excelled him. Men, too, generally found him easy of approach and ready to listen. At all events his tactful management won a majority of the Republican assemblymen before the opposition got a candidate into the field. Under these circumstances members did not fancy staking good committee appointments against the uncertainty of Presidential favours, and in the end Sharpe's election followed without dissent.

In the election of a United States senator to succeed Francis Kernan on March 4, the Stalwarts did not find such smooth sailing. For several years, ever since the gubernatorial nomination in 1876, jealousy, accumulated resentment, and inevitable distrust had divided them, but not until Thomas C. Platt of Owego and Richard Crowley of Niagara announced their candidacy did the smouldering bitterness burst into a blaze. Cornell and his friends promptly declared for Platt, while Arthur, Sharpe, Thomas Murphy, and John F. Smyth, known as ultra Conkling men, wheeled into line for Crowley. Conkling held aloof. He probably preferred Levi P. Morton, although each candidate claimed to be his preference. In the end Morton's name was tangled up in the controversy, but he did not really get into it. Besides, a place in the Cabinet seemed open to him.

At this time Cornell was at the height of his power. Prior to his inauguration he had not stood for much in the way of statesmanship. He was known principally as the maker and chauffeur of Conkling's machine, which he subsequently turned over to Arthur, who came later into the Conkling connection from the Morgan wing. Moreover, the manner of his election, the loss of many thousand Republican votes, and his reappointment of Smyth seriously discredited him. But friend and foe admitted that he had shown real ability as governor. He had about him no angles and no surprises. He exercised authority cautiously, marshalled facts with skill, and presented clear and enlightened reasons for his action. He seemed to be above rather than below the level of his party, and his official colleagues, working in harmony with his policies, found him honourable, if sometimes stubborn and aggressive.

But in his relations to men as well as to policies he had betrayed a disposition to change position. He did not attend the Chicago convention. Nor did Arthur's nomination, brought about largely by Sharpe's activity, particularly please him. While he behaved with decorum and perhaps with loyalty, it was evident that if he did not raise the standard of revolt, he had chosen to fight for his hand. This became the more apparent as the senatorial contest progressed. A grim darksomeness about the expression of his countenance showed that he took a sullen satisfaction in humiliating those who had humiliated him. It was deftly done, but in the result it left its impression.

Crowley, then in his forty-sixth year, was well equipped for the Senate. As a forceful speaker he was an object of respect even by his opponents. In whatever legislative body he appeared he ranked amongst the foremost debaters, generally speaking with an enlightenment and a moderation that did credit to his intellect and to the sweetness of his nature. He had served four years in the State Senate, one term in Congress, and eight years as United States attorney in the Northern District, being justly distinguished as one of the able men of Western New York. He was sadly handicapped, however, by the infirmity of his backers. Sharpe excited the deepest resentment by withholding the appointment of the Assembly committees;[1733] and Smyth and Murphy represented all that was undesirable in politics.

[Footnote 1733: "Senator Woodin spoke of Truman G. Younglove, the only speaker in the history of the State who had dared to hold back the committees in order to influence a senatorial caucus, as a 'political corpse,' and said that Sharpe would share his fate."--New York Tribune, January 13, 1881.]

Cornell was fortunate in his candidate. Platt's cool, quiet methods had aroused little antipathy, while around him gathered loyalty and gratitude. Very early in the contest, too, it began to be whispered that if elected he might act independently of Conkling. To think of a light-weight sparring up to a recognised champion tickled the imagination of the Independents who numbered about forty, of whom Chauncey M. Depew was the choice of a majority.[1734] Ira Davenport of Steuben, a State senator of decided character and strength, supported his brother-in-law, Sherman S. Rogers of Erie, and others talked of Vice-President Wheeler. George William Curtis argued that the aim of the Independents should be to vote for the cause even if they voted for different candidates, and thus show to the country and to Garfield that a large and resolute opposition to the ruling organisation existed in the party.[1735]

[Footnote 1734: "Blaine, representing Garfield, came to New York and asked me to enter the contest for the purpose of securing the election of a senator who would support the Administration. That was the reason why I became a candidate."--Interview of Mr. Depew with the author, February 19, 1909.]

[Footnote 1735: Harper's Weekly, February 5, 1881.]

On the other hand, Depew's friends thought it wiser to "split the machine." It was a taking proposition. If the two senators, they argued, differed upon questions of patronage, the one agreeing with the President would undoubtedly prevail. Thus the Senator and the Governor, backed by the patronage of the State and Federal administrations, would control a machine of great possibilities. Conkling appreciated the danger, and Warner Miller and William H. Robertson approved the plan.

Miller was then in the prime of life. He combined the occupations of manufacturer and farmer, evidenced marked capacity for business, and gave substantial promise of growing leadership. From the schools of Oswego he had entered Union College, and after teaching in Fort Edward Collegiate Institute he became a soldier. Since 1874 he had been in the Assembly and in Congress. He was fully six feet tall, well proportioned, with a large head, a noticeably high forehead, a strong, self-reliant, colourless face, and a resolute chin. A blond moustache covered a firm mouth. He had the appearance of a man of reserve power, and as a speaker, although without the gift of brilliantly phrased sentences, he made a favourable impression. His easy, simple manner added to the vigour and clearness of his words. Perhaps in the end he fell short of realising the full measure of strength that his ardent friends anticipated, for he possessed none of the characteristics of the boss and seemed incapable of submitting to the daily drudgery that political leadership demands. But for several years the reasonableness of his opinions had an unmistakable influence upon the judgment of men. Certainly, in 1881, his opinion greatly strengthened the Depew scheme, and it soon became apparent that a sufficient number of Independents could be relied upon to choose Platt. In the conference that followed the latter promised to support the Garfield administration. "Does that statement cover appointments?" asked Woodin. Platt said it did. "Even if Judge Robertson's name should be sent in?" insisted Woodin. Platt replied, "Yes."[1736] That settled it, and Platt's nomination occurred on the first ballot.[1737] Among the earliest to send him congratulations was Senator Conkling.

[Footnote 1736: Interview of Mr. Depew with the author, March 28, 1909. See also New York Tribune, January 9, 1882. "Among others present at the conference," added Depew, "were Webster Wagner, John Birdsall, Dennis McCarthy, and William H. Robertson of the State Senate, James W. Husted, and George Dawson of the Albany Evening Journal. Woodin remarked, 'We can trust Platt, and when he's elected senator we shall not need a step-ladder to reach his ear.'"]

[Footnote 1737: Total vote in caucus, 105. Necessary to a choice, 53. Platt, 54; Crowley, 26; Rogers, 10; Wheeler, 10; Lapham, 4; Morton, 1.

The election, which occurred on January 18, resulted: Senate, Platt, 25; Kernan, 6; Assembly, Platt, 79, Kernan, 44.]

After the campaign of 1880 Conkling seemed to dismiss the feeling exhibited toward Garfield at Chicago, and in February (1881), at the invitation of the President-elect, he visited Mentor. The Senator asked the appointment of Levi P. Morton as secretary of the treasury, and Garfield consented to give him the Navy, or select Thomas L. James for postmaster-general. "This conference was not wholly satisfactory,"[1738] but Conkling's position at the inauguration ceremonies, voluntarily taken directly behind Garfield while the latter read his inaugural address, indicated a real friendship. His motion in the Senate that James be confirmed as postmaster-general without the usual reference to a committee seemed to support this belief, an impression subsequently stimulated by the prompt confirmation of William M. Evarts for commissioner to the International Monetary Conference, Henry G. Pearson for postmaster of New York, and Levi P. Morton for minister to France.[1739] Two weeks later came a bunch of five Stalwarts.[1740] The next day (March 23) Garfield nominated William H. Robertson for collector of customs at New York and Edwin A. Merritt for consul-general to London. "That evens things up," said Dennis McCarthy, the well-known Half-breed of the State Senate. "This is a complete surprise," added Robertson. "To my knowledge no one has solicited for me any place under Garfield. It comes entirely unsought."[1741] It was no less a surprise to the Stalwarts. Not a hint of it had been dropped by the President. "We had been told only a few hours before," wrote Conkling, "that no removals in the New York offices were soon to be made or even considered, and had been requested to withhold the papers and suggestions bearing on the subject until we had notice from the President of his readiness to receive them."[1742] Indeed, the nomination came with such suddenness that the action seemed to be hasty and ill considered.

[Footnote 1738: Alfred R. Conkling, Life of Conkling, p. 634.]

[Footnote 1739: Morton declined the navy portfolio, preferring the mission to France.]

[Footnote 1740: Stewart L. Woodford, U.S. attorney, and Louis F. Payn, U.S. marshal for the Southern District; Asa W. Tenney, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District; Clinton D. MacDougall, U.S. marshal for the Northern District; and John Tyler, collector of customs, Buffalo. These were reappointments.]

[Footnote 1741: New York Tribune, March 24, 1881.]

[Footnote 1742: From Conkling's letter of resignation.--New York Tribune, May 17, 1881.]

There is much literature on the subject. Reminiscences of public men during the last decade have opened a flood of memories, some of them giving specific statements from the principal actors. Blaine assured George S. Boutwell that he had no knowledge of Robertson's nomination until it had been made, and Garfield told Marshall Jewell that Blaine, hearing of the nomination, came in very pale and much astonished.[1743] Garfield wrote (May 29, 1881) Thomas M. Nichols, once his private secretary, that "the attempt to shift the fight to Blaine's shoulders is as weak as it is unjust. The fact is, no member of the Cabinet behaves with more careful respect for the rights of his brother men than Blaine. It should be understood that the Administration is not meddling in New York politics. It only defends itself when assailed."[1744] The President said to Conkling, declares Hoar, that he desired to make one conspicuous appointment of a New York man who had supported him against Grant, and that thereafter, upon consultation with the two Senators, appointments should be made of fit men without regard to factions. To this Conkling refused his consent, stoutly objecting to Robertson's appointment to any important office in this country. "Conkling's behaviour in the interview," said President Garfield "was so insolent that it was difficult for him to control himself and keep from ordering him out of his presence."[1745] Conkling says the President, on the Sunday preceding the appointment, informed him "that the collectorship of New York would be left for another time."[1746] In a statement purporting to come from the President, Jewell relates that when the five Stalwart nominations went to the Senate, Garfield was immediately burdened with letters and despatches in protest, coupled with the suggestion that everything had been surrendered to Conkling, and that without delay or consultation he sent in Robertson's name. "It was only an instance," says Boutwell, "of General Garfield's impulsive and unreasoning submission to an expression of public opinion, without waiting for evidence of the nature and value of that opinion."[1747]

[Footnote 1743: Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years, Vol. 2, p. 274.]

[Footnote 1744: New York Tribune, January 7, 1882.]

[Footnote 1745: Hoar, Autobiography, Vol. 2, p. 57.]

[Footnote 1746: Boutwell, Reminiscences, Vol. 2, p. 273.]

[Footnote 1747: Ibid., p. 274.]

On the other hand, the country at large accepted it as a Blaine triumph. Senators, especially those who had served in the House with the President and his Secretary of State, had no doubt of it. Such a tremendously bold act was entirely foreign to Garfield's character. Nor could it have but one meaning. The man who had split the New York delegation for Blaine was to have his reward and to occupy the place of patronage and of power. More than that it was Blaine's long look ahead. Such action required the highest order of political courage. It opened an old quarrel, it invited opposition, it challenged to battle. Men like Senator Frye of Maine, who had many times witnessed the resolution and dominating fearlessness of Blaine, knew that it was his act. "For sixteen years," said Frye, "the sting of Blaine's attack kept Conkling unfriendly. Besides, he had no confidence in him. Whenever reconciliation seemed imminent, it vanished like a cloud-shadow. I could never unite them. Blaine was ready, but Conkling would accept no advances. When Robertson's appointment came he knew as well as I that it was the act of Blaine."[1748] Depew, with whom Blaine had conferred, took the same view. On the day after the nomination was sent in, Mrs. Blaine, rather exultingly and without any expression of surprise, wrote her daughter of the incident. "Your father has just gone to the Department. Did you notice the nominations sent in yesterday? They mean business and strength."[1749]

[Footnote 1748: Conversation with the author, December 7, 1908.]

[Footnote 1749: Mrs. James G. Blaine, Letters (March 24, 1881), Vol. 1, p. 197.]

Boutwell illustrates Conkling's lack of confidence in Blaine. After the latter had become secretary of state he said to the Massachusetts Senator that Conkling was the only man who had had three elections to the Senate, and that he and his friends would be considered fairly in the New York appointments. "When in conversation with Conkling, I mentioned Blaine's remark, he said, 'Do you believe one word of that?' I said, 'Yes, I believe Mr. Blaine.' He said with emphasis, 'I don't.' Subsequent events strengthened Mr. Conkling in his opinion."[1750]

[Footnote 1750: Reminiscences, Vol. 2, p. 273.]

The cordial relations apparently existing until then between the President and the Senator encouraged the hope that confirmation of the nomination might not be opposed. Because of this feeling the New York Legislature, by a formal resolution, endorsed it, and Republicans generally spoke not unkindly of it. But Conkling, knowing that though the voice was Garfield's, the hand was Blaine's, quickly precipitated a contest in which the interest of the whole country centred. It recalled the Arthur controversy, renewed the feverish energy of Stalwart and Half-breed, and furnished glimpses of the dramatic discord which stirred restlessly behind the curtains of Senate secrecy. Under the rules of the Senate, Robertson's nomination went to the Committee on Commerce, of which Conkling was chairman and in control. Here the matter could be held in abeyance, at least until the Stalwarts marshalled their influence to have it withdrawn. For this purpose Vice-President Arthur and Postmaster-General James called at the White House. Governor Cornell, through a personal friend, sent a message to the President, declaring the nomination a great mistake and urging its withdrawal.[1751] Other distinguished men, including Senator Allison of Iowa, visited the President on a similar mission. When these overtures failed compromises were suggested, such as making Robertson a Federal judge, a district attorney, a foreign minister, or the solicitor general.

[Footnote 1751: Alfred R. Conkling, Life of Conkling, p. 637.]

Meanwhile assuring messages and comforting letters from Blaine's New York friends stimulated Garfield's courage. On March 27, four days after the nomination, Whitelaw Reid, the accomplished editor of the Tribune, telegraphed John Hay, in part, as follows: "From indications here and at Albany we have concluded that the Conkling plan is: First, to make tremendous pressure on the President for withdrawal of Robertson's name under threats from Conkling and persuasion from James. Second, if this fail, then to make their indignation useful by extorting from the President, as a means of placating them, the surveyorship and naval office. With these two they think they could largely neutralise Robertson. Cornell is believed willing to acquiesce in Robertson, hoping to get other offices.

"I wish to say to the President in my judgment this is the turning point of his whole administration--the crisis of his fate. If he surrenders now Conkling is president for the rest of the term and Garfield becomes a laughing stock. On the other hand, he has only to stand firm to succeed. With the unanimous action of the New York Legislature, Conkling cannot make an effectual fight. That action came solely from the belief that Garfield, unlike Hayes, meant to defend his own administration. The Assembly is overwhelmingly Conkling, but they did not dare go on the record against Robertson so long as they thought the Administration meant business. Robertson should be held firm. Boldness and tenacity now insure victory. The least wavering would be fatal."[1752]

[Footnote 1752: For full text of telegram see New York Tribune, January 7, 1882. This confidential despatch found its way into the public press. "It must have been stolen from the wires," wrote Hay. "Nobody but myself has ever seen it--not even Garfield. I read it to him. It has been under lock and key ever since."--Mrs. James G. Blaine, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 286.]

When Hay read this message to Garfield, the latter said, "They may take him out of the Senate head first or feet first; I will never withdraw him."[1753] That the President might not weaken, Depew and other Independents spent much time in Washington during the controversy. "The party standing of Blaine's New York supporters at Chicago absolutely depended upon Robertson's confirmation," declared Depew.[1754]

[Footnote 1753: Ibid.]

[Footnote 1754: Conversation with the author, March 28, 1909.]

Conkling had not been idle. As usual he cast an anchor to the windward by coquetting with Democratic senators and soothing his Republican colleagues.[1755] He knew how to control in caucus as well as in committee, and on May 2, the Republican senators appointed a Committee of Safety, which recommended that a majority decide the order of executive business including "uncontested nominations." These nominations, it was explained, embraced such as were favourably reported by a committee or accepted by the Republican senators of the State from which the nominee hailed. In other words, the caucus action practically notified the President that no nomination would be confirmed that did not please a senator, if a Republican. To exclude Robertson under such a rule it was only necessary that the New York senators object to his confirmation. Immediately the press of the country teemed with protests. The Constitution, it declared, imposed a moral obligation upon senators to confirm a nomination which was not personally unfit or improper, or which did not imperil the public interest, and it was puerile for a majority to agree in advance to refuse to consider any nomination to which any member, for any reason whatever, saw fit to object. Such a rule substantially transferred the Executive power to one branch of Congress, making the President the agent of the Senate. It was "senatorial courtesy" run mad.

[Footnote 1755: "If any Democratic senator is thinking only of New York politics, and of the mere party relations of the pending question of Presidential nominations, the Democrats of New York must frankly tell him that nothing but injury to the Democracy of New York has come or can come of coalitions with Senator Conkling. The past is eloquent on the subject. Whether set on foot by Mr. Tilden in 1873, or by Mr. Kelly at a later date, Democratic coalitions with Mr. Conkling have benefited only the Republicans. Mr. Tilden finally came to grief through them, and so did Mr. Kelly; and, what is more important, so did the Democratic party.... It is high time that the false lights which Senator Conkling displayed to certain Democratic senators, and with the help of whom the nominations of President Hayes were thwarted, should be understood. The chequered career of Senator Conkling should compel cautious people to inquire carefully into the evidence for any declaration which may be made by him as to President Garfield and his undertaking."--New York World, April 1, 1881.]

As the days passed senators exhibited, under pressure from the country as well as from the White House, a growing desire to have the matter settled, and as a final effort in the interest of harmony the Committee of Safety itself called upon the President, proposing that he withdraw Robertson's name and have the others confirmed. To this Garfield emphatically declined to accede. A few days later (May 5) Vice-President Arthur and Senator Platt suggested that he withdraw all the New York nominations. The President replied that he would willingly withdraw all except Robertson's, and if the latter failed an entire new slate could then be made up. This did not satisfy, but within an hour after his visitors had departed, the President, to prevent the confirmation of some while Robertson's was left tied up in committee, put his suggestion into a message, withdrawing the names of the five Stalwarts. This was another surprise, more alarming than the first, since it showed the Administration's readiness to fight.

Meantime the Republican majority exhibited signs of disintegration. The session was running into hot weather, Democrats had demonstrated their power to prevent a reorganisation of the Senate, and discord in Republican States threatened disaster. Until recently Conkling had felt sure of victory. But now, appreciating the delicacy of the situation, he opened the caucus (May 9) with an earnest, conciliatory speech. He disclaimed desiring any conflict with the President, against whom he made no accusations of bad faith; described the impracticability of his sustaining any relations with Robertson, in whose way, however, he would place no obstacle to any office other than that of collector; discussed the danger to which a lack of political harmony would expose the party in New York; and in almost pathetic tones urged that the courtesy of the Senate be not withheld from him in this hour of his extreme need.

It was plain that he had won the sympathy of his colleagues, but succeeding caucuses, now held daily, lined his pathway with portents and warnings. The iron-clad rule ceased to be operative; a resolution to postpone action until the next session avoided defeat because hastily withdrawn; and a compromise, the last to be suggested, proposing confirmation on condition that Robertson then decline the office, met with no favour. It was plain that at last the stress had reached a climax. Senators no longer exchanged their impressions, or asked "How long?" or "What next?" In their opinion either Garfield or Conkling must recede, and they had learned that the President would not. Moreover, it was rumored, after the caucus of May 13, that Conkling had talked harshly, with much of the temper of a spoiled child. As senators separated on that eventful Friday they declared without hesitation, though not without misgiving, that the last caucus had been held and the last obstacle to Robertson's confirmation removed.

The position of Platt had at last become intolerable. Mindful of the promise to Depew and his friends he had tactfully and patiently sought to avoid a contest by satisfactorily arranging matters between the President and Conkling. Now the end of compromises had come and a vote impended. At this critical if not desperate moment he suggested resignation.[1756] The Legislature that chose him in January was still in session, and the combined votes of the Stalwarts would be sufficient to re-elect them. This would liberate him from a promise and strengthen both with a legislative endorsement. It was neither an intrepid nor an exalted proposition, but Conkling accepted it. Perhaps his nature required a relief from its high-strung irritability in some sort of violence, and resignation backed by the assurance that he would soon be restored to office and to greater power on the shoulders of the party offered the seductive form which that violence could take.

[Footnote 1756: "I walked over to Conkling and said, 'I shall send my resignation to Governor Cornell to-night.' Conkling turned to me and replied: 'Don't be too hasty about this matter, young man.' We then went to the rear of the Senate Chamber and talked it over. Conkling insisted that we should wait, and fight it out in Committee. I replied, 'We have been so humiliated that there is but one thing for us to do--rebuke the President by immediately turning in our resignations and then appeal to the Legislature to sustain us.' I induced Conkling to join me in offering our joint resignations, and that night the papers were forwarded to Cornell by special messenger." Platt's Reminiscences.--Cosmopolitan Magazine, April, 1909, p. 516.

It was at this time that Platt's opponents gave him the sobriquet of "Me Too," meaning that he merely followed Conkling's lead. This was unjust to the junior Senator, who at least took the lead in suggesting and insisting upon resigning.]

Before the Senate reconvened on Monday (May 16) the resignation of Conkling and Platt was in the hands of Governor Cornell. It came with the suddenness of Robertson's nomination. Neither Vice-President Arthur shared their intention, nor did Cornell suspect it. The first intimation came in two brief notes, read by the clerk, informing the Senate of their action. But the crash--the consternation, if any were anticipated, did not appear.[1757] No doubt many senators sincerely regretted the manner of Conkling's going, but that all were weary of his restless predominance soon became an open secret.[1758] Nor did his reasons appeal to any one except as regarded his own personality and power, since the Senator's statement showed a deliberate, personal choice, not based on a question of public policy.

[Footnote 1757: "The sensational resignations of Conkling and Platt produce no excitement here (Washington), and I have yet to hear one criticism complimentary of Conkling, though I have seen all sorts of people and of every shade of cowardice."--Mrs. James G. Blaine, Letters (May 17, 1881), Vol. 1, p. 199.

Robertson and Merritt were promptly and unanimously confirmed on May 18. Two days afterward the names of the five Stalwarts, which had been withdrawn, were resubmitted, except those of Payn and Tyler.]

[Footnote 1758: "Conkling was unrelenting in his enmities. He used to get angry with men simply because they voted against him on questions in which he took an interest. Once he did not for months speak to Justin S. Morrill, one of the wisest and kindliest of men, because of his pique at one of Merrill's votes."--George F. Hoar, Autobiography, Vol. 2, p. 55.]

Stripped of its rhetoric and historicity the letter of Conkling and Platt presented but two causes of complaint, one that the President, in withdrawing some of the New York nominations, tried to coerce the Senate to vote for Robertson; second, that Robertson, in voting and procuring others to vote against Grant at Chicago, was guilty of "a dishonest and dishonourable act."[1759] The poverty of these reasons excited more surprise than the folly of their resignation.[1760] Every one knew that in urging senators to say by their vote whether William H. Robertson was a fit person to be collector, the President kept strictly within his constitutional prerogative, and that in withdrawing the earlier nominations he exercised his undoubted right to determine the order in which he should ask the Senate's advice. Moreover, if any doubt ever existed as to Robertson's right to represent the sentiment of his district instead of the decree of the State convention, the national convention had settled it in his favour.

[Footnote 1759: The full text of the letter is published in the New York papers of May 17, 1881.]

[Footnote 1760: "I was very much surprised at Senator Conkling's action," said Senator Frye of Maine, "because of Judge Robertson's personal hostility to him and not on account of his lack of fitness. During President Hayes' administration not an important appointment was made in Maine to which Senators Blaine and Hamlin were not bitterly opposed. One man was appointed after Mr. Blaine had stated that he was probably the only prominent Republican in the State personally hostile to him. Yet, with a single exception, all were confirmed, notwithstanding the opposition of the Maine Senators. But neither of them resigned. They were too good Republicans for that."--New York Tribune, May 17, 1881.]

Conkling's friends are credited with having overborne his purpose, expressed soon after the election of Garfield, to leave the Senate and engage in the practice of his profession.[1761] But that such intention did not influence his resignation was evidenced by the fact that immediately afterward he bivouacked at Albany and sought a re-election. With his faithful lieutenants he constantly conferred, while the faithless ones, scarcely less conspicuous, who openly refused their support, he stigmatised. From the first Cornell was an object of distrust. He had wired Conkling advising Robertson's confirmation, and the Senator crushed the telegram in his hand. This put the Governor into the disloyal class.[1762] It added to Conkling's irritation also that Cornell remained silent. The Governor's friends expressed some surprise that the Senator did not suggest an interview. It would have been much more surprising if he had, for it is doubtful if Conkling ever suggested an interview in his life. On the other hand, Cornell, unwilling to use the machinery of his great office to force Conkling's return, did not care to approach the Senator. It was not unknown, however, that he refused to become a candidate for United States senator, and that, although ten or fifteen members continued to vote for him, he steadily encouraged his Stalwart friends not to desert Conkling.

[Footnote 1761: A.R. Conkling, Life of Conkling, p. 632.]

[Footnote 1762: Conkling spoke of Cornell as "The lizard on the hill."]

Although the Legislature which elected Platt on January 18 was still in session, the sentiment dominating it had radically changed. The party was deeply stirred. The Senator's sudden resignation had added to the indignation aroused by his opposition to the Administration, and members had heard from their constituents. Besides, a once powerful Senator was now a private citizen. At the outset Independents and several Stalwarts refused to enter a caucus, and early in the contest the Democrats, marshalled by Manning, refused to come to the rescue. Thus, without organisation, Republicans began voting on May 31. Seven weeks and four days later (July 22), after fifty-six ballots, their work was concluded. The first ballot marked the highest score for Conkling and Platt, the former receiving 39 and the latter 29 out of 105 Republican votes.[1763] This severe comment upon their course plainly reflected the general sentiment of the party. It showed especially the dissatisfaction existing toward Conkling. Yet a few Stalwarts remained steadfast to the end. On the morning of July 1, when Platt, to the surprise of his friends, suddenly withdrew, he had 28 votes. On July 22 Conkling had the same.

[Footnote 1763: The ballot resulted as follows: To succeed Platt (long term), Thomas C. Platt, 29; Chauncey M. Depew, 21; Alonzo B. Cornell, 12; Elbridge G. Lapham, 8; Warner Miller, 5; Richard Crowley, 3; scattering, 25. Francis Kernan (Dem.), 54. Total, 157.

To succeed Conkling (short term), Roscoe Conkling, 39; William A. Wheeler, 19; Alonzo B. Cornell, 9; Richard Crowley, 5; Warner Miller, 1; scattering 37. John C. Jacobs (Dem.), 53. Total, 159.]

The act of the assassin of President Garfield on the morning of July 2 had a visible effect upon the proceedings at Albany.[1764] Although for a time conditions indicated that the distinguished sufferer might recover, legislators evinced a great desire to conclude the disagreeable work, and on July 5, sixty-six Republicans held a conference. Up to this time Depew had been the favourite for the long term, registering fifty-five votes on the fourteenth ballot (June 14), but in the interest of harmony he now withdrew his name.[1765]

[Footnote 1764: "Suddenly the adherents of the murdered President saw the powers of government about to be transferred to the leader of their defeated adversaries, and that transfer effected by the act of an assassin. Many of them could not instantly accept the truth that it was the act solely of a half-crazed and disappointed seeker for office; many of them questioned whether the men who were to profit by the act were not the instigators of it."--From address of Elihu Root, delivered at the unveiling of President Arthur's statue in Madison Square, New York, June 13, 1899.]

[Footnote 1765: On June 9, S.H. Bradley of Cattaraugus, made a personal explanation in the Assembly, charging Loren B. Sessions, of the Senate, with offering him $2,000 to cast his vote for Depew. Sessions denied the charge. Investigation proved nothing, and an indictment, subsequently returned against Sessions, resulted in a trial and an acquittal.]

This opened the way for Warner Miller, who received in caucus on the fifth ballot sixty-two of the sixty-six votes cast for the long term. By previous agreement a Stalwart was entitled to the short term, and had Cornell allowed his Stalwart friends to enter the caucus he might have had the nomination. But he would not oppose Conkling. Moreover, the belief obtained that the Democrats and Stalwarts would yet unite and adjourn the session without day, thus giving the Senator time to elect other friends to a new Legislature, and the Governor would not disturb this hallucination. With Cornell out of the way Elbridge G. Lapham easily won the nomination on the second ballot. Lapham had been the first to desert Conkling, who now exclaimed, not without the bitter herb of truth: "That man must not reap the reward of his perfidy."[1766]

[Footnote 1766: New York Tribune, July 7, 1881.]

The caucus did not at once bring union, but on July 12 Miller's vote reached seventy; on the 15th it registered seventy-four; and on the 16th, with the help of Speaker Sharpe, who had encouraged Conkling's going to Albany, Miller was elected.[1767] Lapham's vote, however, hung fire until July 22, when, during a brief and most exciting conference in the Assembly Chamber, State Senator Halbert, the Conkling Gibraltar, exclaimed with the suddenness of a squall at sea: "We must come together or the party is divided in the State. I am willing to vote now."[1768] Reason and good nature being thus restored, each Republican present rose and voted his choice, Lapham receiving sixty-one, Conkling twenty-eight. In the general rejoicing State Senator Pitts, a leader of the Independents, no doubt voiced the feeling of all at that moment: "I am as happy as Mr. Halbert. This nomination has been made good-naturedly. It is an augury of good feeling in the future. New York proposes to stand by the Republican administration. I hope we shall never hear more the words Stalwart, Featherhead, Half-breed."[1769] When the joint convention again reassembled the fifty-sixth ballot gave Elbridge G. Lapham ninety-two, and Clarkson N. Potter, the new Democratic nominee, forty-two.[1770]

[Footnote 1767: "At a conference held on May 22, at the house of Chester A. Arthur, No. 123 Lexington Avenue, the following persons were present: Chester A. Arthur, Thomas C. Platt, Louis F. Payn, Charles M. Denison, George H. Sharpe, John F. Smyth, A.B. Johnson, and Roscoe Conkling. Each person was asked to pass judgment upon the future course of the two Senators. Each one spoke in turn. The sense of the meeting was that they should proceed to the State capital."--A.R. Conkling, Life of Conkling, pp. 642-643.

"Payn warned both Conkling and Platt that they would be defeated. Speaker Sharpe admonished Payn that he was wrong. Payn predicted that while he and other friends were still battling for the organisation Sharpe would desert them. Payn proved himself a prophet. Sharpe went over to the opposition." Platt's Reminiscences.--Cosmopolitan Magazine, April, 1909, p. 517.]

[Footnote 1768: New York papers of July 23.]

[Footnote 1769: New York Tribune, July 23.]

[Footnote 1770: The candidacy of John C. Jacobs had been the subject of some criticism on the part of the Democrats because he was a member of the Legislature, and on June 22, after the twenty-third ballot, he withdrew. A caucus then substituted the name of Potter.]

For Conkling it was worse than defeat. The humiliation of having gone to Albany, of being deserted by friend after friend, of enduring the taunts of an inhospitable press, and, finally, of having his place taken by one, who, in his opinion, had proven most faithless, was like the torture of an unquenchable fire. Lord Randolph Churchill, after his historic resignation as chancellor of the exchequer, declared that he would not live it over again for a million a year. It is likewise a matter of history that Senator Conkling never ceased to deplore his mistake.[1771]

[Footnote 1771: Conkling at once resumed the practice of law in New York City. The strain and exposure of making his way on foot through the snowdrifts of the historic blizzard which visited that city in the spring of 1888, resulted in an abscess in the inner ear, from which he died on April 18. A bronze statue, erected in his memory, is located in Madison Square.

"We have followed poor Conkling down to the gates of death and have been truly sorry to see them close upon him. I have never heard your father, in all the twenty-two years since he spoke hard words to him, say a syllable which he need regret, but his deathbed seemed hardly less inaccessible than his life."--Mrs. James G. Blaine, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 203. Dated, San Remo, May 1, 1888. Addressed to Walker Blaine.]

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