A Political History of the State of New York Volume III Part 38

Nevertheless, the Governor's control of the chairmanship a.s.sured 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 apt.i.tude 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 Ca.n.a.l ring, by a vote of 169 to 114, pa.s.sed 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 ca.n.a.l ring and munic.i.p.al 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ma.s.s meeting called to protest against the action of the Rochester convention appealed for harmony and endorsed the Republican candidates.[1596] Even Curtis, the princ.i.p.al 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 cooperation in the reform policy which I had the honour to inaugurate and which Governor Robinson is consummating will be disowned by the Democratic ma.s.ses."[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 ca.n.a.l prosecutions. On the other hand, the adoption of the recent amendment, subst.i.tuting for the ca.n.a.l 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 canva.s.s 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 _Cyclopaedia_, 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 Sch.e.l.l in one of the fashionable districts of the metropolis. Sch.e.l.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l repairs during his four years in office. A careful a.n.a.lysis 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 ca.n.a.l 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 a.s.sociates willing to benefit at the expense of his ruin. As it was he received a plurality of 11,000, while Seymour and Olcott, his a.s.sociates 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 _Cyclopaedia_, 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 Sch.e.l.l, 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 canva.s.s."[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 ca.n.a.l." 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 a.s.sembly: 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.]

CHAPTER x.x.x

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 a.s.semble 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, who had left the Republicans to become the independent leader of a vast ma.s.s 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 a.s.semblage 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 a.s.sembled at Albany on April 24, had nominated Van Cott.]

Meanwhile the Democratic State convention which a.s.sembled at Syracuse on September 25 became more violent and boisterous than its predecessor. Confident of defeat unless Tammany partic.i.p.ated 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.