A Political History of the State of New York Volume III Part 41

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; Hisc.o.c.k, 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sociates 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 a.s.sistance.

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, a.s.sailed Sanford E. Church as a friend of the ca.n.a.l 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 ingrat.i.tude of party, was building a reputation as the undismayed prosecutor of a predatory ring. Now, Tweed was in his grave; Kelly had joined the ca.n.a.l 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 a.s.sociate editor of the _Argus_, he dominated its policy. Upon the death of James Ca.s.sidy, 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 Ca.s.sidy, 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 a.s.sault 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 ca.n.a.l 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 antic.i.p.ated every movement of the enemy. He knew that Henry W. Sloc.u.m'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 _Cyclopaedia_, 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 Sloc.u.m 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 impa.s.sioned manner, to put themselves in Tammany's place, and to say whether, under like circ.u.mstances, 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 repet.i.tion. 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 a.s.sumption 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, p.r.o.nounced 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 Sch.e.l.l, John Kelly, William Dorsheimer, and other Tammany leaders rose in their places.

"Under no circ.u.mstances will the Democracy of New York support the nomination of Lucius Robinson," said Sch.e.l.l; "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, partic.i.p.ated 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 Sch.e.l.l'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 Sch.e.l.l 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 Sloc.u.m 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 canva.s.s, seemed a.s.sured, 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 ca.n.a.l frauds, as revealed in the eleventh report of the Ca.n.a.l 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt. So bitterly was Curtis a.s.sailed 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 n.o.body 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 princ.i.p.al 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: a.s.sembly, 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 const.i.tutional 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.]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII