Volume III Part 5 (2/2)
[Footnote 863: New York _Times_, November 7.]
[Footnote 864: Henry B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_, p. 216.]
[Footnote 865: Albany _Evening Journal_, Nov. 6.]
[Footnote 866: New York _Tribune_, Nov. 5.]
[Footnote 867: Cary, _Life of Curtis_, p. 161.]
[Footnote 868: _Ibid._, p. 161.]
CHAPTER IV
THURLOW WEED TRIMS HIS SAILS
1863
The political reaction in 1862 tied the two parties in the Legislature. In the Senate, elected in 1861, the Republicans had twelve majority, but in the a.s.sembly each party controlled sixty-four members. This deadlocked the election of a speaker, and seriously jeopardized the selection of a United States senator in place of Preston King, since a joint-convention of the two houses, under the law as it then existed, could not convene until some candidate controlled a majority in each branch.[869] It increased the embarra.s.sment that either a Republican or Democrat must betray his party to break the deadlock.
[Footnote 869: Laws of 1842. Ch. 130, t.i.tle 6, article 4, sec. 32.]
Chauncey M. Depew was the choice of the Republicans for speaker. But the caucus, upon the threat of a single Republican to bolt,[870]
selected Henry Sherwood of Steuben. After seventy-seven ballots Depew was subst.i.tuted for Sherwood. By this time Timothy C. Callicot, a Brooklyn Democrat, refused longer to vote for Gilbert Dean, the Democratic nominee. Deeply angered by such apostasy John D. Van Buren and Saxton Smith, the Democratic leaders, offered Depew eight votes.
Later in the evening Depew was visited by Callicot, who promised, if the Republicans would support him for speaker, to vote for John A. Dix for senator and thus break the senatorial deadlock. It was a trying position for Depew. The speakers.h.i.+p was regarded as even a greater honor then than it is now, and to a gifted young man of twenty-nine its power and prestige appealed with tremendous force. Van Buren's proposition would elect him; Callicot's would put him in eclipse.
Nevertheless, Depew unselfishly submitted the two proposals to his Republican a.s.sociates, who decided to lose the speakers.h.i.+p and elect a United States senator.[871]
[Footnote 870: Horace Bemis of Steuben.]
[Footnote 871: The writer is indebted to Mr. Depew for the interviews between himself, Van Buren, and Callicot.]
The Democrats, alarmed at this sudden and successful flank movement, determined to defeat by disorderly proceedings what their leaders could not prevent by strategy, and with the help of thugs who filled the floor and galleries of the a.s.sembly Chamber, they instigated a riot scarcely equalled in the legislative history of modern times.
Boisterous threats, display of pistols, savage abuse of Callicot, and refusals to allow the balloting to proceed continued for six days, subsiding at last after the Governor, called upon to protect a law-making body, promised to use force. Finally, on January 26, nineteen days after the session opened, Callicot, on the ninety-third ballot, received two majority. This opened the way for the election of a Republican United States senator.
Horace Greeley had hoped, in the event of Wadsworth's success, to ride into the Senate upon ”an abolition whirlwind.”[872] He now wished to elect Preston King or Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson. King had made a creditable record in the Senate. Although taking little part in debate, his judgment upon questions of governmental policy, indicating an accurate knowledge of men and remarkable familiarity with details, commended him as a safe adviser, especially in political emergencies. But Weed, abandoning his old St. Lawrence friend, joined Seward in the support of Edwin D. Morgan.
[Footnote 872: Albany _Evening Journal_, December 10, 1862.]
Morgan had a decided taste for political life. When a grocer, living in Connecticut, he had served in the city council of Hartford, and soon after gaining a residence in New York, he entered its Board of Aldermen. Then he became State senator, commissioner of immigration, chairman of the National Republican Committee, and finally governor.
Besides wielding an influence acquired in two gubernatorial terms, he combined the qualities of a shrewd politician with those of a merchant prince willing to spend money.
The stoutest opposition to Morgan came from extreme Radicals who distrusted him, and in trying to compa.s.s his defeat half a dozen candidates played prominent parts. Charles B. Sedgwick of Syracuse, an all-around lawyer of rare ability, whose prominence as a persuasive speaker began in the Free-Soil campaign of 1848, and who had served with distinction for four years in Congress, proved acceptable to a few Radicals and several Conservatives.[873] Henry J. Raymond, also pressed by the opponents of Morgan, attracted a substantial following, while David Dudley Field, Ward Hunt, and Henry R. Selden controlled two or three votes each. Nevertheless, a successful combination could not be established, and on the second formal ballot Morgan received a large majority. The remark of a.s.semblyman Truman, on a motion to make the nomination unanimous, evidenced the bitterness of the contest. ”I believe we are rewarding a man,” he said, ”who placed the knife at the throat of the Union ticket last fall and slaughtered it.”[874]
[Footnote 873: Sedgwick, a.s.sailed by damaging charges growing out of his chairmans.h.i.+p of the Naval Committee, failed to be renominated for Congress in 1864 after a most bitter contest in which 130 ballots were taken.]
[Footnote 874: New York _Journal of Commerce_, February 3, 1863.
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