Volume III Part 26 (2/2)
[Footnote 1331: Tilden's Speech.--New York _Times_, November 3, 1871.]
[Footnote 1332: Tweed's Speech.--_Ibid._]
These were fatal blows to the Ring. The leading Democratic papers of the interior, notably the Buffalo _Courier_ and Albany _Argus_, came boldly out demanding the dismissal of the shameless robbers who were disgracing the name and destroying the future of their party.
Moreover, Tilden, like an avenging angel, with all the skill and knowledge of his kind, had united into one great reform party the four Democratic organisations of the city, pledged to oppose Tammany.[1333]
This formidable combination, having complied with every requirement of the State committee, selected delegates to the State convention. The hearts of Tweed and his a.s.sociates may well have sunk within them as they studied this list. There were able lawyers like William E.
Curtis; powerful merchants like Havermeyer; influential editors like Ottendorfer; solid business men like Sch.e.l.l; and determined members of the Committee of Seventy like Roswell D. Hatch, who had been conspicuous in tracking the thieves. But the name that must have shone most formidably in the eyes of Tweed was that of Charles O'Conor. It stood at the head of the list like a threatening cloud in the sky, ready to bring ruin upon the Ring. The moral support of his great legal fame, affirming the validity of Andrew H. Green's possession of the comptroller's office, had intimidated O'Gorman, Tweed's corporation counsel, and shattered the plot to forcibly eject Tilden's faithful friend under colour of judicial process. Thus the reform party seemed to be in the ascendant. With confidence Tilden expressed the belief that the State convention would repudiate Tammany.[1334]
[Footnote 1333: The German Democratic General Committee, with 30,000 votes; the Democratic Union, with 27,000; the Ledwith party, with 10,000; and the Young Democracy, led by ex-Sheriff O'Brien. For five years Mozart Hall, under Fernando Wood, had not placed a ticket in the field.]
[Footnote 1334: Interview, New York _Tribune_, September 23, 1871.]
Although it had become well known that Tilden would not compromise, Tweed lost none of his former prestige. His control of the State convention which a.s.sembled at Rochester on October 4 (1871) seemed as firm as on that day in 1870 when he renominated John T. Hoffman. It was still the fas.h.i.+on to praise all he said and all he did. Before his arrival the Reformers claimed a majority, but as the up-State delegates crowded his rooms to bend the obsequious knee he reduced these claims to a count, finding only forty-two disobedient members.
He was too tactful, however, to appear in the convention hall. His duty was to give orders, and like a soldier he pitched his headquarters near the scene of action, boasting that his friends were everywhere ready for battle.
In his opening speech Tilden touched the Ring frauds with the delicacy of a surgeon examining an abscess, and the faint response that greeted his condemnation of corruption satisfied him that the convention did not appreciate the danger of party blood-poisoning. The truth of this diagnosis more fully appeared when Tammany, ”in the interest of harmony,” waived its right to partic.i.p.ate in the proceedings. The whirlwind of applause which greeted this ”unselfish act” had scarcely subsided when a delegate from Kings county, acting for Tweed, moved the previous question on a resolution reciting that hereafter, on the call of the roll, the city of New York be omitted since it presented no delegation bearing the prestige of regularity. This threw the Reformers into an animated counsel. They knew of the proposed withdrawal of Tammany, which seemed to them to smooth the way for the acceptance of their credentials, but the resolution came with startling suddenness. It narrowed the question of their admission to a mere technicality and cut off debate. Tilden, appreciating the ambuscade into which he had fallen, exhausted every expedient to modify the parliamentary situation, knowing it to be in the power of the convention to accept another delegation regardless of its regularity, as the Republicans had done at Syracuse in the previous week. But the delegates derisively laughed at his awkward predicament as they adopted the resolution by a vote of 90 to 4.
By this act the convention clearly indicated its purpose to treat the fraud issue as a local matter and to keep it out of the State campaign. It intended to denounce the crime and the criminals, and to allow no one to become a delegate who had aided or in anywise profited by the conspiracy, but it would not recognise a delegation which desired to reorganise the party in the metropolis by humiliating a great a.s.sociation whose regularity had been accepted for many years, and which had finally turned the State over to the Democracy. This view had the support of every office-holder and of every appointee of the Executive, whose great desire to ”save the party” had its inspiration in a greater desire to save themselves. On the other hand, the minority argued that allowing Tammany voluntarily to withdraw from the convention was equivalent to its endors.e.m.e.nt, thus giving its nominations regularity. This would compel the Democratic ma.s.ses, in order to partic.i.p.ate in the primaries, to vote its ticket. Tilden sought to avoid this regularity just as Conkling had destroyed the Greeley committee, and if office-holders had supported him as they did the Senator he must have won as easily.
The convention's treatment of Horatio Seymour also exhibited its dislike of the reformer. Seymour came to the convention to be its president, and upon his entrance to the hall had been hailed, amidst tumultuous cheers, as ”Our future president in 1872.” While waiting the conclusion of the preliminary proceedings he observed Francis Kernan sitting outside the rail with the rejected Reformers.
Hesitatingly, and in the hope, he said, of arousing no unpleasant discussion, he moved the admission of the veteran Democrat, whom he described as grown gray in the party harness, and whose very presence was a sufficient credential to his t.i.tle to a seat. Kernan, being in sympathy with Tilden, was _non persona grata_ to Tammany, and Seymour had scarcely resumed his seat when the ubiquitous delegate from Kings, with a flourish of rhetoric, promptly subst.i.tuted another, who, he alleged, was the regularly elected delegate as well as ”the friend of that great Democrat, John T. Hoffman.” The convention, frantic with delight at the mention of the Governor's name, saw the Oneidan grow lividly pale with chagrin at this exhibition of Tammany's manners.
Seymour had lived long in years, in fame, and in the esteem of his party. He could hardly have had any personal enemies. He possessed no capricious dislikes, and his kindly heart, in spite of a stateliness of bearing, won all the people who came near him. To be thus opposed and bantered in a Democratic a.s.sembly was a deep humiliation, and after expressing the hope that the Tammany man would fight for the Democratic party as gallantly in future as he had fought against it in the past, the ill.u.s.trious statesman withdrew his motion. When, later, his name was announced as presiding officer of the permanent organisation, the convention discovered to its dismay that Seymour, feigning sickness, had returned to Utica.[1335]
[Footnote 1335: ”Governor Seymour was given to understand that he could not be president of the convention unless he would forego his philippic against the Tammany thieves. This he declined to do.”--New York _Times_ (editorial), October 9, 1871.]
At the end of the day's work it was plain that Tweed had controlled the convention. The Reformers had been excluded, the committee on contested seats had refused them a hearing, Seymour was driven home, and a eulogy of Tammany's political services had been applauded to the echo. The platform did, indeed, express indignation at the ”corruption and extravagance recently brought to light in the munic.i.p.al affairs of the city of New York,” and condemned ”as unworthy of countenance or toleration all who are responsible,” but the contrast between the acts of the convention and the words of its platform made its professions of indignation seem incongruous if not absolutely empty. When one speaker, with rhetorical effect, p.r.o.nounced the frauds in New York ”the mere dreams of Republican imagination” delegates sprang to their feet amidst ringing cheers. In the joy of victory, Tweed, with good-natured contempt, characterised Seymour, Tilden, and Kernan as ”three troublesome old fools.”[1336]
[Footnote 1336: New York _Tribune_, October 6, 1871.]
After adjournment the Reformers made no concealment of their bitter dissatisfaction. Oswald Ottendorfer, editor of the most powerful German Democratic organ then in the State, threatened to issue an address denouncing their betrayal, and William E. Curtis, referring to the refusal of the credentials' committee, declared that a voice from the Democratic ma.s.ses of New York, seeking relief from a gang of thieves, was stronger, higher, and more sublime than mere questions of technicality. Under the spur of this threatened revolt, the convention, when it reconvened the next day, listened to the Reformers. Their recital was not a panegyric. Ottendorfer said that the operation of the previous question exposed the party to the suspicion that Tammany's seats would be open for their return after the storm of indignation had subsided. O'Conor, in a letter, declared that absolute freedom from all complicity in the great official crime and an utter intolerance of all persons suspected of sympathy with it must be maintained, otherwise its action would inflict a fatal wound upon the party. Curtis characterised the question as one of life or death to a great community weighed down by oppression and crime, and maintained that the convention, if it sought to avoid its duty by the subterfuge already enacted, would show both sympathy and complicity with the oligarchy of terror and infamy. These statements did not please the Ring men, who, with much noise, pa.s.sed contemptuously out of the hall.
Riotous interruption, however, did not begin until Tilden announced that the real point of the controversy was to estop Tammany, after nominating five senators and twenty-one a.s.semblymen, from declaring the Democratic ma.s.ses out of the party because they refused to vote for its candidates. The whip of party regularity was Tweed's last reliance, and when Tilden proclaimed absolution to those who disregarded it, the friends of Tammany drowned his words with loud calls to order. The excitement threatened to become a riot, but Tilden, caring as little for disapprobation as the son of Tisander in the story told by Herodotus, calmly awaited silence. ”I was stating,”
he continued, without the slightest tremor of a singularly unmusical voice, ”what I considered the objection to Tammany Hall, aside from the cloud that now covers that concern, and I am free to avow before this convention that I shall not vote for any one of Mr. Tweed's members of the Legislature. And if that is to be regarded the regular ticket, I will resign my place as chairman of the State committee and help my people stem the tide of corruption. When I come to do my duty as an elector, I shall cast my vote for honest men.”[1337] Then, to show his independence if not his contempt of the Tweed-bound body, Tilden suddenly waived aside the question of the Reformers' admission and moved to proceed to the nomination of a State ticket.[1338]
[Footnote 1337: New York _Tribune_, October 6, 1871.]
[Footnote 1338: Except the candidate for Secretary of State, the old Tweed ticket was renominated as follows: Secretary of State, Diedrich Willers, Seneca; Comptroller, Asher P. Nichols, Erie; Treasurer, Wheeler H. Bristol, Tioga; Attorney-General, Marshall B. Champlain, Allegany; Engineer, Van R. Richmond, Wayne; Ca.n.a.l Commissioner, George W. Chapman; Prison Inspector, David B. McNeil, Cayuga.]
The convention was stunned. It became dizzy when he denied Tammany's right to be regarded as the regular organisation, but his proclamation, defiantly and clearly made, that hereafter he should bolt its nominations even if the convention refused to impeach its regularity, struck a trenchant blow that silenced rather than excited.
Such courage, displayed at such a critical moment, was sublime. An organised revolt against an a.s.sociation which had for years been accepted as regular by State conventions meant the sacrifice of a majority and an invitation to certain defeat, yet he hurled the words of defiance into the face of the convention with the energy of the Old Guard when called upon to surrender at Waterloo. The course taken by Tilden on this memorable occasion made his own career, and also a new career for his party. From that hour he became the real leader of the Democracy. Although more than a twelvemonth must pa.s.s before his voice gave the word of command, his genius as a born master was recognised.
The att.i.tude of the Reformers strengthened the Republicans, whose distractions must otherwise have compa.s.sed their defeat. Murphyism and Tweedism resembled each other so much that a contest against either presented a well-defined issue of political morality. The greater importance of the Tammany frauds, however, obscured all other issues.
To preserve their organisation in the up-State counties the Democrats made creditable local nominations and professed support of the State ticket, but in the city the entire voting population, irrespective of former party alignments, divided into Tammany and anti-Tammany factions. As the crusade progressed the details of the great crime, becoming better understood, made Tammany's position intolerable. Every respectable journal opposed it and every organisation crucified it. In a double-page cartoon, startling in its conception and splendidly picturesque, Nast represented the Tammany tiger, with glaring eyes and distended jaws, tearing the vitals from the crushed and robbed city, while Tweed and his a.s.sociates sat enthroned.[1339] ”Let's stop those d.a.m.ned pictures,” proposed Tweed when he saw it. ”I don't care so much what the papers write about me--my const.i.tuents can't read; but they can see pictures.”[1340]
<script>