Volume III Part 38 (1/2)
Nevertheless, the Governor's control of the chairmans.h.i.+p 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 generals.h.i.+p, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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.