Volume III Part 39 (1/2)
Nevertheless, Laning, wis.h.i.+ng to succeed Dorsheimer as lieutenant-governor in 1879 and relying upon Tammany to nominate and elect him, had evidenced a disposition to rule in the Boss's favour, and when, at last, he did so, the angry convention sprang to its feet. For three hours it acted like wild men.[1609] Under a demand for the previous question Laning refused to recognise the Tilden delegates, and the latter's tumult drowned the voice of the chair. Finally, physical exhaustion having restored quiet, Kings County declined to vote and Tammany was added without being called. This left the result 154 to 195 in favour of John Kelly. An hour later Laning, hissed and lampooned, left the convention unthanked and unhonoured.
[Footnote 1609: ”The Democratic convention at Syracuse was perhaps the noisiest, most rowdy, ill-natured, and riotous body of men which ever represented the ruling party of a great Commonwealth.”--The _Nation_, October 3.]
But having gotten into the convention Tammany found it had not gotten into power. The Tilden forces endorsed Robinson's administration, refused to d.i.c.ker with Greenbackers, whom Kelly was suspected of favouring, and a.s.suaged their pa.s.sion by nominating George B. Bradley of Steuben for the Court of Appeals. While Tammany was looking for votes to get in on, it bargained with St. Lawrence to support William H. Sawyer, whose success seemed certain. On the second ballot, however, Bradley's vote ran up to 194, while Sawyer's stopped at 183.
This left Kelly nothing but a majority of the State committee, which was destined, in the hour of great need, to be of little service.
Throughout the State the several parties put local candidates in the field. The Greenbackers, exhibiting the activity of a young and confident organisation, uniformly made congressional and legislative nominations. In one congressional district they openly combined with the Democrats, and in several localities their candidates announced an intention of cooperating with the Democratic party. In the metropolis the various anti-Tammany factions supported independent candidates for Congress and combined with Republicans in nominating a city ticket with Edward Cooper for mayor.[1610] Kelly, acting for Tammany, selected Augustus Sch.e.l.l. This alignment made the leaders of the combined opposition sanguine of victory. It added also to the confidence of Republicans that the Greenbackers were certain to draw more largely from the ranks of the Democrats.
[Footnote 1610: Cooper had resigned from Tammany in 1877.]
The difference between the Syracuse and Saratoga platforms was significant. Democrats declared ”gold and silver, and paper convertible into coin at the will of the holder, the only currency of the country.”[1611] Convertible into what kind of coin? it was asked.
Coin of depreciated value, or the fixed monetary standard of the commercial world? The _Nation_ thought ”this platform not noticeable for strength or directness of statement.”[1612] The Republican plank was clearer. ”We insist that the greenback shall be made as good as honest coin ... that our currency shall be made the best currency, by making all parts of it, whether paper or coin, equivalent, convertible, secure, and steady.”[1613] As the campaign advanced a resistless tendency to force the older parties into the open made it plain that if the Democrats did not say just what they meant, the Republicans meant more than they said, for their speakers and the press uniformly declared that the greenback, which had carried the country triumphantly through the war, must be made as good as gold.
Meantime the Democratic leaders realised that ”fiat” money had a strange fascination for many of their party.
[Footnote 1611: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1878, p. 624.]
[Footnote 1612: The _Nation_, October 3.]
[Footnote 1613: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1878, p. 623.]
To add to Democratic embarra.s.sment the _Tribune_, in the midst of the canva.s.s, began its publication of the cipher despatches which had pa.s.sed between Tilden's personal friends and trusted a.s.sociates during the closing and exciting months of 1876.[1614] The shameful story, revealed by the _Tribune's_ discovered key to the cipher, made a profound impression. As shown elsewhere the important telegrams pa.s.sed between Manton Marble and Smith M. Weed on one side, and Henry Havermeyer and William T. Pelton, Tilden's nephew, on the other.[1615]
Marble had called McLin of the Florida board an ”ague-smitten pariah”
for having charged him with attempted bribery, but these translated telegrams corroborated McLin. Moreover, notwithstanding Tilden's comprehensive and explicit denial, it sorely taxed the people's faith to believe him disconnected with the correspondence, since the corrupt bargaining by which he was to profit was carried on in his own house by a nephew, who, it was said, would scarcely have ventured on a transaction so seriously affecting his uncle's reputation without the latter's knowledge. ”Of their [telegrams] effect in ruining Mr.
Tilden's fortunes, or what was left of them,” said the _Nation_, ”there seems no doubt.”[1616] Whatever of truth this prophecy contained, the revelation of the cipher despatches greatly strengthened the Republican party and brought to a tragic end Clarkson N. Potter's conspicuous failure to stain the President.[1617]
[Footnote 1614: New York _Tribune_, October 8 and 16.]
[Footnote 1615: See Chapter XXVII., pp. 350, 351, note.]
[Footnote 1616: October 24, 1878.]
[Footnote 1617: On May 13, 1878, Congressman Potter of New York secured the appointment of a committee of eleven to investigate alleged frauds in the Florida and Louisiana Returning Boards, with authority to send for persons and papers. He refused to widen the scope of the investigation to include all the States, presumably to avoid the damaging evidence already known relating to Pelton's effort to secure a presidential elector in Oregon. The _Tribune's_ timely exposure of the telegrams turned the investigation into a Democratic boomerang.]
The result of the October elections likewise encouraged Republicans.
It indicated that the Greenback movement, which threatened to sweep the country as with a tornado, had been stayed if not finally arrested, and thenceforth greater activity characterised the canva.s.s.
Conkling spoke often; Woodford, who had done yeoman service in the West, repeated his happily ill.u.s.trated arguments; and Evarts crowded Cooper Union. In the same hall Edwards Pierrepont, fresh from the Court of St. James, made a strenuous though belated appeal. Speaking for the Democrats, Kernan advocated the gold standard, declaring it essential to commercial and the workingmen's prosperity. Erastus Brooks shared the same view, and Dorsheimer, with his exquisite choice of words, endeavoured to explain it to a Tammany ma.s.s meeting. John Kelly, cold, unyielding, precise, likewise talked. There was little elasticity about him. He dominated Tammany like a martinet, naming its tickets, selecting its appointees, and outlining its policies. Indeed, his rule had developed so distinctly into a one-man power that four anti-Tammany organisations had at last combined with the Republicans in one supreme effort to crush him, and with closed ranks and firm purpose this coalition exhibited an unwavering earnestness seldom presented in a local campaign.[1618] It was intimated that Kelly having in mind his reappointment as city comptroller in 1880, sought surrept.i.tiously to aid Cooper.[1619] Kelly saw his danger. He recognised the power of his opponents, the weakness of Sch.e.l.l whom he had himself named for mayor, and the strength of Cooper, a son of the distinguished philanthropist, whose independence of character had brought an honourable career; but the a.s.sertion that the Boss, bowing to the general public sentiment, gave Cooper support must be dismissed with the apocryphal story that Conkling was in close alliance with Tammany. Doubtless Kelly's disturbed mind saw clearly that he must eventually divide his foes to recover lost prestige. Nevertheless, it was after November 5, the day of Tammany's blighting overthrow, that he shaped his next political move.
[Footnote 1618: In reference to Kelly's despotic rule see speeches of Anti-Tammany opponents in New York _Tribune_ (first page), October 31, 1878.]
[Footnote 1619: Myers, _History of Tammany_, p. 310.]
The election returns disclosed that the greatly increased Greenback-Labour vote, aggregating 75,000, had correspondingly weakened the Democratic party, especially in the metropolis, thus electing Danforth to the Court of Appeals, Cooper as mayor, the entire anti-Tammany-Republican ticket, a large majority of Republican a.s.semblymen, and twenty-six Republican congressmen, being a net gain of eight.[1620] Indeed, the divisive Greenback vote had produced a phenomenal crop of Republican a.s.semblymen. After the crus.h.i.+ng defeat of the Liberal movement in 1872 the Republicans obtained the unprecedented number of ninety-one. Now they had ninety-eight, with nineteen hold-over senators, giving them a safe working majority in each body and seventy-six on joint ballot. This insured the re-election of Senator Conkling, which occurred without Republican opposition on January 21, 1879. One month later the Utica _Republican_ closed its career. While its existence probably gratified the founder, it had done little more than furnish opponents with material for effective criticism.
[Footnote 1620: Danforth, Republican, 391,112; Bradley, Democrat, 356,451; Tucker, National, 75,133; Van Cott, Prohibitionist, 4,294.
a.s.sembly: Republicans, 98; Democrats, 28; Nationals, 2. Congress: Republicans, 26; Democrats, 7. Cooper over Sch.e.l.l, 19,361.]