USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. III 1865-1896 > Part 4
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The war between Johnson and the radicals kept the State in a political ferment all through the summer. The President's violent speech of February 22 alienated many who still sought to remain his friends. On the same day Seward in a speech at Cooper Union tried to
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calm the tempest by his parable on the then popular play of "The Nervous Man and the Man of Nerve." Both got the results they wanted, though not as they wanted them. The President, the man of nerve, having achieved a restored Union, was content. It was only the nervous man who was troubled because he had not got what he wanted in the precise way he sought it. But it was all to no purpose. When on May 22 at Auburn Seward argued that the rights of the blacks were more secure if left to the mercy of State governments than they would be under the protection of the national government,1 even the hero-worshippers of a genera- tion in his own State turned against him. His visit to Albany in August, "swinging 'round the circle" with the President, General Grant, and Admiral Farragut, was seized upon to humiliate him. A special session of
the Senate passed resolutions welcoming to the State capital the President and his party. An amendment welcoming General Grant and Admiral Farragut by name was passed, 16 to 3, but another amendment to include Seward by name was voted down, 8 to 12.2 Fenton pointedly ignored him at the reception and forced Seward to greet the throng with the remark that he needed no introduction in the New York Execu- tive chamber.
Having hopelessly estranged a majority of the Republicans, the President and his friends sought a combination of the conservative Republicans with the
1Frederick Bancroft, Life of William H. Seward, II, p. 457.
2 Andrew D. White, Autobiography, I, p. 131; Appleton's Annual Cyclo- pedia, 1866; Diary of Gideon Welles, III, p. 592.
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Democrats and planned a National Union convention of representatives from all the States for August 14 at Philadelphia. A preliminary State convention assembled at Saratoga on August 9 and was attended by such well-known Democrats as Samuel J. Tilden, Francis Kernan, and Sanford E. Church, while among the conservatives were John A. Dix, Hamilton Fish, Marshall O. Roberts, and Moses Taylor. It chose Ray- mond, Tilden, Dix, and Church delegates to Phila- delphia. Raymond, who was chairman of the Repub- lican national committee, had not been at Saratoga and had been reluctant to join the movement, fearing that it might fall into the hands of the ex-Confederates. He finally yielded to Seward's persuasion, apparently under the delusion that he was not committing himself to political opposition to the party of which he was the official head. The Philadelphia convention organized under the temporary chairmanship of John A. Dix, who urged the rights of the States to representation in Congress without condition ; but the general burden of defending the President's policy fell to Raymond. In performing the task, he let his logic of State rights carry him beyond all bounds of discretion or of prac- tical statesmanship and declared that, even if conditions rendered readmission of southern States unsafe, because of disloyal sentiment dominating them, Congress still had no power to deny rights conferred by the Constitu- tion. Such a statement could only give point with northern people to the argument just before put forth by the joint committee on reconstruction, that the President's doctrine simply threw away all the results
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of the war and encouraged any body of men to rebellion with the knowledge that if they were defeated they were just as well off as before, with the result, said the report, that "treason is always master and loyalty a blun- der."3 A few days after the Philadelphia convention, Raymond was removed from the chairmanship of the national committee and Johnson's break with the Republicans was complete.
The plan of his friends to capture the Democratic party, however, did not run smoothly. The Democrats were ready to use the Philadelphia movement, but by no means ready to give themselves up to it. Dean Rich- mond undertook to merge the Democracy of New York temporarily with the National Union party. A State convention, made up of Democrats and conservative Republicans, was called to meet at Albany on Septem- tember 11. Richmond died suddenly on August 27 (while visiting Tilden), and the failure of the plan was probably due in part to that event. Weed was there and with other Republicans favored nominating John A. Dix for Governor. Dix was a soldier and a man of probity, though Seymour declared him "merce- nary,"4 and Gideon Welles, who knew him from the days of the Albany Regency, thought him honest, but "somewhat avaricious," "an inveterate place-seeker," who feared and conformed to the opinions of men in power. He had been a Democrat yet a supporter of the Union and, after some wavering, of the war for its pre-
3Joint Committee Report of June 8, 1866.
4Letter to Tilden, September 21, 1874, Bigelow, Life of Tilden, I, p. 228; Diary of Gideon Welles, III, p. 442.
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servation. But his conservatism had asserted itself as soon as the war was over. Other candidates were Robert H. Pruyn of Albany, a Republican who had been Min- ister to Japan, Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn, a former Mayor of that city and a Democrat of ability and char- acter, and John T. Hoffman, Mayor of New York. The Dix people were seemingly in complete control and Richmond's plan would doubtless have been carried to success but for the chairman, Sanford E. Church, who in the face of a vote of three to one against a motion to adjourn overnight, declared it carried and hurriedly left the platform. The next morning he humbly apologized for his mistake, but during the night the Tammany Democrats had organized to nominate their Mayor and circulated stories among the Democratic delegates that Dix had arbitrarily imprisoned civilians at Fort Lafayette. When the convention reassembled, Edwards Pierrepont, who was supposed to be a Dix leader, threw off the mask, frankly called what was supposed to be a Union meeting a Democratic con- vention, withdrew the name of Dix, and moved the nomination of Hoffman, which was made.5 Pierrepont, whom Gideon Welles described as "a cunning and adroit lawyer, but not a true and trusty man,"6 con- fessed that he had agreed with Tammany to support Hoffman before the Philadelphia convention, though up to the day of the nomination he had appeared as a
5The ticket was: Governor, John T. Hoffman, New York; Lieutenant- Governor, Robert H. Pruyn, Albany; Canal Commissioner, William W. Wright, Ontario; Prison Inspector, Frank B. Gallagher, Erie.
6Diary, III, p. 452.
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Dix supporter. The platform demanded the restoration of the southern States according to Grant's pledge at Appomattox and Johnson's proclamation of amnesty in May, 1865, "which fully, lawfully, and finally restored to all the rights and functions of citizenship the great mass of the people of the southern States." It asked voters to "arrest that monstrous corruption which is fast sapping the sources of public spirit and public virtue," denounced centralization of power in the State as well as the nation, and declared: "Recent legislation at Albany has usurped a supreme yet fitful control of local affairs which counties and municipalities are entitled to regulate."
The rule of the metropolis from Albany thus arraigned, had been exercised with an iron hand for nearly ten years. In 1857 the Republican Legislature revised the charter of New York, centralized the appointing power, and redistricted the city to increase Republican strength in the Board of Aldermen. Then control of the police was withdrawn from the city by the creation of the metropolitan police district, under a board appointed at Albany. The validity of the law was sustained on the ground that the State might create a new civil division for police purposes and vest in it the powers formerly exercised by the municipalities within that district, although the Constitution did not permit State appointment of police officers for the old municipalities themselves. Later the new Central Park was put under a State commission on the legal theory that this was a new local body not covered by the home rule provision of the Constitution, which placed in local
SANFORD E. CHURCH
Sanford E. Church, jurist; born, Milford, N. Y., April 18, 1815; lawyer; member of state assembly, 1842; district attor- ney, Orleans county, 1846-1847; lieutenant governor, 1851-1855; state comptroller, 1858-1859; delegate to constitutional conven- tion of 1867-1868 ; defeated for congress, 1862; first chief judge of the reorganized court of appeals, 1870; died in Albion, N. Y., May 14, 1880.
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1
1
EDWARDS PIERREPONT
Edwards Pierrepont; born, North Haven, Conn., March 4. 1817; lawyer; justice superior court of New York City, 1857; in 1863 was appointed to try prisoners of state in the various prisons and forts throughout the United States; United States attorney for the southern district of New York, 1869-1870; United States attorney general, 1875-1876; minister to Great Britain, 1876; died, New York City, March 6, 1892.
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OVERTHROW OF THE CONSERVATIVES
hands all appointments to local offices existing when the instrument was adopted. The same reasoning has since upheld State Rapid Transit commissions and the long line of State bodies that have held sway in New York City down to the present time. A metropolitan fire district and a metropolitan health dis- trict were also formed. Then the city budget and the tax levies were fixed by the Legislature. A reaction came with the election of Governor Hoffman and the enactment of the Tweed charter, but the corruption of Tweed gave new excuse for interference, though it was never carried to the extreme it reached just after the Civil War. This State supervision sprang from mixed motives. The city government of the time was bad. Life and property were insecure. The most respected citizens of the metropolis demanded protection and objected to entrusting expenditures for great enterprises to local officials. Martin I. Townsend once declared that but for the efficiency of the metropolitan police, when many city authorities were in sympathy with the disaffected, the draft riots of 1863 might have resulted in revolution. At the same time Republican lawmakers were not blind to the value of patronage in the city, or the tactical advantage for national and State contests of curbing the Democrats in their stronghold. So municipal corruption often furnished excuse for schemers as corrupt as those whom they were professing to check. In recent years public sentiment has dimin- ished the abuse and the Republicans themselves, in the Constitution of 1894, with its provision for qualified
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local veto on local legislation, freed the city in consid- erable measure from State meddling.
The Republicans held their State convention at Syracuse on September 5, with Charles H. Van Wyck as temporary and Lyman Tremain as permanent chair- man. Raymond and Weed were absent, and Greeley dominated the convention in all but one particular. He submitted a negro suffrage plank, but George William Curtis, the chairman of the committee on resolutions, suppressed this and avoided any expression favorable to votes even for negro soldiers. The platform declared the President guilty of usurpation of power. It favored the restoration at once of States ratifying the Four- teenth amendment, which tended to equalize the rights of citizens of the Union; and pointed out that the Thirteenth amendment worked a "change prejudicial to the equality of the States in Congress," that the continued absence of ten States was due solely to their refusal to recognize this change, and that their claim to enter before the ratification of the Fourteenth amend- ment amounted to "a demand that a bloody attempt to dissolve the Union shall be rewarded with increased representation of political power." The convention renominated Fenton for Governor, but displaced Thomas G. Alvord, the Lieutenant-Governor, for Gen- eral Stewart L. Woodford of Brooklyn, a brave officer and brilliant orator, whose abilities as a campaigner, it was thought, would add strength to the ticket.7
7The ticket was: Governor, Reuben E. Fenton, Chautauqua; Lieutenant- Governor, Stewart L. Woodford, Kings; Canal Commissioner, Stephen T. Hayt, Steuben; Prison Inspector, John Hammond, Essex.
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The Democratic capture of the National Union movement was more than Raymond could stand. He had ceased to champion the President, no longer was able to believe in his honesty and "attribute his disas- trous action to errors of judgment and infirmities of temper,"8 and now in the face of Tammany's domination of the State convention and its demand in the name of "home rule" for the repeal of the legislation by which the substantial citizens of New York City had sought to secure public improvements and protection of health and property through commissions free from ring domination, he repudiated Hoffman, holding that the State had more to fear from him and his policy than from all the errors of radicalism. The conservative Republicans offered to renominate him for Congress, but he declined in a dignified defense of his course and returned to the editorial chair, which he ought never to have left; for, despite his brilliant gifts, his fickleness and his inability to gauge public feeling made his Con- gressional career a failure. Henry Ward Beecher, who until that time had been aligned with the conservatives, also came to the support of Fenton and made a powerful speech at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Weed and Dix, however, stood by Hoffman, holding that Greeley and his friends who had sought to defeat the renomina- tion of Lincoln were on the same road still. The cam- paign was a close one. Greeley declared that Saturn was not more hopelessly bound with rings than Hoffman,9 and tried, but without success, to fix the taint of dis-
8Maverick, Raymond and the New York Press, p. 174.
9New York Tribune, November 1, 1866.
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loyalty upon him. Fenton was opposed by the liquor interests, the Federal patronage, which was ruthlessly used against him, Thurlow Weed's still powerful influence, and all the Democrats, one of the most for- midable combinations ever overcome in a State cam- paign. Gideon Welles wrote in October that Weed was "struggling to again get position," and flattered himself that he could get it by electing Seward to the Senate.10 Seward predicted Hoffman's election by 40,000, but Fenton won by a plurality of 13,789, receiving 366,315 votes to Hoffman's 352,526. At the same time, the people voted by 96,490 plurality in favor of holding a Constitutional convention, casting 352,854 votes for and 256,364 against. The Republicans carried the Assem- bly, 82 to 46, and won 20 of the 31 Congressmen. Edmund L. Pitts, of Orleans, was elected Speaker of the Assembly.
10Diary, II, p. 611.
CHAPTER IV THE RISE OF CONKLING 1867
T HE campaign of 1866 had brought conspicuously to the attention of the State the abilities of Roscoe Conkling. He had been Mayor of Utica and Representative in Congress, where his legal acumen and gifts of oratory had made him one of the most effective debaters on the radical side. On the stump he had been the voice of radicalism, denouncing the President as "passionate," "perfidious," and a "frenzied usurper."1 Now he aspired to the Senate to succeed Ira Harris. Judge Harris was himself a candidate for reelection. He had high character and good abilities, but at Wash- ington had confined himself chiefly to looking after the individual wants of constituents, so much so that Lin- coln is said to have humorously complained: "I never think of going to sleep now without first looking under my bed to see if Judge Harris is not there wanting some- thing for somebody."2 So far as he was concerned, New York counted for nothing in formulating national poli- cies or in expounding them. Welles declared that he was "sly and manœuvering" and had "against his own
1Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, pp. 278, 282.
2Andrew D. White, Autobiography, I, p. 134.
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convictions gone with the radicals." At the same time Conkling appeared to him "vigorous and vain, full of spread-eagle eloquence."3 The third leading candidate was Noah Davis of Albion, then a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Eighth district and afterward eminent as the Presiding Justice of the general term in New York City. Horace Greeley also had aspira- tions, but he made no campaign and soon came to realize that his stand for general amnesty, which led him to go on the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, had put him too far in advance of his radical friends. His old rivals of the Times favored him until he wrote a letter that they thought went farther than any conservative in giving power to the leaders in the Rebellion.4 Another candidate was Charles J. Folger of Ontario, President pro tem. of the Senate and one of the ablest and most high-minded of its leaders, who afterward was to be Chief-Judge of the Court of Appeals, Secretary of the Treasury, and the ill-fated candidate of his party for Governor against Grover Cleveland in 1882. He soon retired from the field, as did Lyman Tremain, the Unionist candidate for Lieutenant-Governor in 1862, and George William Curtis, the editor of Harper's Weekly, all of whom threw their support to Conkling. Supreme Court Justice Ransom Balcom of Broome, Calvin T. Hulburd of St. Lawrence, and Thomas G. Alvord, the former Lieutenant-Governor, also had some advocates.
Davis seemed at first to be in the lead. Edmund L.
3Diary, III, p. 20.
4New York Times, November 29, 1866.
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Pitts, the Speaker, with his power over the committee appointments, came from his county. The geographical argument for a western candidate was emphasized. Conkling, however, had the powerful newspaper aid of Ellis H. Roberts in the Utica Herald at his home; and D. D. S. Brown of the Rochester Democrat, in Davis's own territory, after giving a complimentary support to Freeman Clarke, rallied necessary western votes for Conkling. Working for him, moreover, was the pop- ular demand that New York have a "voice" and the feeling that he was the representative of a new, young, vigorous, and articulate Republicanism. Fenton was in a difficult position. He aspired to the Senate two years hence and did not wish his way blocked by another Senator from his own end of the State. At the same time Conkling's aggressive and arrogant personality already threw its shadow across his path of leadership. He would doubtless have preferred Harris, but before the caucus met on January 10 it was clear that the real struggle lay between Davis and Conkling. Folger had been expected to second Conkling's nomination, but he preferred to preside over the caucus and his place was taken by Senator Andrew D. White, who had supported Curtis as long as he was in the field. Ellis H. Roberts, who had secured an election to the Assembly solely to promote his townsman's ambition, presented Conkling's name. In seconding it White declared that "the great State of New York, which had been so long silent in the highest councils of the nation, demanded a voice."5 R. L. Burrows of Erie nominated Davis, laying stress
5White, Autobiography, I, p. 136.
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on the claims of that part of the State west of Cayuga Bridge, which had never had a Senator. Henry Smith of Albany urged the renomination of Harris on the strength of his past services. David W. Travis of Westchester, who without consulting Greeley presented his name, said that the Republican party owed more to him than to any other living man.
The first informal ballot gave Conkling 33, Davis 30, and Harris 32, with 7 for Balcom, 6 for Greeley, and 1 for Folger. The second ballot gave Conkling 39, while Davis's vote jumped to 41 and Harris's fell to 24. Balcom had 4 and Folger 1. Greeley's name had been withdrawn. On the third ballot Conkling had 45, Davis 44, Harris 18, and Balcom 2.
It was clear that Harris could not be nominated, and on the next ballot all but six of his supporters divided between the other candidates, Conkling receiving 53 and Davis 50. On the fifth ballot Conkling received 59 and Davis 49, while one vote controlled by Fenton, which had at first been cast for Folger but on the previous two ballots for Davis, went back to Folger. If five of the six remaining Harris votes had been added to Davis's fifty, they would have nominated him, and evidently Fenton, forced to the unwelcome choice, had taken what proved an unnecessary precaution to keep open his road to Washington.
On the same day the Democratic minority nominated Senator Henry C. Murphy of Kings, over A. Oakey Hall, whose name was confessedly presented merely to develop his political prestige in New York City. Under the State Constitution Murphy as a Senator was
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ineligible, and the Republican press made much of this disregard of the Constitution by those who professed to be the chief champions of constitutional law.6 But the nomination was a mere compliment, and the power of the State to impose any qualifications for United States Senator in addition to those of the Federal Constitution was at least doubtful.
The Governor, at this session, called on the Legisla- ture to take up the question of enlarging the canals, and supported the recommendation of Victor M. Rice; State Superintendent of Public Instruction, for the abolition of the rate bill system in the public schools. An act was passed abolishing the rate bills and substituting local and State taxation exclusively on property for the mixed assessment that had been in part a tax on attendance. This act marked an epoch in the development of the educational system. Thenceforth the public schools were entirely free to the poorest citizen. The Legisla- ture also passed an act making eight hours a legal day's work, but it did not affect farm labor, or service by the week, month, or year, or forbid special contracts for any period of work within twenty-four hours. Provision was made for an election of delegates to the Constitu- tional convention on April 23. Each Senate district was to elect four delegates and there were to be thirty- two delegates-at-large, equally divided between the two parties by an arrangement forbidding any elector to vote for more than sixteen of them. The result was the choice of ninety-seven Republicans and sixty-three Democrats.
"Rochester Daily Democrat, January 16, 1867.
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When the Republican State convention met at Syra- cuse on September 25, with James Gibson as temporary chairman, the rivalry between Fenton and Conkling manifested itself. Fenton's friends were in control of the convention and planned to make Lyman Tremain permanent chairman. By clever tactics, however, the Conkling minority secured for the Senator the prestige of this place. On the appointment of the committee on permanent organization, Senator Edward M. Madden moved in open convention that it be instructed to report Conkling for chairman. Resistance to this move meant an open break with Conkling, for which Fenton was not ready. The chair was given to Conkling, who aroused much enthusiasm by his defense of the radical party and his assertion that Johnson should be impeached. Two delegations appeared from New York City, the radicals under the leadership of Charles S. Spencer, and the conservatives who had followed Weed in support of Hoffman and now wished to get back into the party. Their leader was Rufus F. Andrews, who had been Surveyor of the Port under Lincoln. The conservatives could hardly expect to be seated and withdrew fully satisfied with the committee report that found irregularities committed by both factions and recommended action by the convention to harmonize their differences.
The radicals this time had their way with the plat- form. It declared that suffrage should be impartial and was a right not to be limited by property or color. It condemned the suspension of Stanton and the removal of Generals Sheridan and Sickles from their commands.
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A bid was made for the Irish vote, which was sensitive over the arrest in British territory of Fenian agitators who made this country the base of their operations, by declaring for the protection of naturalized citizens in foreign lands "at all hazards." The platform declared against tampering with the public credit or "the slight- est deviation from the path of financial integrity," and sought to meet revelations of frauds in canal contracts by promises to search out corruption in the State and promote economy in administration, both State and national.
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