The nomination of Horace Greeley in 1872 and the overwhelming defeat
that followed left the Democratic party in an abyss of despair. The old
Whig party, after the disaster that overtook it in 1852, had been not
more demoralized. Yet in the general elections of 1874 the Democrats
swept the country, carrying many Northern States and sending a great
majority to the Forty-fourth Congress.
Reconstruction was breaking down of its very weight and rottenness. The
panic of 1873 reacted against the party in power. Dissatisfaction with
Grant, which had not sufficed two years before to displace him, was
growing apace. Favoritism bred corruption and corruption grew more and
more flagrant. Succeeding scandals cast their shadows before. Chickens
of carpetbaggery let loose upon the South were coming home to roost at
the North. There appeared everywhere a noticeable subsidence of the
sectional spirit. Reform was needed alike in the State Governments and
the National Government, and the cry for reform proved something other
than an idle word. All things made for Democracy.
Yet there were many and serious handicaps. The light and leading of the
historic Democratic party which had issued from the South were in
obscurity and abeyance, while most of those surviving who had been
distinguished in the party conduct and counsels were disabled by act of
Congress. Of the few prominent Democrats left at the North many were
tainted by what was called Copperheadism—sympathy with the Confederacy.
To find a chieftain wholly free from this contamination, Democracy,
having failed of success in presidential campaigns, not only with
Greeley but with McClellan and Seymour, was turning to such Republicans
as Chase, Field and Davis. At last heaven seemed to smile from the
clouds upon the disordered ranks and to summon thence a man meeting the
requirements of the time. This was Samuel Jones Tilden.
To his familiars Mr. Tilden was a dear old bachelor who lived in a fine
old mansion in Gramercy Park. Though 60 years old he seemed in the
prime of his manhood; a genial and overflowing scholar; a trained and
earnest doctrinaire; a public-spirited, patriotic citizen, well known
and highly esteemed, who had made fame and fortune at the bar and had
always been interested in public affairs. He was a dreamer with a
genius for business, a philosopher yet an organizer. He pursued the
tenor of his life with measured tread.
His domestic fabric was disfigured by none of the isolation and squalor
which so often attend the confirmed celibate. His home life was a model
of order and decorum, his home as unchallenged as a bishopric, its
hospitality, though select, profuse and untiring. An elder sister
presided at his board, as simple, kindly and unostentatious, but as
methodical as himself. He was a lover of books rather than music and
art, but also of horses and dogs and out-of-door activity.
He was fond of young people, particularly of young girls; he drew them
about him, and was a veritable Sir Roger de Coverley in his gallantries
toward them and his zeal in amusing them and making them happy. His
tastes were frugal and their indulgence was sparing. He took his wine
not plenteously, though he enjoyed it—especially his “blue seal” while
it lasted—and sipped his whisky-and-water on occasion with a pleased
composure redolent of discursive talk, of which, when he cared to lead
the conversation, he was a master. He had early come into a great legal
practice and held a commanding professional position. His judgment was
believed to be infallible; and it is certain that after 1871 he rarely
appeared in the courts of law except as counsellor, settling in
chambers most of the cases that came to him.
It was such a man whom, in 1874, the Democrats nominated for Governor
of New York. To say truth, it was not thought by those making the
nomination that he had any chance to win. He was himself so much better
advised that months ahead he prefigured very near the exact vote. The
afternoon of the day of election one of the group of friends, who even
thus early had the Presidency in mind, found him in his library
confident and calm.
“What majority will you have?” he asked cheerily.
“Any,” replied the friend sententiously.
“How about fifteen thousand?”
“Quite enough.”
“Twenty-five thousand?”
“Still better.”
“The majority,” he said, “will be a little in excess of fifty
thousand.”
It was 53,315. His estimate was not guesswork. He had organized his
campaign by school districts. His canvass system was perfect, his
canvassers were as penetrating and careful as census takers. He had
before him reports from every voting precinct in the State. They were
corroborated by the official returns. He had defeated Gen. John A. Dix,
thought to be invincible by a majority very nearly the same as that by
which Governor Dix had been elected two years before.
V
The time and the man had met. Though Mr. Tilden had not before held
executive office he was ripe and ready for the work. His experience in
the pursuit and overthrow of the Tweed Ring in New York, the great
metropolis, had prepared and fitted him to deal with the Canal Ring at
Albany, the State capital. Administrative reform was now uppermost in
the public mind, and here in the Empire State of the Union had come to
the head of affairs a Chief Magistrate at once exact and exacting,
deeply versed not only in legal lore but in a knowledge of the methods
by which political power was being turned to private profit and of the
men—Democrats as well as Republicans—who were preying upon the
substance of the people.
The story of the two years that followed relates to investigations that
investigated, to prosecutions that convicted, to the overhauling of
popular censorship, to reduced estimates and lower taxes.
The campaign for the Presidential nomination began as early as the
autumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee of
Southerners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southern
man came to town who was not “seen.” If of enough importance he was
taken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southern
standard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchised
Southern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether after
their own ideas of what a President ought to be.
The South came to St. Louis, the seat of the National Convention,
represented by its foremost citizens, and almost a unit for the
Governor of New York. The main opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of
which John Kelly was then the chief. Its very extravagance proved an
advantage to Tilden.
Two days before the meeting of the convention I sent this message to
Mr. Tilden: “Tell Blackstone”—his favorite riding horse—“that he wins
in a walk.”
The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S.S.—“Sunset”—Cox for temporary
chairman. It was a clever move. Mr. Cox, though sure for Tammany, was
popular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought
that with him they could count a majority of the National Committee.
The night before the assembling Mr. Tilden’s two or three leading
friends on the committee came to me and said: “We can elect you
chairman over Cox, but no one else.”
I demurred at once. “I don’t know one rule of parliamentary law from
another,” I said.
“We will have the best parliamentarian on the continent right by you
all the time,” they said.
“I can’t see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention,” I
said.
“We’ll have a dozen men at hand to tell you,” they replied. So it was
arranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen.
I had barely time to write the required keynote speech, but not enough
to commit it to memory; nor sight to read it, even had I been willing
to adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust to
extemporization. A friend, Col. J. Stoddard Johnston, who was familiar
with my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my manuscript behind
his hat he lined the words out to me between the cheering, I having
mastered a few opening sentences.
Luck was with me. It went with a bang—not, however, wholly without
detection. The Indianans, devoted to Hendricks, were very wroth.
“See that fat man behind the hat telling him what to say,” said one to
his neighbor, who answered, “Yes, and wrote it for him, too, I’ll be
bound!”
One might as well attempt to drive six horses by proxy as preside over
a national convention by hearsay. I lost my parliamentarian at once. I
just made my parliamentary law as we went. Never before or since did
any deliberate body proceed under manual so startling and original. But
I delivered each ruling with a resonance—it were better called an
impudence—which had an air of authority. There was a good deal of quiet
laughter on the floor among the knowing ones, though I knew the mass
was as ignorant as I was myself; but realizing that I meant to be just
and was expediting business the convention soon warmed to me, and
feeling this I began to be perfectly at home. I never had a better
day’s sport in all my life.
One incident was particularly amusing. Much against my will and over my
protest I was brought to promise that Miss Phoebe Couzins, who bore a
Woman’s Rights Memorial, should at some opportune moment be given the
floor to present it. I foresaw what a row it was bound to occasion.
Toward noon, when there was a lull in the proceedings, I said with an
emphasis meant to carry conviction: “Gentlemen of the convention, Miss
Phoebe Couzins, a representative of the Woman’s Association of America,
has a memorial from that body, and in the absence of other business the
chair will now recognize her.”
Instantly and from every part of the hall arose cries of “No!” These
put some heart into me. Many a time as a schoolboy I had proudly
declaimed the passage from John Home’s tragedy, “My Name is Norval.”
Again I stood upon “the Grampian hills.” The committee was escorting
Miss Couzins down the aisle. When she came within the radius of my poor
vision I saw that she was a beauty and dressed to kill.
That was reassurance. Gaining a little time while the hall fairly
rocked with its thunder of negation I laid the gavel down and stepped
to the edge of the platform and gave Miss Couzins my hand.
As she appeared above the throng there was a momentary “Ah!” and then a
lull, broken by a single voice:
“Mister Chairman. I rise to a point of order.”
Leading Miss Couzins to the front of the stage I took up the gavel and
gave a gentle rap, saying: “The gentleman will take his seat.”
“But, Mister Chairman, I rose to a point of order,” he vociferated.
“The gentleman will take his seat instantly,” I answered in a tone of
one about to throw the gavel at his head. “No point of order is in
order when a lady has the floor.”
After that Miss Couzins received a positive ovation and having
delivered her message retired in a blaze of glory.