The time and the man had met. Although 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 the
civil fabric, to the rehabilitation 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 idea 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 upon 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 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 “key-note” speech, but
not 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, Colonel 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.
[Illustration: From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve THOMAS F.
BAYARD of Delaware