A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

The effort to secure a Democratic nominee for governor required four ballots. Addison Gardiner, David L. Seymour, Fernando Wood, and Amasa J. Parker were the leading candidates. David Seymour had been a steady supporter of the Hards. He belonged to the O'Conor type of conservatives, rugged and stalwart, who seemed unmindful of the changing conditions in the political growth of the country. At Cincinnati, he opposed the admission of the Softs as an unjust and utterly irrational disqualification of the Hards, who, he said, had always stood firmly by party platforms and party nominations regardless of personal convictions. Fernando Wood belonged to a different type.[206] He had already developed those regrettable qualities which gave him a most unsavoury reputation as mayor of New York; but of the dangerous qualities that lay beneath the winning surface of his gracious manner, men as yet knew nothing. Just now his gubernatorial ambition, fed by dishonourable methods, found support in a great host of noisy henchmen who demanded his nomination. Addison Gardiner was the choice of the Softs. Gardiner had been elected lieutenant-governor on the ticket with Silas Wright in 1844, and later became an original member of the Court of Appeals, from which he retired in 1855. He was a serious, simple-hearted, wise man, well fitted for governor. But Horatio Seymour made up his mind that Parker, although far below Gardiner and David L. Seymour in number of votes, would better unite the convention, and upon Gardiner's withdrawal Parker immediately received the nomination.

Amasa J. Parker was then forty-nine years of age, an eminent, successful lawyer. Before his thirty-second birthday he had served Delaware County as surrogate, district attorney, assemblyman, and congressman. Later, he became a judge of the Supreme Court and removed to Albany, where he resided for forty-six years, until his death in 1890. Parker was a New England Puritan, who had been unusually well raised. He passed from the study of his father, a Congregational clergyman, to the senior class at Union College, graduating at eighteen; and from his uncle's law library to the surrogate's office. All his early years had been a training for public life. He had associated with scholars and thinkers, and in the estimation of his contemporaries there were few stronger or clearer intellects in the State. But his later political career was a disappointment. His party began nominating him for governor after it had fallen into the unfortunate habit of being beaten, and, although he twice ran ahead of his ticket, the anti-slavery sentiment that dominated New York after 1854 kept him out of the executive chair.

The Republican state convention assembled at Syracuse on the 17th of September. A feeling existed that the election this year would extract the people from the mire of Know-Nothingism, giving the State its first Republican governor; and confidence of success, mingled with an unusual desire to make no mistake, characterised the selection of a nominee for chief executive. Myron H. Clark, a man of the people, had made a good governor, but he was too heavily weighted with prohibition to suit the older public men, who did not take kindly to him. They turned to Moses H. Grinnell, whose pre-eminence as a large-hearted, public-spirited merchant always kept him in sight. Grinnell was now fifty-three years of age. His broad, handsome face showed an absence of bigotry and intolerance, while the motives that controlled his life were public and patriotic, not personal. Probably no man in New York City, since the time John Jay left it, had ever had more admirers. He was a favourite of Daniel Webster, who appointed Washington Irving minister to Spain upon his request. This interest in the famous author, as well as his recent promotion of Dr. Kane's expedition to the Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin, indicated the broad philanthropy that governed his well-ordered life. But he declined to accept office. The distinguished house that had borne his name for twenty-seven years, decided that its senior member could not be spared, even temporarily, to become governor of the State, and so Grinnell's official life was limited to a single term in Congress, although his public life may be said to have spanned nearly two-thirds of his more than three score years and ten.

Grinnell's decision seemed to leave an open field, and upon the first ballot John A. King received 91 votes, James S. Wadsworth 72, Simeon Draper 23, Myron H. Clark 22, and Ira Harris 22. Thurlow Weed and the wheel horses of Whig descent, however, preferring that the young party have a governor of their own antecedents, familiar with political difficulties and guided by firmness and wisdom, had secretly determined upon King. But Wadsworth, although he quickly felt the influence of their decision, declined to withdraw. Wadsworth was a born fighter. In the Free-soil secession of 1847, he proclaimed uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery, and he never changed his position until death ended his gallant and noble service in the Civil War.

Wadsworth descended from a notable family. His father, James Wadsworth, a graduate of Yale, leaving his Connecticut home in young manhood, bought of the Dutch and of the Six Nations twenty thousand acres in the Genesee Valley, and became one of the earliest settlers and wealthiest men in Western New York. He was, also, the most public-spirited citizen. He believed in normal schools and in district school libraries, and he may properly be called one of the founders of the educational system of the State. But he never cared for political office. It was said of him that his refusal to accept public place was as inflexible as his determination to fight Oliver Kane, a well-known merchant of New York City, after trouble had occurred at the card table. The story, told at the time, was that the two, after separating in anger, met before sunrise the next morning, without seconds or surgeons, under a tall pine tree on a bluff, and after politely measuring the distance and taking their places, continued shooting at each other until Kane, slightly wounded, declared he had enough.[207]

James S. Wadsworth discovered none of his father's aversion to holding office. He, also, graduated at Yale and studied law in the office of Daniel Webster, but he preferred politics and agriculture to the troubles of clients, and, although never successful in getting office, all admitted his fitness for it. He was brave, far-sighted, and formed to please. He had a handsome face and stately presence. Many people who never saw him were strongly attracted to him by sympathy of political opinions and by gratitude for important services rendered the country. There was to come a time, in 1862, when these radical friends, looking upon him as the Lord's Anointed, and indifferent to the wishes of Thurlow Weed and the more conservative leaders, forced his nomination for governor by acclamation; but, in 1856, John A. King had the weightiest influence, and, on the second ballot, he took the strength of Draper, Clark, and Harris, receiving 158 votes to 73 for Wadsworth. It was not soon forgotten, however, that in the memorable stampede for King, Wadsworth more than held his own.

John Alsop King was the eldest son of Rufus King. While the father was minister to the court of St. James, the son attended the famous school at Harrow, had as classmates Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel, and went the usual rounds of continental travel. For nearly four decades he had been conspicuous in public life as assemblyman, senator, congressman, and in the diplomatic service. Starting as a Federalist and an early advocate of anti-slavery sentiments, he had been an Anti-Mason, a National Republican, and a Whig. Only when he acted with Martin Van Buren against DeWitt Clinton did he flicker in his political consistency. Although now sixty-eight years old, he was still rugged—a man of vigorous sense and great public spirit. His congressional experience came when the hosts of slavery and freedom were marshalling for the great contest for the territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific, and at the side of Preston King he resisted Clay's compromise measures, especially the fugitive slave law, and warmly supported the admission of California as a free State. "I have come to have a great liking for the Kings," wrote Seward, in 1850. "They have withstood the seduction of the seducers, and are like a rock in the defence of the right. They have been tried as through fire."[208] John A. King was not ambitious for public place. He waited to be called to an office, but he did not wait to be called to join a movement which would be helpful to the public. His ear was to the sky rather than to the ground. He believed Ralph Waldo Emerson's saying: "That is the one base thing in the universe, to receive benefits and render none." Like his distinguished father, he was tolerant in dealing with men who differed from him, but he never shrank from the expression of an opinion because it would bring sacrifice or ostracism.

The ticket was strengthened by the nomination of Henry R. Selden of Monroe for lieutenant-governor. Selden belonged to a family that had been prominent for two centuries in the Connecticut Valley. Like his older brother, Samuel L. Selden, who lived at Rochester, he was an able lawyer and a man of great industry. These brothers brought to the service of the people a perfect integrity, coupled with a gracious urbanity that kept them in public life longer than either desired to remain. One was a Republican, the other a Democrat. Samuel became a partner of Addison Gardiner in 1825, and Henry, after studying law with them, opened an office at Clarkson in the western part of the county. In 1851, Henry became reporter for the Court of Appeals, and then, lieutenant-governor. Samuel's public service began earlier. He became judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1831, of the Supreme Court in 1847, and of the Court of Appeals in 1856. When he resigned in 1862, Henry took his place by appointment, and afterward by election. Finally, in 1865, he also resigned. The brothers were much alike in the quality they brought to the public service; and their work, as remarkable for its variety as for its dignity, made Samuel an original promoter of the electric telegraph system and Henry a defender of Susan B. Anthony when arrested on the charge of illegally voting at a presidential election.

The Americans nominated Erastus Brooks for governor. He was a younger brother of James Brooks, who founded the New York Express in 1836. The Brookses were born in Maine, and early exhibited the industry and courage characteristic of the sons of the Pine Tree State. At eight years of age, Erastus began work in a grocery store, fitting himself for Brown University at a night school, and, at twenty, he became an editor on his brother's paper. His insistence upon the taxation of property of the Catholic Church, because, being held in the name of the Bishops, it should be included under the laws governing personal holdings in realty, brought him prominently before the Americans, who sent him to the State Senate in 1854. But Brooks' political career, like that of his brother, really began after the Civil War, although his identification with the Know-Nothings marked him as a man of force, capable of making strong friends and acquiring much influence.

The activity of the Americans indicated firm faith in their success. Six months before Brooks' nomination they had named Millard Fillmore for President. At the time, the former President was in Europe. On his return he accepted the compliment and later received the indorsement of the old-line Whigs. Age had not left its impress. Of imposing appearance, he looked like a man formed to rule. The peculiar tenets of the Americans, except as exemplified in the career of their candidate for governor, did not enter into Fillmore's campaign. He rested his hopes upon the conservative elements of all parties who condemned the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and opposed the formation of a party which, he declared, had, for the first time in the history of the Republic, selected candidates for President and Vice President from the free States alone, with the avowed purpose of electing them by the suffrages of one part of the Union to rule over the other part.