It is difficult to excuse Tilden's silence when this fatal resolution was adopted. In the final haste to report the platform, the deep significance of Vallandigham's words may not have been fully appreciated by the Committee;[238] but Tilden understood their meaning, and vigorous opposition might have avoided them.[239] He seems, however, to have shared the fear of McClellan's friends that the defeat of the resolution would endanger the integrity of the convention, and to have indulged the hope that McClellan's letter of acceptance would prove an antidote to the Ohioan's peace-poison. But his inaction did little credit either to his discernment or judgment, for the first ballot for President disclosed the groundlessness of his timidity,[240] and the first work of the campaign revealed the inefficiency of the candidate's statements.[241] Indeed, so grievous was Tilden's mistake that his distinguished biographer (Bigelow) avoided his responsibility for declaring the war a failure by ignoring his presence at Chicago.
Meanwhile the cheers for McClellan that greeted the returning delegates were mingled with those of the country over Sherman's capture of Atlanta and Farragut's destruction of the Mobile forts.
CHAPTER IX
FENTON DEFEATS SEYMOUR
1864
The brilliant victories of Sherman and Farragut had an appreciable effect upon Republicans. It brought strong hope of political success, and made delegates to the Syracuse convention (September 7) very plucky. Weed sought to control, but the Radicals, in the words of Burke's famous sentence, were lords of the ascendant. They proposed to nominate Reuben E. Fenton, and although the Chautauquan's popularity and freedom from the prejudices of Albany politics commended him to the better judgment of all Republicans, the followers of Greeley refused to consult the Conservatives respecting him or any part of the ticket. Resenting such treatment Weed indicated an inclination to secede, and except that his regard for Fenton steadied him the historic bolt of the Silver Grays might have been repeated.[242]
Fenton was a well-to-do business man, without oratorical gifts or statesmanlike qualities, but with a surpassing genius for public life. He quickly discerned the drift of public sentiment and had seldom made a glaring mistake. He knew, also, how to enlist other men in his service and attach them to his fortunes. During his ten years in Congress he developed a faculty for organisation, being able to coördinate all his resources and to bring them into their place in the accomplishment of his purposes. This was conspicuously illustrated in the Thirty-seventh Congress when he formed a combination that made Galusha A. Grow speaker of the House. Besides, by careful attention to the wants of constituents and to the work of the House, backed by the shrewdness of a typical politician who rarely makes an enemy, he was recognised as a sagacious counsellor and safe leader. He had previously been mentioned for governor, and in the preceding winter Theodore M. Pomeroy, then representing the Auburn district in Congress, presented him for speaker.[243] Schuyler Colfax controlled the caucus, but the compliment expressed the esteem of Fenton's colleagues.
He was singularly striking and attractive in person, tall, erect, and graceful in figure, with regular features and wavy hair slightly tinged with gray. His sloping forehead, full at the eyebrows, indicated keen perceptive powers. He was suave in address, so suave, indeed, that his enemies often charged him with insincerity and even duplicity, but his gracious manner, exhibited to the plainest woman and most trifling man, won the hearts of the people as quickly as his political favours recruited the large and devoted following that remained steadfast to the end. Perhaps no one in his party presented a stronger running record. He belonged to the Barnburners, he presided at the birth of the Republican party, he stood for a vigorous prosecution of the war regardless of the fate of slavery, and he had avoided the Weed-Greeley quarrels. If he was not a statesman, he at least possessed the needed qualities to head the State ticket.