His personal habits, too, commended him. He seems to have been absolved from the love of wine, and if the love of a good woman did not win him, he created a substantial home among his books, and worked while others feasted. He talked easily, he learned readily, and with the earnestness of one who inherited an ambition for public life he carefully equipped himself for a political as well as a professional career. He had a robust, straightforward nature. Men liked his courage, his earnestness, his effectiveness as a debater, and his declared purposes which were thoroughly in unison with the spirit of his party. But it was his boldness, tempered with firmness, which justified Robinson in singling him out for chairman. Still, the courage exhibited as a presiding officer in one of the stormiest conventions that ever assembled in the Empire State did not win him distinction.
The Kelly opposition raised no question of principle. The platform denounced the defeat of Tilden as due to fraud, applauded Hayes for his Southern policy, declared for reapportionment of the State, and bitterly assailed railroad subsidies. But it had no words of unkindness for Tilden and Robinson. Indeed, with a most sublime display of hypocrisy, Kelly pointed with pride to the fruits of their administrations, made illustrious by canal reforms, economy, and the relentless prosecution of profligate boards and swindling contractors, and vied with the apostles of administrative reform in calling them "fearless" and "honest," and in repudiating the suggestion of desiring other directing spirits. His only issue involved candidates. Should it be the old ticket or a new one? Should it be Bigelow for a third term, or Beach, the choice of the ring? In opposing the old ticket several delegates extended their hostility only to Bigelow; others included the attorney-general. Only a few demanded an entire change. But Tammany and the Canal ring tactfully combined these various elements with a skill never before excelled in a State convention. Their programme, sugar-coated with an alleged affection for Tilden, was arranged to satisfy the whim of each delegate, while Robinson's policy, heavily freighted with well doing, encountered the odium of a third-term ticket.
Nevertheless, the Governor's control of the chairmanship assured him victory unless Hill yielded too much. But Kelly was cunning and quick. After accepting Hill without dissent, he introduced a resolution providing that the convention select the committee on contested seats. To appoint this committee was the prerogative of the chairman, and Hill, following Cornell's bold ruling in 1871, could have refused to put the motion. When he hesitated delegates sprang to their feet and enthroned pandemonium.[831] During the cyclone of epithets and invective John Morrissey for the last time opposed John Kelly in a State convention. His shattered health, which had already changed every lineament of a face that successfully resisted the blows of Yankee Sullivan and John C. Heenan, poorly equipped him for the prolonged strain of such an encounter, but he threw his envenomed adjectives with the skill of a quoit-pitcher.
Distributed about the hall were William Purcell, DeWitt C. West, George M. Beebe, John D. Townsend, and other Tammany talkers, who had a special aptitude for knockdown personalities which the metropolitan side of a Democratic convention never failed to understand. Their loud voices, elementary arguments, and simple quotations neither strained the ears nor puzzled the heads of the audience, while their jibes and jokes, unmistakable in meaning, sounded familiar and friendly. Townsend, a lawyer of some prominence and counsel for Kelly, was an effective and somewhat overbearing speaker, who had the advantage of being sure of everything, and as he poured out his eloquence in language of unmeasured condemnation of Morrissey, he held attention if he did not enlighten with distracting novelty.
Morrissey admitted he was wild in his youth, adding in a tone of sincere penitence that if he could live his life over he would change many things for which he was very sorry. "But no one, not even Tweed who hates me," he exclaimed, pointing his finger across the aisle in the direction of Kelly, "ever accused me of being a thief." Morrissey's grammar was a failure. He clipped his words, repeated his phrases, and lacked the poise of a public speaker, but his opponents did not fail to understand what he meant. His eloquence was like that of an Indian, its power being in its sententiousness, which probably came from a limited vocabulary.
At the opening of the convention Robinson's forces had a clear majority,[832] but in the presence of superior generalship, which forced a roll-call before the settlement of contests, Tammany and the Canal ring, by a vote of 169 to 114, passed into control. To Tilden's friends it came as the death knell of hope, while their opponents, wild with delight, turned the convention into a jubilee. "This is the first Democratic triumph in the Democratic party since 1873," said Jarvis Lord of Monroe. "It lets in the old set."[833]
The adoption of the Credentials Committee's report seated Tammany, made Clarkson N. Potter permanent chairman, and turned over the party machine. Pursuing their victory the conquerors likewise nominated a new ticket.[834] Quarter was neither asked nor offered. Robinson had squarely raised the issue that refusal to continue the old officials would be repudiation of reform, and his friends, as firmly united in defeat as in victory, voted with a calm indifference to the threats of the allied power of canal ring and municipal corruptionists. Indeed, their boast of going down with colours flying supplemented the vigorous remark of the Governor that there could be no compromise with Tweed and canal thieves.[835]
This apparently disastrous result encouraged the hope that Republicans, in spite of Conkling's indiscretion at Rochester, might profit by it as they did in 1871. Upon the surface Republican differences did not indicate bitterness. Except in the newspapers no organised opposition to the Senator had appeared, and the only mass meeting called to protest against the action of the Rochester convention appealed for harmony and endorsed the Republican candidates.[836] Even Curtis, the principal speaker, although indulging in some trenchant criticism, limited his remarks to a defence of the Administration. Nevertheless, the presence of William J. Bacon, congressman from the Oneida district, who voiced an intense admiration for the President and his policies, emphasised the fact that the Senator's home people had elected a Hayes Republican. Indeed, the Senator deemed it essential to establish an organ, and in October (1877) the publication of the Utica Republican began under the guidance of Lewis Lawrence, an intimate friend. It lived less than two years, but while it survived it reflected the thoughts and feelings of its sponsor.[837]
The campaign presented several confusing peculiarities. Governor Robinson in his letter to a Tammany meeting refused to mention the Democratic candidates, and Tilden, after returning from Europe, expressed the belief in his serenade speech that "any nominations that did not promise coöperation in the reform policy which I had the honour to inaugurate and which Governor Robinson is consummating will be disowned by the Democratic masses."[838] This was a body-blow to the Ring. Its well-directed aim also struck the ticket with telling effect, for its election involved the discontinuance of Fairchild's spirited canal prosecutions. On the other hand, the adoption of the recent amendment, substituting for the canal commission a superintendent of public works to be appointed by the Governor, made the election of Olcott and Seymour especially desirable, since it would give Robinson and his reforms stronger support than Tilden had in the State board. Yet it could not be denied that the success of the Albany ticket would be construed as a defeat of Tilden's ascendency.
Similar confusion possessed the Republican mind. A large body of men, resenting the Rochester convention's covert condemnation of the President's policies, hesitated to vote for candidates whose victory would be attributed to Republican opposition to the Administration. This singular political situation made a very languid State campaign. An extra session of Congress called Conkling to Washington, Tilden retired to Gramercy Park, the German-Independent organisation limited its canvass to the metropolis, and the candidates of neither ticket got a patient hearing. Other causes contributed to the Republican dulness. Old leaders became inactive and government officials refused to give money because of their interpretation of the President's civil service order, while rawness and indifference made newer leaders inefficient. After the October collapse in Ohio conditions became hopelessly discouraging.[839] The tide set more heavily in favour of the Democracy, and each discordant Republican element, increasing its distrust, practically ceased work lest the other profit by it.