Kelly did not mean to dish the whole Democratic ticket. He expected to elect the minor State officers. But he learned on the morning after election that he had entirely miscalculated the effect of his scheme, since every Democrat except the nephew of Horatio Seymour rested in the party morgue by the side of Lucius Robinson.[904] In the city Kelly also disappointed his followers. His own vote ran behind Robinson's, and all his friends were slaughtered. Indeed, when Tammany surrendered its regularity at Syracuse it lost its voting strength. Even Cornell whom it saved ran 20,000 behind his ticket. The election was, in fact, a triumph for nobody except Conkling. He had put into the highest State office a personal adherent, whom the Administration had stigmatised by dismissal; he had brought to New York his principal opponents in the Cabinet (Evarts and Sherman) to speak for his nominee and their dismissed servant; and he had induced the Administration to call for a "strong man" for the Presidency.[905]
CHAPTER XXXIII
STALWART AND HALF-BREED
1880
While General Grant made his tour around the world there was much speculation respecting his renomination for the Presidency. Very cautiously started on the ground of necessity because of the attitude of the Southerners in Congress, the third-term idea continued to strengthen until the widespread and deep interest in the great soldier's home-coming was used to create the belief that he was unmistakably the popular choice. Grant himself had said nothing publicly upon the subject except in China, and his proper and modest allusions to it then added to the people's respect. But during the welcome extended him at Philadelphia, the Mayor of that city disclosed a well-laid plan to make him a candidate. This frank declaration indicated also that Grant expected the nomination, if, indeed, he was not a party to the scheme for securing it.
The question of discrediting the traditions quickly became a serious one, and its discussion, stimulated by other aspirants for the Presidency, took a wide range. The opponents of a third term did not yield to any in their grateful remembrance and recognition of what Grant had done for the country, but they deemed it impolitic upon both public and party grounds. If the tradition of two terms be overthrown because of his distinguished service, they argued, his election for a fourth term, to which the Constitution offered no bar, could be urged for the same reason with still more cogency. Such apparently logical action would not only necessarily familiarise the public mind, already disturbed by the increasing depression to business caused by the turmoil incident to quadrennial elections, with the idea of a perpetual Presidency, but it would foster confidence in personal government, and encourage the feeling that approved experience, as in the case of trusted legislators, is necessary to the continuance of wise administration.
Party reasons also furnished effective opposition. German voters, especially in New York and Wisconsin, early disclosed an indisposition to accept Grant even if nominated, while the Independent or Scratcher voiced a greater hostility than the Cornell nomination had excited. Never before had so much attention been given to a political question by persons ordinarily indifferent to such speculation. Anti-Grant clubs, springing up in a night, joined the press in ridiculing the persistent talk about the need of "a strong man," and charged that the scheme was conceived by a coterie of United States senators, managed by former office-holders under President Grant, and supported by men who regarded the Hayes administration as an impertinence. Matthew Hale, in accepting the presidency of the Albany Club, declared the movement to be at war with American traditions and with the spirit of American institutions.[906]
Such acrimonious antagonism quickly uncovered the purpose of the Stalwarts, who now sought to control the nomination regardless of opposition. For this purpose unusually early conventions for the selection of delegates to the National Convention, to be held at Chicago on June 2, were called in Pennsylvania, New York, and other States. Pennsylvania's was fixed for February 4 at Harrisburg, and New York's for the 25th at Utica. Like methods obtained in the selection of delegates. At Albany John F. Smyth issued a call in the evening for primaries to be held the next day at noon, and furnished his followers with pink coloured tickets, headed "Grant." Smyth was already in bad odour. Governor Robinson had accused him of compelling illegal payments by insurance companies of a large sum of money, to which he replied that the act making it illegal was unconstitutional, although no court had so pronounced. His misdemeanour was confirmed in the public mind by the fact, elicited on the impeachment trial, that the money so obtained had been divided among agents of the Republican organisation. Indeed, the Times charged, without reservation, that in one case the place of division was in none other than the house of Cornell himself.[907] Although the Senate of 1878 and of 1879 failed to remove Smyth, the Senate of 1880, notwithstanding his reappointment by Governor Cornell, refused to confirm him.[908] In the presence of such a sorry record the ostracised Albany Republicans were not surprised at his attempt to cheat them at the primaries, and their indignation at the shameless procedure resounded through the State. At the end of a week Charles Emory Smith, the gifted editor of the Albany Journal, who headed the delegation thus selected, deemed it expedient to withdraw. Five associates did likewise. Nevertheless, the opponents of a third term refused to participate in a second election, called to fill the vacancies, since it did not remove the taint from the majority who refused to resign.