Conkling only discovered his dilemma after the Convention met, when he found to his dismay that Robertson had bolted the Grant ticket.
Robertson had first made an alliance with the Blaine party, but finding an insufficiency of power among that party to carry his point against the solid phalanx of the Grant movement, he joined forces with John Sherman’s supporters, who were under the management of James A. Garfield.
The able strategist from Utica, at the head of his 306 chosen followers, so disconcerted the Sherman contingent that it also failed to carry the necessary number of guns.
As day after day passed without any change, it seemed as if the Conkling forces had adopted the motto of Napoleon’s old guard, “The Guard dies, but does not surrender.”
At length Robertson and his lieutenants collected the shattered ranks of Blaine and Sherman, and with Garfield at their head, like Ney attacking the English centre at Waterloo, hurled them with desperation on the solid square of Conkling, which still remained unbroken.
The united forces, however, with the war cry, “Anything to beat Grant!” carried the day, Garfield was nominated and Conkling retired in good order, but greatly discomfited.
Robertson had taken up this cry at the Convention in the same spirit that was displayed by another man about whom a good story was told during that campaign. He had got that shibboleth on the brain, “Anything to beat Grant!” As the story goes, a prediction had been made by some religious enthusiast that the world was coming to an end early in November of that year. A preacher was reminding his congregation, one Sunday, of the prediction, and the possibility of its fulfilment—at least that it was well to be prepared for such an event. At the conclusion of his exhortation, a man in the congregation arose to his feet, and in a solemnly pathetic voice said, “Thank God.” At the end of the service the minister’s curiosity was excited to converse with the man who had so fervently thanked heaven for what most people regarded as a universal calamity. He saw the man, and asked why he had made such a remarkable ejaculation at the prospect of such a terrible consummation. “Anything to beat Grant,” was the reckless and self-sacrificing response.
It was in this spirit that the Robertson party made the fight at Chicago, and in this spirit that they triumphed. It was anything to beat Senator Conkling, however, so far as Judge Robertson was concerned, who on other grounds would probably have preferred Grant. Thus he avenged upon the wrong man his defeat at the Utica Convention, and I was permitted to escape scathless, though innocently responsible for blasting his Gubernatorial aspirations.
This was not the end of Judge Robertson’s enmity to Senator Conkling, however. When the new Government came into power, Garfield, in making up his cabinet, selected Blaine as a member of that special body. This created a bad feeling between Blaine and Conkling, as it seemed to the latter like a continuation of the conspiracy between Robertson and Blaine, hatched at the Chicago Convention. Thus the seeds of a strong and bitter antagonism were sown between these two leading spirits in the Republican party, each aspiring to be at least the power behind the throne.
After Garfield’s inauguration Blaine was made Secretary of State. Great credit for the Presidential success was not only due to Mr. Blaine, but in a large degree to Judge Robertson also, as without his assistance Garfield could not have been nominated. So it was necessary to take care of Judge Robertson too. This was done by making him Collector of the Port of New York. These appointments were severe political blows, which, in the nature of circumstances, fell with full force upon the devoted head of Senator Conkling.