“Now John, you are my sponsor, or political godfather. You found me not inclined to take any office two years ago, and you insisted that I should take the nomination for Governor. No matter what differences may have arisen since, remember John, you are my sponsor.” Mr. Kelly smiled, but was non-committal. But that visit, and graceful reminiscence of a happier day in their political lives did its work well. Let the brilliant Philadelphia editor, Alexander McClure, tell the sequel. In a letter to his paper from St. Louis, announcing Mr. Tilden’s nomination for the Presidency, Mr. McClure said:
“The work of the Convention was then done, but it was electrified by the appearance on the main aisle of the full-moon, Irish face of John Kelly, the Anti-Tilden Tammany Sachem. Those who hissed and howled at him yesterday, now greeted him with thunders of approval, and called him to the platform. When he appeared there a whisper could have been heard in any part of the hall, and when he gave in his adhesion to Tilden and Hendricks, and pledged his best efforts for their election, he was crowned and welcomed as the returning prodigal of the household.”[67]
Right nobly did John Kelly keep that pledge. Rutherford B. Hayes came in from the rural districts of New York 30,000 ahead of Samuel J. Tilden. When he reached the Harlem River he found that Tammany Hall had given Mr. Tilden 54,000 majority in the city of New York, and had wrested the Empire State from the Republicans. President-elect Tilden sent a message of congratulation on that memorable election night to John Kelly, and his warmest salutations to the invincible tribe of Saint Tammany, as “the right wing of the Democratic Army.”
By changing dates and names, it will be found that Mr. Kelly’s services in the Cleveland campaign of 1884 were an exact repetition of his services in 1876. He gave the same loyal support to Grover Cleveland that he had given to Samuel J. Tilden. He held his forces in hand magnificently, and if the high honor may be attributed to any one man of carrying New York through the most desperate conflict ever waged within her borders, safely out of the very jaws of defeat, to the Democratic column, that honor belongs to Honest John Kelly. To save Grover Cleveland, Kelly sacrificed every man on his local ticket, every dear friend who bore the Tammany standards on that eventful day, which decided the destinies of the United States for the next four years.
When John Kelly was appointed Comptroller of the City of New York by Mayor Wickham, in 1876, the debt of the municipality which had been uniformly accumulating under his predecessors until it reached over a hundred million of dollars, was first arrested in its upward course, and brought into a line of rapid reduction. In four brief years he had reduced the debt $12,000,000, thus justifying the encomiums of the press at the time of his accession to the office. The New York Herald of December 8, 1876, the day after his appointment, said editorially:
“Mr. Kelly will make a very good Comptroller. He has firmness, honesty and business capacity. He is the right man in the right place, and a great improvement on Mr. Green. He will guard the treasury just as jealously as the present Comptroller, without being impracticable, litigious and obstructive. The people of New York will be satisfied with Mr. Kelly.”
The New York World of the same date, after dwelling editorially upon his great ability, said:
“Mr. Kelly’s honesty and integrity are unquestioned, even by his bitterest political opponents. He is a native of New York city. Beginning life as a mechanic, by his energy and industry he very soon made himself a manufacturer and a merchant. He sat for one term in the Board of Aldermen, and was twice elected to Congress. At Washington he handled questions of national importance with ability and decorum, and by the force of his native good sense soon took rank above many men who had more experience than he in the national councils. He is best known to New Yorkers of the present day as the leader of the Tammany organization, as the man who took hold of that ancient society after it had been deservedly defeated, disgraced and overthrown under the management of members of the old Ring. He reorganized it, filled it with new life, and weeded out the men who helped to bring reproach upon it. The property-holders and taxpayers of this city are to be congratulated that the administration of their financial affairs has fallen into such worthy hands, and will be entrusted to a man of Mr. Kelly’s perspicacious brain and known probity.”
The New York Evening Express, of the same date, referred to Mr. Kelly’s eminent fitness for the office, and to his services in the election of Mr. Tilden to the Presidency, and said, editorially: “Speaking in a political sense only, Mr. Kelly has well earned this office, and even a higher one, for to him more than any other man is the credit due for the immense Democratic majority in this city, which gave the state to Governor Tilden.”
The New York Sun, of the same date, said editorially: