“Twenty-five thousand?”
“Still better.”
“The majority,” he said, “will be a little in excess of fifty thousand.” It was 53,315. His estimate was not guesswork. He had organized his campaign by school-districts. His canvass system was perfect, his canvassers were as penetrating and careful as census-takers. He had before him reports from every voting precinct in the State. They were corroborated by the official returns. He had defeated General John A. Dix, thought to be invincible, by a majority very nearly the same as that by which Governor Dix had been elected two years before.
III
THE time and the man had met. Although Mr. Tilden had not before held executive office, he was ripe and ready for the work. His experience in the pursuit and overthrow of the Tweed Ring in New York, the great metropolis, had prepared and fitted him to deal with the Canal Ring at Albany, the State Capital. Administrative Reform was now uppermost in the public mind, and here in the Empire State of the Union had come to the head of affairs a Chief Magistrate at once exact and exacting, deeply versed not only in legal lore but in a knowledge of the methods by which political power was being turned to private profit, and of the men—Democrats as well as Republicans—who were preying upon the substance of the people.
The story of the two years that followed relates to investigations that investigated, to prosecutions that convicted, to the overhauling of the civil fabric, to the rehabilitation of popular censorship, to reduced estimates and lower taxes.
The campaign for the presidential nomination began as early as the autumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee of Southerners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southern man came to town who was not “seen.” If of enough importance, he was taken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southern standard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchised Southern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether after their own idea of what a President ought to be. The South came to St. Louis, the seat of the National Convention, represented by its foremost citizens and almost a unit for the Governor of New York. The main opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of which John Kelly was then the Chief. Its very extravagance proved an advantage to Tilden. Two days before the meeting of the Convention I sent this message to Mr. Tilden: “Tell Blackstone [his favorite riding horse] that he wins in a walk.” The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S. S. (“Sunset”) Cox, for Temporary Chairman. It was a clever move. Mr. Cox, though sure for Tammany, was popular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought that with him they could count upon a majority of the National Committee.
The night before the assembling, Mr. Tilden’s two or three leading friends on the Committee came to me and said: “We can elect you Chairman over Cox, but no one else.” I demurred at once. “I don’t know one rule of parliamentary law from another,” I said. “We will have the best parliamentarian on the continent right by you all the time,” they said. “I can’t see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention,” I said. “We’ll have a dozen men to tell you,” they replied. So it was arranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen.
I had barely time to write the required “key-note” speech, but not to commit it to memory, nor sight to read it, even had I been willing to adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust to extemporization. A friend, Colonel Stoddard Johnston, who was familiar with my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my manuscript behind his hat, he lined the words out to me between the cheering, I having mastered a few opening sentences.