A Political History of the State of New York Volume II Part 14

The Whig convention followed on September 20. A divided Democracy again made candidates confident, and eight or ten names were presented for governor. Horace Greeley thought it time his turn should come. He had been p.r.o.nounced in his advocacy of the Maine liquor law and active in his hostility to the Nebraska Act. As these were to be the issues of the campaign, he applied with confidence to Weed for help. The Albany editor frankly admitted that his friends had lost control of the convention, and that Myron H. Clark would probably get the nomination. Then Greeley asked to be made lieutenant-governor. Weed reminded him of the outcry in the Whig national convention of 1848 against having "cotton at both ends of the ticket." "I suppose you mean," replied Greeley, laughing, "that it won't do to have prohibition at both ends of our state ticket."[445] But, though he laughed, the editor of the _Tribune_ went away nettled and humiliated.

In the contest, which became exciting, Greeley's friends urged his selection for governor without formally presenting his name to the convention; but on the third ballot Clark received the nomination, obtaining 82 out of the 132 votes cast.

[Footnote 445: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

226.

"Mr. Greeley called upon me at the Astor House and asked if I did not think that the time and circ.u.mstances were favourable to his nomination. I replied that I did not think the time and circ.u.mstances favourable to his election, if nominated, but that my friends had lost control of the state convention. This answer perplexed him, but a few words of explanation made it quite clear. Admitting that he had brought the people up to the point of accepting a temperance candidate for governor, I remarked that another aspirant had 'stolen his thunder.' In other words, while he had shaken the temperance bush, Myron H. Clark would catch the bird. I informed Mr. Greeley that Know-Nothing or 'Choctaw' lodges had been secretly organised throughout the State, by means of which many delegates for Mr. Clark had been secured. Mr. Greeley saw that the 'slate' had been broken, and cheerfully relinquished the idea of being nominated. But a few days afterwards Mr. Greeley came to Albany, and said in an abrupt but not unfriendly way, 'Is there any objection to my running for lieutenant-governor?'... After a little more conversation, Mr. Greeley became entirely satisfied that a nomination for lieutenant-governor was not desirable, and left me in good spirits."--_Ibid._, Vol. 2, p.

226.]

Myron H. Clark, now in his forty-ninth year, belonged to the cla.s.s of men generally known as fanatics. He was a plain man of humble pretensions and slender attainments. He was originally a cabinet-maker and afterward a merchant. Then he became a reformer. He sympathised with the Native Americans; he approved Seward's views upon slavery; and he interested himself in the workingmen. But his hobby was temperance. Its advocates made his home in Canandaigua their headquarters, and during the temperance revival which swept over the State in the early fifties, he aided in directing the movement. This experience opened his way, in 1851, to the State Senate. Here he displayed some of the legislative gifts that distinguished John Young.

He had patience and persistence; he could talk easily and well; and, underneath his enthusiasm, lingered the shrewdness of a skilled diplomat. When, at last, the Maine liquor bill, which he had introduced and engineered, pa.s.sed the Legislature, his name was a household word throughout the State. Seymour's veto of the measure strengthened Clark. People realised that a governor no less than a legislature was needed to make laws, and, with the spirit of reformers, the delegates demanded his nomination. To Weed it seemed hazardous; but a majority of the convention, believing that Clark's public career had been sagacious and upright, refused to take another.

Clark's nomination made the selection of a candidate for lieutenant-governor more difficult. The prohibitionists were satisfied; Greeley was not. In their anxiety, the delegates canva.s.sed several names without result. Finally, with great suddenness and amidst much enthusiasm, Henry J. Raymond was nominated. This deeply wounded Greeley. "He had cheerfully withdrawn his own name," wrote Weed, "but he could not submit patiently to the nomination of his personal, professional, and political rival."[446] Greeley believed it was not the convention, but Weed himself, who brought it about. On the contrary, Weed declared that he had no thought of Raymond in that connection until his name was suggested by others. Nevertheless, the _Tribune's_ editor held to his own opinion. "No other name could have been put upon the ticket so bitterly humbling to me,"[447] he afterward wrote Seward. To Greeley, Raymond was "The little Villain of the _Times_;" to Raymond, Greeley was "The big Villain of the _Tribune_."[448] In any aspect, Raymond was an unfortunate nomination for Weed, since it began the quarrel that culminated in the defeat of Seward at Chicago in 1860.

[Footnote 446: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

227.]

[Footnote 447: _Ibid._, p. 280.]

[Footnote 448: In a letter to Charles A. Dana, dated March 2, 1856, Greeley indicates his feeling toward Raymond. "Have we got to surrender a page of the next _Weekly_ to Raymond's bore of an address?" he says, referring to the Pittsburgh convention's appeal.

"The man who could inflict six columns on a long-suffering public, on such an occasion, cannot possibly know enough to write an address."]

Early in the campaign, Greeley favoured dropping the name of Whig and organising an anti-Nebraska or Republican party, with a ticket of Whigs and Democrats, as had been done in some of the Western States.

But Seward and Weed, with a majority of the Whig leaders, thought that while fusion might be advisable wherever the party was essentially weak, as in Ohio and Indiana, it was wiser, in States like New York and Ma.s.sachusetts where Whigs were in power, to retain the party name and organisation.[449] In so deciding, however, they agreed with Greeley that the platform should be thoroughly anti-Nebraska, and they gave it a touch that kindled the old fire in the hearts of the anti-slavery veterans. It condemned the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, approved the course of the New York senators and representatives who resisted it, declared that it discharged the party from further obligation to support any compromise with slavery, and denounced "popular sovereignty" as a false and deceptive cry, "too flimsy to mislead any but those anxious to be deluded and eager to be led astray." This declaration of principles was summarised as "Justice, Temperance, and Freedom." One delegate, amidst great applause, said he felt glorified that the party was disenthralled and redeemed. Roscoe Conkling, a vice president, spoke of the convention as belonging to "the Republican party." Greeley declared the platform "as n.o.ble as any friend of freedom could have expected." Other state organisations also approved it. The anti-Nebraska convention, upon rea.s.sembling in Auburn on September 26, adopted the Whig ticket. The state temperance convention indorsed the nomination of Clark and Raymond, and the Free Democrats accepted Clark. This practically made a fusion ticket.

[Footnote 449: "I was a member of the first anti-Nebraska or Republican State Convention, which met at Saratoga Springs in September; but Messrs. Weed and Seward for a while stood aloof from the movement, preferring to be still regarded as Whigs."--Horace Greeley, _Recollections of a Busy Life_, p. 314.]

Early in October the Native Americans went into council. This organisation, which had elected a mayor of New York in 1844, suddenly revived in 1854; and, in spite of its intolerant and prescriptive spirit, the movement spread rapidly. Mystery surrounded its methods.

It held meetings in unknown places; its influence could not be measured; and its members professed to know nothing. Thus it became known as the "Know-Nothing" party. Members recognised each other by the casual inquiry, "Have you seen Sam?" and when one of the old parties collapsed at a local election the reply came, "We have seen Sam." Its secrecy fascinated young men, and its dominant principle, "America for Americans," stirred them into unusual activity. The skilful use of patriotic phrases also had its influence. The "Star Spangled Banner" was its emblem, Was.h.i.+ngton its patron saint, and his thrilling command, "Put none but Americans on guard to-night," its favourite pa.s.sword. Henry Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts joined it as an instrument for destroying the old parties, which he regarded an obstacle to freedom; but Seward thought this was doing evil that good might come. Everything is un-American, he argued, which makes a distinction between the native-born American and the one who renounces his allegiance to a foreign land and swears fealty to the country that adopts him. "Why," he asked, "should I exclude the foreigner to-day?

He is only what every American citizen or his ancestor was at some time or other."[450]

[Footnote 450: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 234.]

The voting strength of this party in New York was estimated at 65,000, divided between Hards, Softs, and Whigs, with one-fifth each, and the Silver-Grays with two-fifths. On the question of putting up a state ticket, its council divided. The Silver-Grays, it was said, favoured candidates in order to defeat Clark; while the Whigs and Softs preferred making no nominations. In the end, Daniel Ullman, a reputable New York lawyer of mediocre ability, received the nomination for governor. The great overmastering pa.s.sion of Ullman was a desire for office. For many years he had been a persistent and unsuccessful knocker at the door of city, county and state Whig conventions, and when the Know-Nothings appeared he turned to them to back his ambition. Possibly they knew that his parents were foreign-born, but the mystery surrounding his own birthplace became a comical feature of the canva.s.s. It was claimed, upon what seemed proper evidence at the time, that Ullman was born in India and had not become a naturalised citizen of the United States. This made him ineligible as the candidate of his party, and disqualified him from serving as governor if elected.

The campaign opened with two clearly defined issues--limitation of the liquor traffic and condemnation of the Nebraska Act. Clark stood for both, Ullman stood for neither; Bronson and Seymour opposed prohibition and approved the Nebraska Act. Greeley declared that the two Democratic candidates differed only "as to whether the contempt universally felt for President Pierce should be openly expressed, or more decorously cherished in silence." As the canva.s.s advanced, the real contest became prohibition, with Bronson and Seymour apparently running a race for the liquor vote, while Ullman was silently securing the votes of men who thought the proscription of foreign-born citizens more important than either freedom or temperance. To the most adroit political prognosticators the situation was confused. Greeley estimated Clark's strength at 200,000, and that of the next highest, either Seymour or Bronson, at 150,000; but so little was known of the Know-Nothings that he omitted Ullman from the calculation. Another prophet fixed Ullman's strength at 65,000. The surprise was great, therefore, when the returns disclosed a Know-Nothing vote of 122,000, with Clark and Seymour running close to 156,000 each, and Bronson with less than 35,000. The people did not seem to have been thinking about Bronson at all. Seymour's veto commended the Governor to the larger cities, and it swept him on like a whirlwind. New York gave him 26,000. His election was conceded by the Whigs and claimed by the Democrats; but, after several weeks of anxious waiting, the official count made Clark the governor by a plurality of 309.[451] Including defective votes plainly intended for Seymour, Clark's plurality was only 153. Raymond ran 600 ahead of Clark, but his plurality over Ludlow was 20,000, since the latter's vote was 20,000 less than Seymour's. These twenty thousand preferred to vote for Elijah Ford of Buffalo, who ran for lieutenant-governor on the ticket with Bronson, possibly because of Ludlow's alleged perfidy at the Syracuse convention. Of the congressmen elected, twenty-five were Whigs, three Softs, two Anti-Nebraskans, and three Know-Nothings; in the a.s.sembly there were eighty-one Whigs, twenty-six Softs, and seventeen Hards.

[Footnote 451: Myron H. Clark, 156,804; Horatio Seymour, 156,495; Daniel Ullman, 122,282; Green C. Bronson, 33,850.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

The result of the election could scarcely be called a Whig victory; but it was a popular rebuke to the Nebraska bill. Clark's majority, slender as it finally appeared by the official count, was due to the Whigs occupying common ground with Free-soilers who discarded party attachments in behalf of their cherished convictions. The Silver-Grays found a home with the Hards and the Know-Nothings, and many Democrats, unwilling to go to the Whigs, voted for Ullman.

It was the breaking-up of old parties. The great political crisis which had been threatening the country for many years was about to burst, and, like the first big raindrops that precede a downpour, the changes in 1854 announced its presence. It had been so long in coming that John W. Taylor of Saratoga, the champion opponent of the Missouri Compromise, was dying when Horace Greeley, at the anti-Nebraska convention held in Taylor's home in August, 1854, was writing into the platform of the new Republican party the principles that Taylor tried to write into the old Republican party in 1820. "Whoever reads Taylor's speeches in that troubled period," says Stanton, "will find them as sound in doctrine, as strong in argument, as splendid in diction, as any of the utterances of the following forty-five years, when the thirteenth amendment closed the controversy for all time."[452]

[Footnote 452: H.B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_, p. 164. John W.

Taylor served twenty consecutive years in Congress--a longer continuous service than any New York successor. Taylor also bears the proud distinction of being the only speaker from New York. Twice he was honoured as the successor of Henry Clay. He died at the home of his daughter in Cleveland, Ohio, in September, 1854, at the age of seventy, leaving a place in history strongly marked.]

CHAPTER XVI

THE FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

1854-5

The winter of 1855 became a turning-point in the career of William H.

Seward. The voice of the anti-slavery Whigs proclaimed him the only man fitted by position, ability, and character to succeed himself in the United States Senate. To them he possessed all the necessary qualities for leaders.h.i.+p. In his hands they believed the banner of opposition to the extension of slavery would be kept at the front and every other cause subordinated to it. This feeling was generously shared by the press of New York. "The repeal of the Missouri Compromise," said Henry J. Raymond in the _Times_, "has developed a popular sentiment in the North which will probably elect Governor Seward to the Presidency in 1856 by the largest vote from the free States ever cast for any candidate."[453] Even the Democratic _Evening Post_ admitted that "Seward is in the ascendancy in this State."[454]

[Footnote 453: New York _Times_, June 1, 1854.]

[Footnote 454: New York _Evening Post_, May 23, 1854.]

The Legislature was overwhelmingly Whig. Nearly three-fourths of the a.s.sembly and two-thirds of the Senate had been elected as Whigs.

Although Seward did not make a speech or appear publicly in the campaign of 1854, he had been active in seeing that members were chosen who would vote for him. But, notwithstanding the Whigs controlled the Legislature, many of them belonged to the Know-Nothings, whose noisy opposition soon filled the air with rumours of their intention to defeat Seward. The secrecy that veiled the doings of the order now concealed the strength of their numbers; but, as Seward's course had been sufficient to array its entire members.h.i.+p against him, there was little doubt of the att.i.tude of all its representatives. Though he had not violently denounced them as Douglas did at Philadelphia, men of otherwise liberal opinions were angry because he seemed deliberately to support views opposed to their most cherished principles. His recommendation, while governor, to divide the public money with Catholic schools was recalled with bitter comment. The more recent efforts of Bishop Hughes, an ardent friend of the Senator, to exclude the Bible from the public schools, added to the feeling; while the coming of a papal nuncio to adjust a controversy in regard to church property between a bishop and a Catholic congregation in Buffalo which had the law of the State on its side, greatly increased the bitterness. Thus the old controversy was torn open, hostility increasing so rapidly that Thurlow Weed declared "there is very much peril about the senator question."

The plan of the Know-Nothings was to prevent an election in the Senate and then block a joint session of the two houses. This scheme had succeeded in defeating Ambrose Spencer in 1825 and Nathaniel P.

Tallmadge in 1845, and there was no apparent reason why similar methods might not be invoked in 1855, unless the manifest inability of Seward's adversaries to unite upon some one opponent gave his supporters the upper hand. Millard Fillmore, Ira Harris, and Was.h.i.+ngton Hunt had their friends; but an anti-slavery Know-Nothing could not support Fillmore or Hunt, and a Silver-Gray Whig did not take kindly to Harris. This was the cornerstone of Greeley's confidence. Besides, the more bitter the criticism of Seward's record, the more inclined were certain senators of the Democratic party, who did not sympathise with the Know-Nothing aversion to foreigners, to support the Auburn statesman.[455] There was no hope for Seymour, or Dix, or Preston King, and some of their friends in the Senate who admired the anti-slavery views of Seward could stop the play of the Know-Nothings.

[Footnote 455: "There is about as much infidelity among Whigs at Albany as was expected; perhaps a little more. But there is also a counteracting agency in the other party, it is said, which promises to be an equilibrium."--F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p.

243.]

Thus the contest grew fiercer. It was the chief topic in Albany. All debate ended in its discussion. When, at last, DeWitt C. Littlejohn, vacating the speaker's chair, took the floor for the distinguished New Yorker, the excitement reached its climax. The speaker's bold and fearless defence met a storm of personal denunciation that broke from the ranks of the Know-Nothings; but his speech minimised their opposition and inspired Seward's forces to work out a magnificent victory. "Our friends are in good spirits and reasonably confident,"

wrote Seward. "Our adversaries are not confident, and are out of temper."[456] Finally, on February 1, the caucus met. Five Whig senators and twenty a.s.semblymen, representing the bulk of the opposition, were absent; but of the eighty present, seventy-four voted for Seward. This stifled the hope of the Silver-Gray Know-Nothings.

Indeed, several of Seward's opponents now fell into line, giving him eighteen out of thirty-one votes in the Senate and sixty-nine out of one hundred and twenty-six in the a.s.sembly. The five dissenting Whig senators voted for Fillmore, Ullman, Ogden Hoffman, Preston King, and George R. Babc.o.c.k of Buffalo. Of the nineteen opposing Whig votes in the a.s.sembly, Was.h.i.+ngton Hunt received nine and Fillmore four. When the two houses compared the vote in joint session, Henry J. Raymond, the lieutenant-governor, announced with evident emotion to a sympathetic audience which densely packed the a.s.sembly chamber, that "William H. Seward was duly elected as a senator of the United States for six years from the fourth of March, 1855."

[Footnote 456: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 243.]

Seward did not visit Albany or Auburn during the contest. A patent suit kept him busy in New York City until the middle of January, after which he returned to his place in the Senate. He professed to "have the least possible anxiety about it," writing Weed early in December that "I would not have you suffer one moment's pain on the ground that I am not likely to be content and satisfied with whatever may happen;"[457] yet a letter written five months afterward, on his fifty-fifth birthday, gives a glimpse of what defeat would have meant to him. "How happy I am," he says, "that age and competence bring no serious and permanent disappointment to sour and disgust me with country or mankind."[458] To Weed he shows a heart laden with grat.i.tude. "I s.n.a.t.c.h a minute," he writes, "to express not so much my deep and deepened grat.i.tude to you, as my amazement at the magnitude and complexity of the dangers through which you have conducted our shattered bark, and the sagacity and skill with which you have saved us from so imminent a wreck."[459] But Seward was not more amazed at the dangers he had escaped than at the great number of congratulations now pouring in from opponents. "Was ever anything more curious," he writes his wife, "than the fact that this result is scarcely more satisfactory to my truest friends, than, as it seems, to so many lifelong opponents? We have nothing but salutations and congratulations here. How strange the mutations of politics."[460]

[Footnote 457: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 243.]

[Footnote 458: _Ibid._, p. 251.]

[Footnote 459: _Ibid._, p. 245.]

[Footnote 460: _Ibid._, p. 246.]

After Seward's re-election the Kansas troubles began attracting attention. Governor Reeder fixed March 30, 1855, for the election of a territorial legislature, and just before it occurred five thousand Missourians, "with guns upon their shoulders, revolvers stuffing their belts, bowie-knives protruding from their boot-tops, and generous rations of whiskey in their wagons,"[461] marched into the territory to superintend the voting. This army intimidated such of the election judges as were not already pro-slavery men; and of six thousand votes, three-fourths of them were cast by the Missourians in the interest of slavery. The Northern press recorded the fraud. If further evidence were needed, Governor Reeder's speech, published in the New York _Times_ of May 1, in which he declared that the fierce violence and wild outrages reported by the newspapers were in no wise exaggerated, set all controversy at rest. Instantly the North was in a ferment. The predominant sentiment demanded that Kansas should be free, and the excitement aroused by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was quickly rekindled when the South approved the murderous methods intended to make it a slave State. A journal published in the pro-slavery interest threatened "to lynch and hang, tar and feather, and drown every white-livered Abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil," and secret societies, organised for the purpose of keeping out Northern immigrants, resolved "that we recognise the inst.i.tution of slavery as already existing in this territory, and advise slave-holders to introduce their property as early as possible."

[Footnote 461: Spring's _Kansas_, p. 44; see also, Sara Robinson, _Kansas_, p. 27.]

As the year went on matters got worse. The territorial legislature, elected by admitted and wholesale fraud, unseated all free-state members whose election was contested, and proceeded to pa.s.s laws upholding and fortifying slavery. It declared it a felony, punishable by two years' imprisonment, to write or maintain that persons have not the right to hold slaves in the territory; it disqualified all anti-slavery men from sitting as jurors; it made one's presence in the territory sufficient qualification to vote; and it punished with death any one who a.s.sisted in the escape of fugitive slaves. When Reeder vetoed these acts the Legislature pa.s.sed them over his head and demanded the Governor's removal. To add to the popular feeling, already deeply inflamed, President Pierce met this demand with affirmative action.

In the midst of this political excitement, the Hards met in convention at Syracuse on August 23, 1855. That party had been sorely punished in the preceding election; but it had in no way changed its att.i.tude toward opponents. It refused to invite the Softs to partic.i.p.ate; it denounced the national administration, and it condemned the Know-Nothings. Daniel E. Sickles, then thirty-four years old, who was destined to play a conspicuous part when the country was in difficulty and the Government in danger, sought to broaden and liberalise its work; but the convention sullenly outvoted him. It approved the Nebraska Act, refused to listen to appeals in behalf of freedom in Kansas, and rebuked all efforts to restore the Missouri Compromise. Only upon the liquor question did it modify its former declarations. The Hards had started off in 1854 in favour of prohibition. But during the campaign, Bronson changed his position, or, as Greeley put it, "he first inclined to water, then to rum and water, and finally he came out all rum." To keep in accord with their leader's latest change, the delegates now declared the prohibitory law unconst.i.tutional and demanded its repeal. This law, pa.s.sed on April 9, 1855, and ent.i.tled "An Act for the prevention of intemperance, pauperism, and crime," permitted the sale of liquors for mechanical, chemical, and medicinal uses; but prohibited the traffic for other purposes. Its regulations, providing for search, prosecutions, and the destruction of forfeited liquors, were the very strongest, and its enforcement gave rise to much litigation. Among other things it denied trial by jury. In May, 1856, the Court of Appeals declared it unconst.i.tutional. But while it lasted it gave the politicians much concern. The Democrats disapproved and other parties avoided it.

On August 29, the Softs met in convention. The Barnburners, who had vainly extended the olive branch to the Hards, now faced an array of anti-slavery delegates that would not condone the Kansas outrages.

They would disapprove prohibition, commend Marcy's admirable foreign policy, and praise the President's management of the exchequer; but they would not countenance border ruffianism, encourage slavery propagandists in Kansas, or submit to the extension of slavery in the free territories. It was a stormy convention. For three days the contest raged; but when final action was taken, although the platform did not in terms censure Pierce's administration, it condemned the Kansas outrages which the President had approved by the removal of Governor Reeder, and disapproved the extension of slavery into free territories. Among the candidates nominated were Samuel J. Tilden for attorney-general, and Samuel L. Selden of Rochester for judge of the Court of Appeals. Selden, who had been a district judge since 1847, was also nominated by the Hards.