Republicans looked upon the doctrine announced as the well-weighed conclusion of a profound thinker and of a man of wide experience, who united the political philosopher with the practical politician.

Henry Wilson, senator and Vice President, declared that he would give ten years of his life if he could blot out his membership in the Know-Nothing party, since it associated him throughout his long and attractive public career with…

You may elect Seward to be President of the North; but of the South, never!

His encounter with the great Illinoisan had marked him as a powerful and logical reasoner whose speeches embraced every political issue of the day and cleared up every doubtful point.

He argued that the Republican party was not revolutionary, but conservative, since it maintained the doctrine of the fathers who held and acted upon the opinion that Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in the territories.

Let no citizen, however, be deterred by any threats or fears, but let him assert his rights boldly and resolutely, and he will find his perfect protection under the laws and the lawfully constituted authorities of the State.

The election was a barbarous burlesque," he continued.

Repeating, ballot-box stuffing, ruffianism, and false counting decided everything.

Tweed made the election officers, and the election officers were corrupt.

Thirty thousand votes were falsely added to the Democratic majority in New York and Brooklyn alone.

Taxes and elections were the mere spoil and booty of a corrupt junta in Tammany.

Moreover, it pronounced the investigation a shameful effort to convict the Democracy of crimes that were really the result of the long-continued misgovernment of the Republicans.

This sarcastic thrust emphasised the notorious gerrymander which, in spite of the Tammany frauds, gave the Republicans a legislative majority of twenty-four on joint-ballot.

Arthur, looking into the future, had already recognised the need of a new alignment, and the young Senator evidenced the qualities that appealed to him.

They were dominated, also, by the favourite doctrine of political leaders that organisation must be maintained and victory won at any cost save by a revolution in party policy, and they entered the senatorial contest with a courage as…

Besides, his four years' service as governor, strengthened by the veto of several bills calculated to increase the public burdens, had received the unmistakable approval of the people.

Talk of this kind appealed to the pessimist who believes a legislator is always for sale, but Speaker Younglove, an assemblyman of long experience, knowing that good committee appointments were more potent than other influences, tactfully…

The passage of these vicious appropriations, requiring the help of Republicans, gave rise to numerous charges of bribery and corruption.

Men frankly admitted that no reason or economic principle justified the existence of such monstrous levies.

The press condemned it, good men mourned over it, and wise men unmasked it.

If corruption had demoralised Republicans, fear of a repetition of the Tweed frauds paralysed them.

Republicans controlled it, and their insistence upon unrestricted negro suffrage gave colour to the whole document, until the Democrats, demanding its defeat, focused upon it their united opposition.

Although this result was not unexpected, no one dreamed that the Democracy would win every department of the State government, executive, legislative, and judicial.

For seventeen years the Democrats had twice elected the governor and once secured the Assembly, while the Republicans, holding the Senate continuously and the governorship and Assembly most of the time, had come to regard themselves the…

The absence of violent democratic innovations was the Constitution's remarkable feature.