De Alexander

In other words, Kelly thought Tilden an unfit candidate because he did not decide for himself that he had been elected and proceed to take his seat at the cost of a tremendous civil convulsion.

His nomination attaches to the ticket all the odium of machine politics, and will greatly endanger the success of Garfield.

In his relations with politicians of high or low degree there was not a trace of dissimulation or double-dealing.

He possessed, too, an inherited instinct for keeping faith with men.

Now, the question is, whom shall we place upon the altar as a vicarious sacrifice?

Conkling bitterly resented Garfield's nomination, predicted his defeat at the polls, and did not hesitate to dissuade friends from accepting the nomination for Vice-President.

Without patronage, without telegraph wires running from his house to this convention, without election contrivances, his name is on the country's lips.

One critic thought it a revelation to find a man who could be eloquent with studied composure, who could be fervid without wildness, and who could hold imagery and metaphor to the steady place of relentless logic without detracting from…

All the art of which he was master found expression in every sentence, polished and balanced with rhetorical skill, and delivered with the emphasis and inflection of a great orator.

He was not intolerant, seldom disclosing his powers of sarcasm, or being betrayed, even when excited, into angry or bitter words.

During his career of ten years in the State Senate he was unquestionably the strongest man in the Legislature and the designated as well as the real leader for more than half a decade.

Besides, he possessed the incomparable gift of reserved power.

It was rather the proud self-confidence of a rugged character which obstacles roused to a higher combative energy.

He may not have been an organiser of the machine type, but he was a born ruler of men.

If the Harrisburg convention punctured the assumption that the people demanded Grant's nomination, the Utica assembly destroyed it, since the majority of thirty-three indicated an entire absence of spontaneity.

Is it a man to go to a convention representing others, and then determine as he individually prefers what he will do?

Leaders changed and new issues appeared, yet his pen, though sometimes crafty, was never dipped in gall.

But Smith's admirable temper, his sweet disposition, and his rare faculty for saying things without offence, kept him, like Raymond, on friendly terms with all.

Indeed, the beauty and strength of his character, coupled with the esteem in which Republican leaders held him as a counsellor, gave him in the seventies a position in the politics of the State somewhat akin to that held by Henry J.

In a few years his clear, incisive English, always forcible, often eloquent, had advanced him to the editorship of the Evening Journal.

Such acrimonious antagonism quickly uncovered the purpose of the Stalwarts, who now sought to control the nomination regardless of opposition.

Never before had so much attention been given to a political question by persons ordinarily indifferent to such speculation.

If the tradition of two terms be overthrown because of his distinguished service, they argued, his election for a fourth term, to which the Constitution offered no bar, could be urged for the same reason with still more cogency.

The opponents of a third term did not yield to any in their grateful remembrance and recognition of what Grant had done for the country, but they deemed it impolitic upon both public and party grounds.

The question of discrediting the traditions quickly became a serious one, and its discussion, stimulated by other aspirants for the Presidency, took a wide range.