-General United States Army.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP

In September, 1898, the First Volunteer Cavalry, in company with most
of the rest of the Fifth Army Corps, was disembarked at Montauk Point.
Shortly after it was disbanded, and a few days later, I was nominated
for Governor of New York by the Republican party. Timothy L. Woodruff
was nominated for Lieutenant-Governor. He was my stanch friend
throughout the term of our joint service.

The previous year, the machine or standpat Republicans, who were under
the domination of Senator Platt, had come to a complete break with the
anti-machine element over the New York mayoralty. This had brought
the Republican party to a smash, not only in New York City, but in the
State, where the Democratic candidate for Chief Judge of the Court
of Appeals, Alton B. Parker, was elected by sixty or eighty thousand
majority. Mr. Parker was an able man, a lieutenant of Mr. Hill's,
standing close to the conservative Democrats of the Wall Street type.
These conservative Democrats were planning how to wrest the Democratic
party from the control of Mr. Bryan. They hailed Judge Parker's victory
as a godsend. The Judge at once loomed up as a Presidential possibility,
and was carefully groomed for the position by the New York Democratic
machine, and its financial allies in the New York business world.

The Republicans realized that the chances were very much against them.
Accordingly the leaders were in a chastened mood and ready to nominate
any candidate with whom they thought there was a chance of winning. I
was the only possibility, and, accordingly, under pressure from certain
of the leaders who recognized this fact, and who responded to popular
pressure, Senator Platt picked me for the nomination. He was entirely
frank in the matter. He made no pretense that he liked me personally;
but he deferred to the judgment of those who insisted that I was the
only man who could be elected, and that therefore I had to be nominated.

Foremost among the leaders who pressed me on Mr. Platt (who "pestered"
him about me, to use his own words) were Mr. Quigg, Mr. Odell--then
State Chairman of the Republican organization, and afterwards
Governor--and Mr. Hazel, now United States Judge. Judge Hazel did not
know me personally, but felt that the sentiment in his city, Buffalo,
demanded my nomination, and that the then Republican Governor, Mr.
Black, could not be reelected. Mr. Odell, who