[429]

[Footnote 428: New York _Tribune_, September 27, 1853.]

[Footnote 429: New York _Tribune_, September 27, 1853.]

Seymour appears to have taken Dickinson's animosity, as he took most
things, with composure. Nevertheless, if he looked for harmony on
election day, the letters of Charles O'Conor and Greene C. Bronson,
declining an invitation to ratify the Softs' ticket at a meeting in
Tammany Hall, must have extinguished the hope. O'Conor was United
States attorney and Bronson collector of the port of New York; but
these two office-holders under Pierce used no varnish in their
correspondence with the Pierce-Seymour faction. "As a lover of honesty
in politics and of good order in society," wrote Bronson, "I cannot
approve of nominations brought about by fraud and violence. Those who
introduce convicts and bullies into our conventions for the purpose of
controlling events must not expect their proceedings will be
sanctioned by me." Then he betrayed the old conservative's deep
dislike of the Radicals' canal policy, the memory of which still
rankled. "If all the nominees were otherwise unexceptionable," he
continued, "they come before the public under the leadership of men
who have been striving to defeat the early completion of the public
works, and after the shameless breach of past pledges in relation to
the canals, there can be no reasonable ground for hope that new
promises will be performed."[430]

[Footnote 430: _Ibid._, September 26, 1853.]

Charles O'Conor, with the envenomed skill of a practised prosecutor
coupled with a champion's coolness, aimed a heavier blow at the
offending Softs. "Judging the tickets by the names of the leading
members of the two conventions no reasonable doubt can be entertained
which of them is most devoted to preserving union and harmony between
the States of this confederacy. One of the conventions was
uncontaminated by the presence of a single member ever known as an
agitator of principles or practices tending in any degree to disturb
that union and harmony; the leaders of the other were but recently
engaged in a course of political action directly tending to discord
between the States. It has, indeed, presented a platform of principles
unqualifiedly denouncing that political organisation as dangerous to
the permanency of the Union and inadmissible among Democrats; but when
it is considered that the leaders, with one unimpressive exception,
formerly withheld assent to that pla