d 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
Washington 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