between the Whig and Republican state
committees, calls were issued for two state conventions to meet at
Syracuse on September 26. This meant an opportunity for the formal
union of all anti-slavery voters. Of the two hundred and fifty-six
delegates allotted to the Republican convention, over two hundred
assembled, with Reuben E. Fenton as their presiding officer. Fenton,
then thirty-six years old, was serving his first term in Congress. He
was a man of marked intellectual vigour, unquestioned courage, and
quiet courtesy, whose ability to control men was to give him, within a
few years, something of the influence possessed by Thurlow Weed as a
managing politician, with this difference, perhaps, that Fenton
trusted more to the prevalence of ideas for which he stood. He kept
step with progress. His reason for being a Barnburner, unlike that of
John A. Dix,[462] grew out of an intense hatred of slavery, and after
the historic break in 1847, he never again, with full-heartedness,
co-operated with the Democratic party. Fenton studied law, and, for a
time, practised at the bar, but if the dream and highest ambition of
his youth were success in the profession, his natural love for trade
and politics quickly gained the ascendant. It is doubtful if he would
have become a leading lawyer even in his own vicinage, for he showed
little real capacity for public speaking. Indeed, he was rather a dull
talker. The _Globe_, during his ten years in Congress, rarely reveals
him as doing more than making or briefly sustaining a motion, and,
although these frequently occurred at the most exciting moments of
partisan discussion, showing that he was carefully watching, if not
fearlessly directing affairs, it is evident that for the hard blows in
debate he relied as much as Weed did upon the readiness of other
speakers.

[Footnote 462: "He never became unduly excited about slavery. He had
no sympathy for the religious or sentimental side of abolitionism, nor
was he moved by the words of the philanthropists, preachers, or poets
by whom the agitation was set ablaze and persistently fanned. He
probably regarded it as an evil of less magnitude than several others
that threatened the country."--Morgan Dix, _Memoirs of John A. Dix_,
Vol. 1, p. 338.]

The Whigs, who had represented only a meagre minority of the voters of
the State since the Know-Nothing defection, now responded to the call
with a full quota of delegates, and elected John A. King pres