, but their principles expressed the real sentiment of whatever
was left of the rank and file of the Democratic party of the State.
Horatio Seymour was the pivotal personage. Around him they rallied.
The resolution indorsing Stephen A. Douglas and his doctrine of
non-intervention very adroitly avoided quarrels. It accepted Fernando
Wood's delegation on equal terms with Tammany; refused to notice the
Hards' attack upon Dean Richmond and the majority of the Charleston
delegation; and nominated William Kelley of Hudson for governor by
acclamation. Kelley was a large farmer of respectable character and
talents, who had served with credit in the State Senate and supported
Van Buren in 1848 with the warmth of a sincere Free-soiler. He was
evidently a man without guile, and, although modest and plain-spoken,
he knew what the farmer and workingman most wanted, and addressed
himself to their best thought. It was generally conceded that he would
poll the full strength of his party.

But the cleverest act of the convention was its fusion with the
Constitutional Union party. In the preceding May, the old-line Whigs
and Know-Nothings had met at Baltimore and nominated John Bell of
Tennessee for President and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice
President, on the simple platform: "The Constitution of the country,
the union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws." Washington
Hunt, the former governor of New York, had become the convention's
president, and, in company with James Brooks and William Duer, he had
arranged with the Softs to place on the Douglas electoral ticket ten
representatives of the Union party, with William Kent, the popular son
of the distinguished Chancellor, at their head.

Hunt had become a thorn in the side of his old friends, now the
leading Republican managers. He had joined them as a Whig in the
thirties. After sending him to Congress for three terms and making him
comptroller of state in 1848, they had elected him governor in 1850;
but, in the division of the party, he joined the Silver-Grays, failed
of re-election in 1852, dropped into the American party in 1854, and
supported Fillmore in 1856. Thurlow Weed thought he ought to have
aided them in the formation of the Republican party, and Horace
Greeley occasionally reminded him that a decent regard for consistency
should impel him to act in accordance with his anti-slavery record;
but when, in 1860, Hunt began the crusade that successfully fuse