the emancipation
proclamation. "All our reverses, our despondence, our despairs," said
Curtis, "bring us to the inevitable issue, shall not the blacks strike
for their freedom?"[868]

[Footnote 860: New York _Herald_, October 17, 1862.]

[Footnote 861: New York _Tribune_, Nov. 6.]

[Footnote 862: "Seymour, 307,063; Wadsworth, 296,492."--_Ibid._,
November 24.]

[Footnote 863: New York _Times_, November 7.]

[Footnote 864: Henry B. Stanton, _Random Recollections_, p. 216.]

[Footnote 865: Albany _Evening Journal_, Nov. 6.]

[Footnote 866: New York _Tribune_, Nov. 5.]

[Footnote 867: Cary, _Life of Curtis_, p. 161.]

[Footnote 868: _Ibid._, p. 161.]

CHAPTER IV

THURLOW WEED TRIMS HIS SAILS

1863

The political reaction in 1862 tied the two parties in the
Legislature. In the Senate, elected in 1861, the Republicans had
twelve majority, but in the Assembly each party controlled sixty-four
members. This deadlocked the election of a speaker, and seriously
jeopardized the selection of a United States senator in place of
Preston King, since a joint-convention of the two houses, under the
law as it then existed, could not convene until some candidate
controlled a majority in each branch.[869] It increased the
embarrassment that either a Republican or Democrat must betray his
party to break the deadlock.

[Footnote 869: Laws of 1842. Ch. 130, title 6, article 4, sec. 32.]

Chauncey M. Depew was the choice of the Republicans for speaker. But
the caucus, upon the threat of a single Republican to bolt,[870]
selected Henry Sherwood of Steuben. After seventy-seven ballots Depew
was substituted for Sherwood. By this time Timothy C. Callicot, a
Brooklyn Democrat, refused longer to vote for Gilbert Dean, the
Democratic nominee. Deeply angered by such apostasy John D. Van Buren
and Saxton Smith, the Democratic leaders, offered Depew eight votes.
Later in the evening Depew was visited by Callicot, who promised, if
the Republicans would support him for speaker, to vote for John A. Dix
for senator and thus break the senatorial deadlock. It was a trying
position for Depew. The speakership was regarded as even a greater
honor then than it is now, and to a gifted young man of twenty-nine
its power and prestige appealed with tremendous force. Van Buren's
proposition would elect him; Callicot's would put him in eclipse.
Nevertheless, Depew unselfishly submitted the two proposals to his
Republican associates, who decid