al Union convention, meeting at Albany
on September 8, named candidates for attorney-general and prison
inspector, with the request that the Democratic convention endorse
them; otherwise it would put a full ticket into the field. Among its
State Committee appeared the names of former governor Washington Hunt
and Lorenzo Burrows. It resolved to resist all departures from the
strict letter of the Constitution, whether based upon military
necessity or a usurpation of doubtful powers.

"We tender the Democratic State convention our hearty thanks for their
contemptuous treatment of Jim Brooks & Co.'s one-horse concern,
consisting of fifteen or twenty officers and three or four privates.
That concern is thoroughly bogus--a barefaced imposture which should
be squelched and its annual nuisance abated."--New York _Tribune_,
September 11, 1863.]

[Footnote 917: "Governor Seymour can talk more without saying
anything, and write more without meaning anything, than any other man
we know.... We consider Seymour not much of a man, and no Governor at
all."--New York _Herald_ (editorial), September 11, 1863.]

[Footnote 918: _Ibid._, September 10.]

[Footnote 919: The ticket was made up as follows: Secretary of state,
David B. St. John of Otsego; Comptroller, Sanford E. Church of
Orleans; Attorney-General, Marshall B. Champlain of Allegany; State
Engineer, Van R. Richmond of Wayne; Treasurer, William B. Lewis of
Kings; Canal Commissioner, William W. Wright, of Ontario; Inspector of
Prisons, David B. McNeil of Clinton; Judge of Appeals, William F.
Allen, of Oswego.--_Ibid._]

The Republicans, backed by success in the field, started with an
advantage which the cheering news from Maine strengthened. It soon
become manifest, too, that the Gibraltar of Democracy resented the
destructive work of mobs and rioters. Criticism of Seymour also became
drastic. "He hobnobbed with the copperhead party in Connecticut," said
the _Herald_, "and lost that election; he endorsed Vallandigham, and
did nothing during the riot but talk. He has let every opportunity
pass and rejected all offers that would prove him the man for the
place. The sooner he is dropped as incompetent, the better it will be
for the ticket."[920] The _Tribune_ imputed nepotism. "His brother,"
it said, "gets $200 per month as agent, a nephew $150 as an officer,
and two nephews and a cousin $1,000 a year each as clerks in the
executive departments."[921] But Martin I. Townsend, at