t Mississippi's denial of even a limited suffrage to the
negro, such as obtained in New York, indicated the feeling of the
Southern people, and the Union conventions of Pennsylvania, dominated
by Thaddeus Stevens, and of Massachusetts, controlled by Charles
Sumner, refused to endorse the President's scheme. During the summer
Horace Greeley, in several earnest and able editorials, advocated
negro suffrage as a just and politic measure, but he carefully avoided
any reflection upon the President, and disclaimed the purpose of
making such suffrage an inexorable condition in reconstruction.[1029]
Nevertheless, the Radicals of the State hesitated to leave the civil
status of coloured men to their former masters.

[Footnote 1029: New York _Tribune_, June 14, 15, 20, 26, 28, July 8,
10, 31, August 26, September 20, October 7, 19, 1864.]

Johnson's policy especially appealed to the Democrats, and at their
State convention, held at Albany on September 9 (1865), they promised
the President their cordial support, commended his reconstruction
policy, pledged the payment of the war debt, thanked the army and
navy, and denounced the denial "of representation to States in order
to compel them to adopt negro equality or negro suffrage as an element
of their Constitutions."[1030] Indeed, with one stroke of the pen the
convention erased all issues of the war, and with one stroke of the
axe rid itself of the men whom it held responsible for defeat. It
avoided Seymour for president of the convention; it nominated for
secretary of state Henry W. Slocum of Onondaga, formerly a Republican
office-holder, whose superb leadership as a corps commander placed
him among New York's most famous soldiers; it preferred John Van
Buren to Samuel J. Tilden for attorney-general; and it refused Manton
Marble's platform, although the able editor of the _World_ enjoyed the
hospitality of the committee room. Further to popularise its action,
it welcomed back to its fold Lucius Robinson, whom it nominated for
comptroller, an office he was then holding by Republican suffrage.

[Footnote 1030: New York _Herald_, September 9.]

Robinson's political somersault caused no surprise. His dislike of the
Lincoln administration, expressed in his letter to the Cleveland
convention, influenced him to support McClellan, while the Radicals'
tendency to accept negro suffrage weakened his liking for the
Republican party. However, no unkind words followed his action.
"Robinso