filled with crutches, scarred faces, armless sleeves, and
representatives of Andersonville and Libby Prisons, such an attitude
seemed like a betrayal of his trust, and the resentment of the
delegates, perhaps, was not unnatural.

If Seward was discredited, Reuben E. Fenton was conspicuously trusted.
According to Andrew D. White, a prominent State senator of that day,
the Governor was not a star of the magnitude of his Republican
predecessors.[1076] Others probably held the same opinion. Fenton's
party, however, renominated him by acclamation, and then showed its
inconsistency by refusing a like honour to Thomas G. Alvord, the
lieutenant-governor. The service of the Onondaga Chief, as his friends
delighted to call him, had been as creditable if not as important as
the Governor's, but the brilliant gifts of Stewart L. Woodford, a
young soldier of patriotic impulses, attracted a large majority of the
convention.[1077] Up to that time, Woodford, then thirty years of age,
was the youngest man nominated for lieutenant-governor. He had made a
conspicuous sacrifice to become a soldier. In 1861 Lincoln appointed
him an assistant United States attorney, but the silenced guns of
Sumter inspired him to raise a company, and he marched away at its
head, leaving the civil office to another. Later he became commandant
of the city that sheltered the guns first trained upon the American
flag, and after his return, disciplined and saddened by scenes of
courage and sacrifice, the clarion notes of the young orator easily
commanded the emotions of his hearers. No one ever wearied when he
spoke. His lightest word, sent thrilling to the rim of a vast
audience, swayed it with the magic of control. He was not then at the
fulness of his power or reputation, but delegates had heard enough to
desire his presence in the important campaign of 1866, and to
stimulate his activity they made him a candidate.

[Footnote 1076: "There stood Fenton, marking the lowest point in the
choice of a State executive ever reached in our Commonwealth by the
Republican party."--_Autobiography_, Vol. 1, p. 131.]

[Footnote 1077: "The Republican ticket was as follows: Governor, Reuben
E. Fenton, Chautauqua; Lieutenant-Governor, Stewart L. Woodford,
Kings; Canal Commissioner, Stephen T. Hoyt, Steuben; Prison Inspector,
John Hammond, Essex."--New York _Tribune_, September 7, 1866.]

The platform declared that while the constitutional authority of the
Federal government