derstanding and pleasing
people, being liberal and spontaneous in his expressions of sympathy,
and apparently earnest in his attachment to principle. He was not an
orator. He lacked dash, brilliant rhetoric, and attractive figures of
speech. He rarely stirred the emotions. But he pleased people. They
felt themselves in the presence of one whom they could trust as well
as admire. The Democratic party wanted a new hero, and the favourite
young mayor seemed cut out to supply the want.

However, Hoffman did not escape the barbed criticism of the Republican
press. Raymond had spoken of his ability and purity, and of his course
during the war as patriotic.[1102] Weed, also, had said that "during
the rebellion he was loyal to the government and Union."[1103] To
overcome these certificates of character, the _Tribune_ declared that
"Saturn is not more hopelessly bound with rings than he. Rings of
councilmen, rings of aldermen, rings of railroad corporations, hold
him in their charmed circles, and would, if he were elected, use his
influence to plunder the treasury and the people."[1104] It also
charged him with being disloyal. In 1866 and for several years later
the standing of pronounced Copperheads was similar to that of Tories
after the Revolution, and it seriously crippled a candidate for office
to be classed among them. Moreover, it was easy to discredit a
Democrat's loyalty. To most members of the Union party the name itself
clothed a man with suspicion, and the slightest specification, like
the outcropping of a ledge of rocks, indicated that much more was
concealed than had been shown. On this theory, the Republican press,
deeming it desirable, if not absolutely essential, to put Hoffman into
the disloyal class, accepted the memory of men who heard him speak at
Sing Sing, his native town, in 1864. As they remembered, he had
declared that "Democrats only had gone to war;" that "volunteering
stopped when Lincoln declared for an abolition policy;" and that he
"would advise revolution and resistance to the government" if Lincoln
was elected without Tennessee being represented in the electoral
college.[1105] Other men told how "at one of the darkest periods of the
war, Hoffman urged an immediate sale of United States securities, then
under his control and held by the sinking fund of the city."[1106] In
the _Tribune's_ opinion such convenient recollections of unnamed and
unknown men made him a "Copperhead."[1107]

[Footnote 1