ontrol of the constitutional convention enabled them, if
they had so desired, to finish and submit their work in the early
autumn. This action subjected their convention resolve for "impartial
suffrage" to ridicule as well as to the charge of cowardice. If you
shrink from giving the ballot to a few thousand negroes at home, it
was asked, why do you insist that it should be conferred on millions
in the South? If, as you pretend, you wish the blacks of this State to
have the ballot, why do you not give it to them? How can you blame the
South for hesitating when you hesitate? "It is manifest," said the
_World_, "that the Republicans do not desire the negroes of this State
to vote. Their refusal to present the question in this election is a
confession that the party is forcing on the South a measure too
odious to be tolerated at home."[1144]

[Footnote 1144: New York _World_, September 27, 1867.]

This charge, perhaps, was the most disturbing influence Republicans
had to meet in the campaign. Responsibility for canal frauds made them
wince, since it appealed strongly and naturally to whatever there was
of discontent among the people, but their apparent readiness to force
upon the South what they withheld in New York seemed so unreasonable
and unjust that it aided materially in swelling the strength of the
Democrats.

James T. Brady, Henry C. Murphy, John T. Hoffman, and Samuel J. Tilden
made the campaign attractive, speaking with unsparing severity to the
great audiences gathered in New York City. Although somewhat
capricious in his sympathies, Brady seemed never to care who knew what
he thought on any subject, while the people, captivated by his
marvellously easy mode of speech, listened with rapture as he
exercised his splendid powers. It remained for Seymour, however, to
give character to the discussion in one of his most forcible
philippics. He endeavoured to show that the ballot, given to a few
negroes in New York, could do little harm compared to the
enfranchisement of millions of them in the Southern States. The
Radicals, he said, not only propose to put the white men of the South
under the blacks, but the white men of the North as well. To allow
three millions of negroes, representing ten Southern States, to send
twenty senators to Washington, while more than half the white
population of the country, living in nine Northern States, have but
eighteen senators, is a home question. "Will you sanction it?" he
asked.