"In public," it said, "few members of conventions
have the courage to deny his fitness for any office, such are the
terrors inspired by his editorial cowskin; but the minute the voting
by ballots begins, the cowardly fellows repudiate him under the veil
of secrecy."[1165] The great disparity between the applause and the
vote for the editor became the subject of much suppressed amusement.
"The highly wrought eulogium pronounced by Depew was applauded to the
echo," wrote a correspondent of the _Times_, "but the enthusiasm
subsided wonderfully when it came to putting him at the head of the
ticket."[1166] Depew himself appreciated the humour of the situation.
"Everybody wondered," said the eulogist, speaking of it in later
years, "how there could be so much smoke and so little fire."[1167] To
those conversant with the situation, however, it was not a mystery.
Among conservative men Greeley suffered discredit because of his
ill-tempered criticisms, while his action in signing Jefferson Davis's
bail-bond was not the least powerful of the many influences that
combined to weaken his authority. It seemed to shatter confidence in
his strength of mind. After that episode the sale of his _American
Conflict_ which had reached the rate of five hundred copies a day,
fell off so rapidly that his publishers lost $50,000.[1168]

[Footnote 1163: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 1164: New York _Times_, July 9.]

[Footnote 1165: The _Nation_, July 16.]

[Footnote 1166: New York _Times_, July 9, 1868.]

[Footnote 1167: Conversation with the author.

The ticket nominated was as follows: Governor, John A. Griswold,
Rensselaer; Lieutenant-Governor, Alonzo B. Cornell, Wyoming; Canal
Commissioner, Alexander Barkley, Washington; Prison Inspector, Henry
A. Barnum, Onondaga.]

[Footnote 1168: _The Nation_, November 11, 1869.]

The platform approved the nomination of Grant and Colfax, held
inviolate the payment of the public debt in the spirit as well as the
letter of the law, commended the administration of Fenton, and
demanded absolute honesty in the management and improvement of the
canals; but adopting "the simple tactics of the ostrich" it maintained
the most profound silence in regard to suffrage of any kind--manhood,
universal, impartial, or negro.[1169]

[Footnote 1169: New York _Tribune_, July 9, 1868.]

The day the Syracuse convention avoided Greeley, the National
Democratic convention which had assembled in Tammany's new building on
July