4, accepted a leader under whom victory was impossible. It was an
historic gathering. The West sent able leaders to support its
favourite greenback theory, the South's delegation of Confederate
officers recalled the picturesque scenes at Philadelphia in 1866, and
New England and the Middle States furnished a strong array of their
well-known men. Samuel J. Tilden headed the New York delegation,
Horatio Seymour became permanent president, and in one of the chairs
set apart for vice presidents, William M. Tweed, "fat, oily, and
dripping with the public wealth,"[1170] represented the Empire State.

[Footnote 1170: New York _Tribune_, March 5, 1868.]

The chairmanship of the committee on resolutions fell to Henry C.
Murphy of Brooklyn. Murphy was a brave fighter. In 1832, when barely
in his twenties, he had denounced the policy of chartering banks in
the interest of political favourites and monopolists, and the reform,
soon after established, made him bold to attack other obnoxious fiscal
systems. As mayor of Brooklyn he kept the city's expenditures within
its income, and in the constitutional convention of 1846 he stood with
Michael Hoffman in preserving the public credit and the public faith.
To him who understood the spirit of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, it
seemed rank dishonesty to pay bonds in a depreciated currency, and he
said so in language that did not die in the committee room. But
opposed to him were the extremists who controlled the convention.
These Greenbackers demanded "that all obligations of the government,
not payable by their express terms in coin, ought to be paid in lawful
money," and through them the Ohio heresy became the ruling thought of
the Democratic creed.

Although New York consented to the Pendleton platform, it determined
not to sacrifice everything to the one question of finance by
permitting the nomination of the Ohio statesman. There were other
candidates. Andrew Johnson was deluded into the belief that he had a
chance; Winfield S. Hancock, the hero of the famous Second Army Corps,
who had put himself in training while department commander at New
Orleans, believed in his star; Salmon P. Chase, chief justice of the
United States Supreme Court, having failed to capture the nomination
at Chicago, was willing to lead whenever and by whomsoever called;
while Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, then a United States senator
and supporter of the "Ohio idea," hoped to succeed if Pendleton
failed. Of