be vitalised into organised opposition.
Tilden undoubtedly despised Tweed. Yet he gave him countenance and
saved the State chairmanship.[1232]

[Footnote 1232: The Democratic ticket was as follows: Secretary of
state, Homer A. Nelson, Dutchess; Comptroller, William F. Allen,
Oswego; Treasurer, Wheeler H. Bristol, Tioga; Attorney-General,
Marshall B. Champlain, Allegany; State Engineer, Van Rensselaer
Richmond, Wayne; Canal Commissioner, William W. Wright; Prison
Inspector, Fordyce Laflin, Ulster; Court of Appeals, John A. Lott,
Kings; Robert Earl, Herkimer.]

The campaign pivoted on the acceptance or rejection of the new State
constitution, framed by the convention of 1867 and submitted by the
Legislature of 1869. From the first the constitutional convention had
become a political body. Republicans controlled it, and their
insistence upon unrestricted negro suffrage gave colour to the whole
document, until the Democrats, demanding its defeat, focused upon it
their united opposition. As a candidate for comptroller Horace Greeley
likewise became an issue. Democrats could not forget his impatient,
petulant, and, as they declared, unfair charges of election frauds,
and every satirist made merry at his expense. To denunciation and
abuse, however, Greeley paid no attention. "They shall be most welcome
to vote against me if they will evince unabated devotion to the cause
of impartial suffrage."[1233] But the people, tired of Republican rule,
turned the State over to the Democrats regardless of men.[1234]

[Footnote 1233: New York _Tribune_, October 11, 1869.]

[Footnote 1234: Nelson for secretary of state over Sigel, 22,524; Allen
for comptroller over Greeley, 26,533; Greeley over Sigel in New York
City, 1,774; Sigel over Greeley in the State, 4,938; against the
constitution, 19,759; majority for the judiciary article, 6,006.--New
York _Tribune_, November 23, 1869.]

Although this result was not unexpected, no one dreamed that the
Democracy would win every department of the State government,
executive, legislative, and judicial. For seventeen years the
Democrats had twice elected the governor and once secured the
Assembly, while the Republicans, holding the Senate continuously and
the governorship and Assembly most of the time, had come to regard
themselves the people's lawmakers and the representatives of executive
authority. But Tweed's quiet canvass in the southern tier of counties
traversed by the Erie Railroad exhib