nkling leaders this
seemed unnecessarily severe. Having showed their teeth they hesitated
to lacerate the party, especially after the mad rush to the winning
side had given them an overwhelming majority. At last, it fell to
Hamilton Ward, a friend of the Senator, for six years a member of
Congress, a forcible speaker, and still a young man of nerve, who was
to become attorney-general and a judge of the Supreme Court, to
propose as a substitute that the State committee be directed to
consolidate and perfect the two city organisations. The Fenton people
promptly acquiesced, and their opponents, after eliminating Smith by
disallowing a member of the organisation to hold office under Tammany,
cheerfully accepted it.

This compromise, thus harmoniously perfected in the presence and
hearing of the convention, was loudly applauded, and the chairman had
risen to put the motion when Conkling interrupted, "Not yet the
question, Mr. President!" Until then the Senator had been a silent
spectator. Indeed, not until the previous roll-call did he become a
member of the convention. But he was now to become its master. His
slow, measured utterances and deep chest-tones commanded instant
attention. If for a moment, as he calmly declared opposition to the
substitute, he seemed to stand alone, his declaration that a horde of
Tammany ballot-box stuffers, pirates, and robbers had controlled and
debauched the Republican organisation in the city of New York called
forth the loudest applause of the evening. His next statement, that
the time had come when such encroachments must cease, renewed the
cheering. Having thus paid his respects to the Greeley committee,
Conkling argued that a new State committee could not do in the four
weeks preceding election what it had taken the old committee months to
accomplish. The campaign must be made not with a divided organisation,
but with ranks closed up. Reading from an editorial in the _Tribune_,
he claimed that it approved the committee's report, and he begged the
convention to take the editor at his word, shake hands, bury
animosities and disappointments, make up a ticket equally of both
factions, and accept the reorganisation of the city committee, so that
double delegations might not appear at the next national convention to
parade their dissensions. He disclaimed any unkind feeling, and in
favouring the admission of both city delegations, he said, he supposed
he had worked in the interest of harmony