e party to the
suspicion that Tammany's seats would be open for their return after
the storm of indignation had subsided. O'Conor, in a letter, declared
that absolute freedom from all complicity in the great official crime
and an utter intolerance of all persons suspected of sympathy with it
must be maintained, otherwise its action would inflict a fatal wound
upon the party. Curtis characterised the question as one of life or
death to a great community weighed down by oppression and crime, and
maintained that the convention, if it sought to avoid its duty by the
subterfuge already enacted, would show both sympathy and complicity
with the oligarchy of terror and infamy. These statements did not
please the Ring men, who, with much noise, passed contemptuously out
of the hall.

Riotous interruption, however, did not begin until Tilden announced
that the real point of the controversy was to estop Tammany, after
nominating five senators and twenty-one assemblymen, from declaring
the Democratic masses out of the party because they refused to vote
for its candidates. The whip of party regularity was Tweed's last
reliance, and when Tilden proclaimed absolution to those who
disregarded it, the friends of Tammany drowned his words with loud
calls to order. The excitement threatened to become a riot, but
Tilden, caring as little for disapprobation as the son of Tisander in
the story told by Herodotus, calmly awaited silence. "I was stating,"
he continued, without the slightest tremor of a singularly unmusical
voice, "what I considered the objection to Tammany Hall, aside from
the cloud that now covers that concern, and I am free to avow before
this convention that I shall not vote for any one of Mr. Tweed's
members of the Legislature. And if that is to be regarded the regular
ticket, I will resign my place as chairman of the State committee and
help my people stem the tide of corruption. When I come to do my duty
as an elector, I shall cast my vote for honest men."[1337] Then, to
show his independence if not his contempt of the Tweed-bound body,
Tilden suddenly waived aside the question of the Reformers' admission
and moved to proceed to the nomination of a State ticket.[1338]

[Footnote 1337: New York _Tribune_, October 6, 1871.]

[Footnote 1338: Except the candidate for Secretary of State, the old
Tweed ticket was renominated as follows: Secretary of State, Diedrich
Willers, Seneca; Comptroller, Asher P. Nichols, Erie; Treasu