ded him the
attention given to a conqueror. From Albany to Buffalo crowds
everywhere saluted him with bands of music and salvos of artillery,
while his addresses, characterised by plainness of speech, deprecated
a reactionary policy.

[Footnote 1471: Bigelow, _Life of Tilden_, Vol. 2, p. 263.]

These demonstrations alarmed Republican leaders. They appreciated that
his adroitness and energy in accumulating proof of Tweed's guilt had
fixed the attention of the country upon him as a presidential
candidate, and that the assault on the canal spoilers made his
pretensions more formidable. Moreover, they realised that their own
failure to lead in canal reform in 1873, evidenced by ignoring Barlow
and his incriminating disclosures, yielded Tilden a decided advantage
of which he must be dispossessed. To accomplish this two ways opened
to them. Regarding the canal scandal as not a party question they
could heartily join him in the crusade, thus dividing whatever
political capital might be made out of it; or they could disparage his
effort and belittle his character as a reformer. The latter being the
easier because the more tolerable, many Republican papers began
charging him with insincerity, with trickery, and with being wholly
influenced by political aspirations. His methods, too, were criticised
as undiplomatic, hasty, and often harsh. Of this policy _Harper's
Weekly_ said: "Those who say that the Governor's action is a mere
political trick, and that he means nothing, evidently forget that they
are speaking of the man who, when he once took hold of the Tweed
prosecution, joined in pushing it relentlessly to the end."[1472]

[Footnote 1472: _Harper's Weekly_, August 28, 1875.]

This was the sentiment of George William Curtis, who presided at the
Republican State convention.[1473] It also became the policy of the
managers whom defeat had chastened. They discerned the signs of the
times, and instead of repressing hostility to a third term and
dissatisfaction with certain tendencies of the National
administration, as had been done in 1874, they deemed it wiser to swim
with the current, meeting new influences and conditions by discarding
old policies that had brought their party into peril. The delegates,
therefore, by a great majority, favoured "a just, generous, and
forbearing national policy in the South," and "a firm refusal to use
military power, except for purposes clearly defined in the
Constitution." They also commend