attitude remained a
profound secret until Thomas C. Platt, as temporary chairman, began
the delivery of a carefully prepared speech.

[Footnote 1569: New York _Tribune_, February 28, 1877.]

Platt was then forty-four years old. He was born in Owego, educated at
Yale, and as a man of affairs had already laid the foundation for the
success and deserved prominence that crowned his subsequent business
career. Ambition also took him early into the activities of public
political life, his party having elected him county clerk at the age
of twenty-six and a member of Congress while yet in his thirties. His
friends, attracted by his promise-keeping and truth-telling, included
most of the people of the vicinage. He was not an orator, but he
possessed the resources of tact, simplicity, and bonhomie, which are
serviceable in the management of men.[1570] Moreover, as an organiser
he developed in politics the same capacity for control that he
exhibited in business. He had quickness of decision and flexibility of
mind. There was no vacillation of will, no suspension of judgment, no
procrastination that led to harassing controversy over minor details.
He seemed also as systematic in his political purposes as he was
orderly in his business methods. These characteristic traits, well
marked in 1877, were destined to be magnified in the next two decades
when local leaders recognised that his judgment, his capacity, and his
skill largely contributed to extricate the party from the chaotic
conditions into which continued defeat had plunged it.

[Footnote 1570: "Platt and I imbibed politics with our earliest
nutriment. I was on the stump the year I became a voter, and so was
he. I was doing the part of a campaign orator and he was chief of the
campaign glee club. The speech amounted to little in those days unless
it was assisted by the glee club. In fact the glee club largely drew
the audience and held it. The favorite song of that day was 'John
Brown's Body,' and the very heights of ecstatic applause were reached
when Brother Platt's fine tenor voice rang through the arches of the
building or the trees of the woodland, carrying the refrain, 'We'll
hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree, while John Brown's soul goes
marching on.'"--Chauncey M. Depew, _Speeches_, 1896 to 1902, p. 237.]

Conkling early recognised Platt's executive ability, and their
friendship, cemented by likeness of views and an absence of rivalry,
kept them sympathetical