in
an hour after its delivery Charles E. Fitch of the Rochester
_Democrat-Chronicle_, voicing the sentiment of the Senator's best
friends, deprecated the attack. Reading the article at the breakfast
table on the following morning, Conkling exclaimed, "the man who wrote
it is a traitor!" It was "the man" not less than the criticism that
staggered him. Fitch was a sincere friend and a writer with a purpose.
His clear, incisive English, often forcible and at times eloquent, had
won him a distinct place in New York journalism, not more by his
editorials than by his work in various fields of literature, and his
thought usually reflected the opinion of the better element of the
party. To Conkling it conveyed the first intimation that many
Republican papers were to pronounce his address unfortunate, since it
exhorted to peace and fomented bitter strife.

[Footnote 1583: New York _Tribune_ (correspondence), September 28.]

[Footnote 1584: Alfred R. Conkling, _Life of Conkling_, p. 540.]

Curtis refused to make public comment, but to Charles Eliot Norton,
his intimate friend, he wrote: "It was the saddest sight I ever knew,
that man glaring at me in a fury of hate, and storming out his foolish
blackguardism. I was all pity. I had not thought him great, but I had
not suspected how small he was. His friends, the best, were
confounded. One of them said to me the next day, 'It was not amazement
that I felt, but consternation.' I spoke offhand and the report is
horrible. Conkling's speech was carefully written out, and therefore
you do not get all the venom, and no one can imagine the
Mephistophelean leer and spite."[1585]

[Footnote 1585: Edward Cary, _Life of Curtis_, p. 258.]

Conkling closed his speech too late at night for other business,[1586]
and in the morning one-half of the delegates had disappeared. Those
remaining occupied less than an hour in the nomination of
candidates.[1587]

[Footnote 1586: Curtis's amendment was defeated by 311 to 110.]

[Footnote 1587: The candidates were: Secretary of State, John C.
Churchill, Oswego; Comptroller, Francis Sylvester, Columbia;
Treasurer, William L. Bostwick, Ithaca; Attorney-General, Grenville
Tremaine, Albany; Engineer, Howard Soule, Onondaga.]

CHAPTER XXIX

THE TILDEN REGIME ROUTED

1877

The result at Rochester, so unsatisfactory to a large body of
influential men to whom the President represented the most patriotic
Republicanism, was followed at Albany b