nce to support William
H. Sawyer, whose success seemed certain. On the second ballot,
however, Bradley's vote ran up to 194, while Sawyer's stopped at 183.
This left Kelly nothing but a majority of the State committee, which
was destined, in the hour of great need, to be of little service.

Throughout the State the several parties put local candidates in the
field. The Greenbackers, exhibiting the activity of a young and
confident organisation, uniformly made congressional and legislative
nominations. In one congressional district they openly combined with
the Democrats, and in several localities their candidates announced an
intention of cooeperating with the Democratic party. In the metropolis
the various anti-Tammany factions supported independent candidates for
Congress and combined with Republicans in nominating a city ticket
with Edward Cooper for mayor.[1610] Kelly, acting for Tammany,
selected Augustus Schell. This alignment made the leaders of the
combined opposition sanguine of victory. It added also to the
confidence of Republicans that the Greenbackers were certain to draw
more largely from the ranks of the Democrats.

[Footnote 1610: Cooper had resigned from Tammany in 1877.]

The difference between the Syracuse and Saratoga platforms was
significant. Democrats declared "gold and silver, and paper
convertible into coin at the will of the holder, the only currency of
the country."[1611] Convertible into what kind of coin? it was asked.
Coin of depreciated value, or the fixed monetary standard of the
commercial world? The _Nation_ thought "this platform not noticeable
for strength or directness of statement."[1612] The Republican plank
was clearer. "We insist that the greenback shall be made as good as
honest coin ... that our currency shall be made the best currency, by
making all parts of it, whether paper or coin, equivalent,
convertible, secure, and steady."[1613] As the campaign advanced a
resistless tendency to force the older parties into the open made it
plain that if the Democrats did not say just what they meant, the
Republicans meant more than they said, for their speakers and the
press uniformly declared that the greenback, which had carried the
country triumphantly through the war, must be made as good as gold.
Meantime the Democratic leaders realised that "fiat" money had a
strange fascination for many of their party.

[Footnote 1611: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1878, p. 624.]

[Footnote 161