y unsettled his mind, one glance at
McLaughlin and the Brooklyn delegation, sitting like icebergs in the
midst of the heated uproar, restored his reason. When a motion to
recess increased the tumult, Rufus H. Peckham, a cool Tilden man,
called for the ayes and noes. This brought the convention to earth
again, and as the noise subsided Jacobs reproved the clerk for his
unauthorised assumption of the Chair's duties, adding, with a slight
show of resentment, that had he been consulted respecting the
nomination he should have respectfully declined.

At the conclusion of the roll-call the Tammany tellers, adding the
aggregate vote to suit the needs of the occasion, pronounced the
motion carried, while others declared it lost. A second call defeated
a recess by 166 to 217. On a motion to table the appointment of a
harmony committee the vote stood 226 to 155. A motion to adjourn also
failed by 166 to 210. These results indicated that neither tricks nor
disorder could shake the Robinson phalanx, and after the call to
select a nominee for governor had begun, Augustus Schell, John Kelly,
William Dorsheimer, and other Tammany leaders rose in their places.
"Under no circumstances will the Democracy of New York support the
nomination of Lucius Robinson," said Schell; "but the rest of the
ticket will receive its warm and hearty support." Then he paused.
Kelly, standing in the background of the little group, seemed to
shrink from the next step. Regularity was the touchstone of Tammany's
creed. Indifference to ways and means gave no offence, but
disobedience to the will of a caucus or convention admitted of no
forgiveness. Would Kelly himself be the first to commit this
unpardonable sin? He could invoke no precedent to shield him. In 1847
the Wilmot Proviso struck the keynote of popular sentiment, and the
Barnburners, leaving the convention the instant the friends of the
South repudiated the principle, sought to stay the aggressiveness of
slavery. Nor could he appeal to party action in 1853, for the Hunkers
refused to enter the convention after the Barnburners had organised
it. Moreover, he was wholly without excuse. He had accepted the
platform, participated in all proceedings, and exhausted argument,
diplomacy, trickery, and deception. Not until certain defeat faced him
did he rise to go, and even then he tarried with the hope that
Schell's words would bring the olive-branch. It was a moment of
intense suspense. The convention, sitt