ice
commissioners, who championed Tammany's right to its share of poll
inspectors, pointed unmistakably to a bargain, since it gave Tammany
and the Republicans power to select a chairman at each poll.[1662]
Evidence of a real alliance, however, was nebulous. The defeat of
Robinson meant the election of Cornell, and Republicans naturally
welcomed any effort to accomplish it. They greeted Kelly, during his
tour of the State, with noise and music, crowded his meetings, and
otherwise sought to dishearten Robinson's friends. Although Kelly's
speeches did not compare in piquancy with his printed words, his
references to Tilden as the "old humbug of Cipher Alley" and to
Robinson as having "sore eyes" when signing bills, kept his hearers
expectant and his enemies disturbed. The _World_ followed him,
reporting his speeches as "failures" and his audiences as "rushing
pell-mell from the building."[1663]

[Footnote 1662: The _Nation_, September 25 and October 23, 1879; New
York _Times_, September 19, 20, 24, 25.]

[Footnote 1663: New York _World_, October 11, 14, 16, 17.

"John Kelly. Oh! John Kelly!
We read you like a book;
We've got plain country common-sense,
Though homely we may look;
And we know each vote you beg, John,
Is only begged to sell;
You are but the tool of Conkling,
And bargained to Cornell."
--New York _World_, October 17.]

Kelly did not mean to dish the whole Democratic ticket. He expected to
elect the minor State officers. But he learned on the morning after
election that he had entirely miscalculated the effect of his scheme,
since every Democrat except the nephew of Horatio Seymour rested in
the party morgue by the side of Lucius Robinson.[1664] In the city
Kelly also disappointed his followers. His own vote ran behind
Robinson's, and all his friends were slaughtered. Indeed, when Tammany
surrendered its regularity at Syracuse it lost its voting strength.
Even Cornell whom it saved ran 20,000 behind his ticket. The election
was, in fact, a triumph for nobody except Conkling. He had put into
the highest State office a personal adherent, whom the Administration
had stigmatised by dismissal; he had brought to New York his principal
opponents in the Cabinet (Evarts and Sherman) to speak for his nominee
and their dismissed servant; and he had induced the Administration to
call for a "strong man" for the Presidency.[1665]

[Footnote 1664: The election held on