no
authority to exact,[1680] did not explain how a personal pledge could
be avoided. Finally, William H. Robertson, a delegate from the
Twelfth District, who had not appeared at Utica, published a letter
that he should vote for Blaine "because he is the choice of the
Republicans of the district which I represent."[1681] Two days
afterwards John Birdsall of the First District and Loren B. Sessions
of the Thirty-third announced on the floor of the Senate that they
should do likewise. Woodin said that as he could not reconcile a vote
for some candidate other than Grant with his attitude voluntarily
taken at Utica he should let his alternate go to Chicago.[1682] From
time to time other delegates followed with declarations similar to
Robertson's.

[Footnote 1680: _Harper's Weekly_, May 29.]

[Footnote 1681: Letter dated May 6.--See Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1880,
p. 575.]

[Footnote 1682: New York _Tribune_, May 8.]

As expected, this disobedience drew a volley of anathemas upon the
offending delegates, who became known as "Half-breeds."[1683] The
_Times_ thought Robertson's "tardy revolt" dictated by "self-interest,"
because "the pliant politician from Westchester had chafed under a
sense of disappointed ambition ever since the defeat of his nomination
for governor in 1872."[1684]

[Footnote 1683: Everit Brown, _A Dictionary of American Politics_, p.
372; _Harper's Weekly_, February 5, 1881.]

[Footnote 1684: New York _Times_, May 16.]

Upon Sessions and Woodin it was more severe. "We have never regarded
State Senator Sessions as a type of all that is corrupt in politics at
Albany," it said, "and we have steadily defended Mr. Woodin against
the attacks made upon him on the testimony of Tweed. But if these
recent accessions to the Blaine camp are half as bad as the _Tribune_
has painted them in the past, that journal and its candidate must have
two as disreputable allies as could be found outside of state
prison."[1685] Woodin's manner of avoiding his Utica pledge seemed to
arouse more indignation than the mere breaking of it. The _Times_
called it "a sneaking fashion,"[1686] and charged lack of courage. "He
does not believe that he who performs an act through another is
himself responsible for the act."[1687]

[Footnote 1685: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 1686: _Ibid._, June 2.]

[Footnote 1687: _Ibid._, May 8.]

At Chicago the principle of district representation became the
important question. It involved the admiss