ished to withdraw to avoid the humiliation
of a defeat by ballot, the Conservatives continued their opposition.
For once it could be truthfully said of a candidate that he was "in
the hands of his friends." Even the "judicious" delegate, whom the
Governor directed to withdraw his name, declined executing the
commission until a ballot had nominated Wright, giving him
ninety-five votes to thirty for Bouck. "Wright's nomination is the
fatality," wrote Seward. "Election or defeat exhausts him."[334] Seward
had the gift of prophecy.

[Footnote 334: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 723.

"Wright was a strong man the day before his nomination for governor.
He fell far, and if left alone will be not, what he might have been,
George I. to William of Orange, lineal heir to Jackson, through Van
Buren. The wiseacres in New York speak of him with compliment, 'this
distinguished statesman;' yet they bring all their small artillery to
bear upon him, and give notice that he is demolished. The praise they
bestow is very ill concealed, but less injurious to us than their
warfare, conducted in their mode."--Letter of W.H. Seward to Thurlow
Weed, _Ibid._, Vol. 1, p. 725.]

The bitterness of the contest was further revealed in the refusal of
Daniel S. Dickinson, a doughty Conservative, to accept a renomination
for lieutenant-governor, notwithstanding Silas Wright had especially
asked it. There were many surmises, everybody was excited, and the
door to harmony seemed closed forever; but it opened again when the
name of Addison Gardiner of Rochester came up. Gardiner had been
guided by high ideals. He was kind and tolerant; the voice of personal
anger was never heard from his lips; and Conservative and Radical held
him in high respect. At Manlius, in 1821, Gardiner had become the
closest friend of Thurlow Weed, an intimacy that was severed only by
death. He was a young lawyer then, anxious to seek his fortune in the
West, and on his way to Indianapolis happened to stop at Rochester.
The place proved too attractive to give up, and, through his
influence, Weed also made it his residence. "How curious it seems," he
once wrote his distinguished journalistic friend, "that circumstances
which we regard at the time as scarcely worthy of notice often change
the entire current of our lives." A few years later, through Weed's
influence, Gardiner became a judge of the Supreme Court, laying the
foundation for a public life of honourable