Year: 1876




1872, and the eagerness with which both the
avowed and the secret friends of Senator
Conkling seek to put it under his control at
tests their sense of the importance of the
purposes for which it is possible to use it.
The engineering of the approaches for its
capture is prosecuted with an ingenuity which
rivals any of the historical exploits Of Thur
low Weed, and that venerable patriot must
indeed feel that he has not lived in vain
when he sees the political methods which he
invented copied so faithfully by a later gene
ration and applied with such success to
thwart his own advice and desires. 1t is
said that within the last twenty-four hours,
since our disclosure of the situation,
Mr.. Weed has awakened to its peril,
tools, and gone into the business
of countermining, for which until then
he had been relying upon Ex-Governor Nor
gan. AS all the works are underground, and
| Mr.. Weeds Intervention is so recent, it is
not prudent for any one who sees only the
unbroken surface of the plain beneath
which all the burrowing is going on to haz-





of this battle of the great republican engi-
neers but on the assumption that Senator
Conkling's galleries cannot be successfully
countermined it is interesting to consider
what he may or may not do with the New
York delegation after he has captured it.


1t will be proud, pleasurable and profit
able situation for the Senator to hold in his
hon JofG tha oF
enty out of the seven hundred and fifty-four
delegates, especially if the remaining six
hundred and eighty-four shall be about
equally divided between the advocates and
the opponents of a third term for
President Grant Instances in which ex-
pectant Presidents have not thought it
unbecoming to enter into specific pledges
concerning the policy of their administra-
tions to persons SO situated are not lacking
in the political history of the United States
Mr.. James A Bayard, for instance, the single
representative from Delaware, demanded
and obtained assurances from Mr.. Jefferson
in February. 1901, concerning the support
of the public credit. the maintenance of the
naval system and the subject of removals





the vote of Delaware from Burr on the de-
cisive thirty ballot. The possibilities
of patriotic service in respect to the restora-
ton of specie payments, the reinvigoration
of our navy and the reform of the civil SER
vice, which must occur to Senator Conkling
from this historical reminiscence, are obvious
Twenty-four years later, in February, 1926
4
John Quincy Adams President, and
month afterward Mr.. Clay became Secretary
of State-a combination of facts which also
must be suggestive to Senator Conkling,
whose admiration of the great whig leader is
so well known Just as the late Senator
in mind and person to Edmund Burke so
Senator Conkling would copy the example
of Henry Clay. In the admirable eulogy
pronounced by Mr.. Breckenridge on Mr.
Clay in the House of Repres entatives, on
June 80, 1852, he said that Clay ''never felt
that he was in the presence of a man supe-
rior to himself" Entertaining the feeling
which he does upon similar subject, how
fortunate, indeed, it is for our country that
both Conkling and Clay were not assigned
by Providence to the same generation of
Americans ! As contemporaries they in
evitably would have been antagonists, but in
the order of time in which one succeeds
the other what otherwise might have been
jealousy on the part of the junior
statesman takes the shape of an ardent
emulation of the career of his illustrious
predecessor, and the control of the seventy
votes of this State in the Cincinnati Conven-
ton may enable him to initiate it in one Of
its most peculiar features.


In the event of the removal of the third
term question from the minds of mankind
by the withdrawal of President Grant from
the list of candidates at Cincinnati Senator
Conkling's position there as the controller of
those seventy votes will be scarcely less i'm
portant Who, in that event, will have
superior chances to his own? The Difference
he will have shown to the desires of the
President will insure him the Presidents
efficient support in the struggle for the
nomination, and the two hundred and fifty
carpet-bag votes which can thereupon be
turned over to him from the South,
added to the seventy votes of New York,
will go far to secure it. Grants relation
to Conkling will, under those circumstances,
bear q curious resemblance to Jacksons rea-
ton to Van Buren. We need not dwell long
upon this, for we directed public attention
the day before yesterday to the fidelity with
which the Senator always has served the
President Jacob did not serve Laban in
the house of Bethuel at Padan Aram with
greater constancy. Faithful among the
faithless, not single vote in the Senator's
whole record from March 4, 1869, to the pres
ent day, in opposition to any Legislative
measure favored by the President, can be