The campaign for the presidential nomination began as early as the autumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee of Southerners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southern man came to town who was not “seen.” If of enough importance, he was taken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southern standard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchised Southern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether after their own idea of what a President ought to be. The South came to St. Louis, the seat of the National Convention, represented by its foremost citizens and almost a unit for the Governor of New York. The main opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of which John Kelly was then the Chief. Its very extravagance proved an advantage to Tilden. Two days before the meeting of the Convention I sent this message to Mr. Tilden: “Tell Blackstone [his favorite riding horse] that he wins in a walk.” The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S. S. (“Sunset”) Cox, for Temporary Chairman. It was a clever move. Mr. Cox, though sure for Tammany, was popular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought that with him they could count upon a majority of the National Committee. The night before the assembling, Mr. Tilden’s two or three leading friends on the Committee came to me and said: “We can elect you Chairman over Cox, but no one else.” I demurred at once. “I don’t know one rule of parliamentary law from another,” I said. “We will have the best parliamentarian on the continent right by you all the time,” they said. “I can’t see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention,” I said. “We’ll have a dozen men to tell you,” they replied. So it was arranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen. I had barely time to write the required “key-note” speech, but not to commit it to memory, nor sight to read it, even had I been willing to adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust to extemporization. A friend, Colonel Stoddard Johnston, who was familiar with my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my manuscript behind his hat, he lined the words out to me between the cheering, I having mastered a few opening sentences. [Illustration: From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve THOMAS F. BAYARD of Delaware From a photograph by Brady FRANCIS KERNAN of New York From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell ALLEN G. THURMAN of Ohio From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell JOSEPH E. McDONALD of Indiana From a photograph by Brady JOHN W. STEVENSON of Kentucky SENATORS OF THE DEMOCRATIC “ADVISORY COMMITTEE” IN THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST] Luck was with me. It went with a bang--not, however, wholly without detection. The Indianians, devoted to Hendricks, were very wroth. “See that fat man behind the hat telling him what to say,” said one to his neighbor, who answered, “Yes, and wrote it for him, too, I’ll be bound.”