The “Barnburners,” practically driven out of Tammany Hall by the “Hunkers,” had been meeting elsewhere. Tiring of defeats, however, overtures for reunion were made during the Fall campaign. A fusion resulted, not only in the city but in other parts of the State, and candidates were agreed upon.[3] But no sooner had the reunion been declared than a number of irreconcilable “Hunkers” and certain other politicians--including Daniel E. Sickles, James T. Brady, “Mike” Walsh and John M. Bloodgood--formed a self-constituted “Democratic-Republican Executive Committee” to oppose the deal. On the day before election they sent out a circular denouncing the fusion, and declaring that though it promised much it was really only a means of engrafting upon Democratic time-honored principles a set of abolition doctrines, “hostile to the peace and welfare of the Republic and repugnant to the sympathies and intelligence of the Democratic party.”[4] This circular was misleading. Neither the “Barnburners” nor the “Hunkers” had imposed any sacrifice of principle upon the other. They merely agreed for the time being to suspend their differences in order to get a controlling influence over the disbursement of municipal finances. The opinion of each voter on the slavery question was left untouched. The election was hotly contested, for by the new State constitution the selection of minor State offices had been taken from the Governor and Legislature and given to the people.[5] Owing to this defection of a strong Tammany group the Whigs carried the city. The excitement in the Wigwam, when the result became known, was intense. Four thousand Tammany men, looking either for office or party triumph, were in a frenzy. W. D. Wallach, a politician of some note, mounted the rostrum, and under the stimulus of disappointment, held forth in a long and remarkable harangue, to which his auditors listened in comparative silence, though the same utterances at another time might have provoked a riot in the Wigwam. Men of downright dishonesty, Wallach said, had crept into the organization by the aid of bullies and loafers. These men of late years had managed to wield great power at Tammany primary elections, where, as everybody knew, matters long had been arranged “upon the assumption that by a free application of money, violence and roguery, the people could and should be controlled.” What wonder was it, he asked, that thousands of quiet and respectable Democrats had ceased to bow to the authority of regular nominations, however worthy the candidates, when they found more or less of the Tammany nominating committees returned in part notoriously by violence, if not by fraud?