Under a new charter the Mayor’s term was extended to two years, and the time of election, with that of the other city officers, was changed to November. The latter change gave great satisfaction to the leaders, for it enabled them to trade votes. Trading grew to such an extent that charges became common of this or that nominee for President, Governor, State Senator and so on being “sold out” by the leaders to insure their own election. The Tammany organization, too, had made a change. It had adopted the convention system of nominating. This new method was much more satisfactory to the leaders, because the election of delegates to the conventions could easily be controlled, and the risk of having prearranged nominations overruled by an influx of “gangs” into the great popular meeting was eliminated. A show of opposition to the proposed program was, however, still necessary. The first general convention was held in October, 1850. Fernando Wood was the leading candidate for Mayor, and it was certain that he would be nominated. But the first ballot showed a half-dozen competitors. The second ballot, however, disclosed the real situation, and Wood was chosen by 29 votes, to 22 for John J. Cisco. Wood was a remarkable man. As a tactician and organizer he was the superior both of his distant predecessor Burr and of his successors Tweed and Sweeny. He was born in Philadelphia, in June, 1812, of Quaker parents. At the age of thirteen, he was earning $2 a week as a clerk. Later, he became a cigarmaker and tobacco dealer, and still later, a grocer. As a lad he was pugnacious; in a Harrisburg bar-room he once floored with a chair a State Senator who had attacked him. But he seems to have been amenable to good advice; for once when a Quaker reprimanded him for his excessive use of tobacco with the observation, “Friend, thee smokes a good deal,” he at once threw away his cigar, and gave up the habit. Coming to New York, he engaged in several business enterprises, all the while taking a considerable interest in politics. He was elected to Congress in 1840, serving one term. Gradually he came to make politics his vocation. Political manipulation before his day was, at the best, clumsy and crude. Under his facile genius and painstaking care, it developed to the rank of an exact science. He devoted himself for years to ingratiating himself with the factors needed in carrying elections.[1] He curried favor with the petty criminals of the Five Points, the boisterous roughs of the river edge, and the swarms of immigrants, as well as with the peaceable and industrious mechanics and laborers; and he won a following even among the business men. All these he marshaled systematically in the Tammany organization. Politics was his science, and the “fixing” of primaries his specialty; in this he was perhaps without a peer.