100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Tuesday, July 23, 1918. As the Democratic state conference opens at Convention Hall today, 34 more Saratoga County men take their first steps toward the battlefields of Europe.
“With the inspiring strains of the Star Spangled Banner played by Noller’s Troy City Band and the cheers of a crowd that numbered at least 2,000 persons ringing in their ears,” the draftees board a train for Camp Meade, Maryland.
“There were rather more solemn faces than usual along the streets as the boys marched in the station,” The Saratogian reports, “but the sadness that must always follow the breaking of home ties was kept in check until the train had pulled out, so that the boys could carry away a memory of smiling faces and ringing messages of good luck and good cheer.”
By now, men from Saratoga County have been killed in action in Europe. The main body of Saratoga troops, Company L of the 105th U.S. Infantry regiment, is within eighteen miles of the front lines in France, according to the latest letters to reach home. Democratic Convention The “first real thrill” of the Democratic gathering comes when Judge Samuel Seabury submits a resolution to a largely hostile crowd. Seabury is declared out of order until the rules are adopted, but even after he’s given the floor, “Various delegates tried to hiss and howl him down as he started to read his resolution.” The judge is a known opponent of Alfred E. Smith, the president of the New York City board of aldermen and front runner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, but the hecklers expecting an anti-Smith tirade receive a pleasant surprise.
Seabury calls on delegates to “repudiate every truckler with our country’s enemies who strives or has striven to extenuate or excuse such crimes against humanity as the rape of Belgium, the sinking of the Lusitania and the German policy of assassination by submarines … or who now seeks to capitalize by election to public office, the latent treason whose total annihilation is the most pressing need of the hour.”
The real target of Seabury’s resolution is newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, a longshot in the race for governor. A failed candidate in 1906, Hearst opposed U.S. intervention in the European war until the nation declared war on Germany in April 1917.
The convention, also called a conference, will not nominate any candidates. Instead, delegates will endorse one of the expected contenders in the September gubernatorial primary. One contender, former Democratic state committee chairman William Church Obsorn, is boycotting the convention because he feels the Tammany Hall political machine has rigged it in Smith’s favor.
-- Kevin Gilbert