1895.] J-"' [Potts. 



leap one by one into the water, driven over by the fire, and could dis- 

 tinctly hear their cries. The solemn sound of the State House bell, the 

 ringing of the firebells in both cities, and the lurid glare which lighted up 

 the Delaware, added to the horrible scene, of which the writer was one of 

 the eye-witnesses from the Camden shore. The pilot box was the first 

 part of the vessel to catch, and consequently the boat soon became un- 

 manageable. Loaded with heavy wagons and a hundred passengers re- 

 turning to their homes in Camden, nearly fifty persons, it is said, were lost. 

 Finally driven by the flames, Mr. Dudley, throwing away his overcoat to 

 sink more easily and avoid the paddle-wheels which struck many, sprang 

 as far as possible from the side of the vessel, and came up in a mass of 

 crushed ice, which gave but a partial support. It was in this situation that 

 he saw many leap into the water, their clothes on fire and their cries most 

 agonizing — a scene which naturally had an effect upon his nervous sys- 

 tem, and one never to be forgotten, of which he rarely ever spoke. Shout- 

 ing until his cries grew faint, he was despairing and overcome with cold, 

 when several men in a boat which put out from the Philadelphia side, res- 

 cued him, and he was carried in a state of apparent death to the hotel at 

 Arch street wharf, where all efforts to bring him to life seemed in vain. 

 Mr. Albert S. Markley, of Camden, a well-known director in the Camden 

 & Amboy Railroad, happening in, recognized him, and after long and 

 persistent efforts, though told it was no use, the man was dead, restored 

 him to consciousness. Mr. Dudley was then in his thirty-sixth year. 



In 18'j0 he was Chairman of the State Executive Committee of New 

 Jersey. 



"In 1860 he was chosen as one of the Senatorial delegates from the 

 State at large, in the memorable convention at Chicago, which nominated 

 Abraham Lincoln for President. He was a member of the committee 

 which framed the platform adopted by that convention, and it was he 

 who introduced the plank favoring incidental protection to American 

 manufactures and was mainly instrumental in carrying it through the 

 convention. He supported Mr. Lincoln as a candidate for nomination, 

 in opposition to Mr. Seward, and took a prominent part in bringing about 

 that nomination. 



" The manner in which this nomination was effected, and Mr. Dudley's 

 part therein, is thus related by Charles P. Smith in Beecher's (Trenton) 

 Magazine. As these are facts of historic interest, we give the account in 

 full." [We shall introduce Mr. Smith's account by a few words from Mr. 

 Isaac H. Bromley's striking and vivid paper, with the same title, in 

 Scribner's Magazine for November, 1893, a spectator as a journalist in 

 the scenes which he describes. He was afterward one of the editors of 

 the New York Tribune. Mr. Bromley says, " The Chicago Convention 

 of 1860 was much more than an organized body of delegates, its work 

 much more than that of nominating candidates. Its transactions over- 

 shadowed in importance, outreached in consequences, and transcended in 

 results those of any assembly of men that was ever gathered on this con- 



