At 7:00 P.M. on May 31, J. Donald Cameron convened the Republican National Committee's last meeting before the opening of the convention. Of the forty-six men at the meeting, Cameron counted only sixteen allies. The rest of the men were anti-Grant delegates who had decided to gang up on Cameron. Colorado senator Jerome B. Chaffee was the first to bring up the unit rule at the meeting. Chaffee handed Cameron a handwritten motion that was orchestrated by William E. Chandler. Cameron expected this, and knew he had to find some fault in Chaffee's motion. Cameron called Chaffee's motion out of order. Upon being questioned by Chaffee, Cameron explained that the committee could only appoint a temporary chairman to the convention, and could not vote on the unit rule issue (which he said belonged to the Rules Committee). Cameron then used George Congdon Gorham, a California Stalwart delegate who as secretary of the United States Senate had become an expert on parliamentary procedure, to justify his ruling. One by one, anti-Grant delegates unsuccessfully tried to appeal Cameron's motion. Gorham proclaimed that as committee chairman, Cameron could do "as he saw fit." Marshall Jewell, a Connecticut delegate and national committee member who had served in Grant's administration as Postmaster General, spoke up against Cameron's rulings. Cameron did not comment, and then called for a brief recess. After the recess, he acknowledged a motion from William E. Chandler to elect George Frisbie Hoar, a neutral senator and delegate from Massachusetts, as the convention's temporary chairman.