Chapter XXI…

Chapter XXI

The opening of the Forty-second Congress, on the 4th of March, 1871, was disfigured by an act of grave injustice committed by the Senate of the United States. Charles Sumner was deposed from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations,--a position he had held continuously since the Republican party gained control of the Senate. The cause of his displacement may be found in the angry contentions to which the scheme of annexing San Domingo gave rise. Mr. Sumner's opposition to that project was intense, and his words carried with them what was construed as a personal affront to the President of the United States,--though never so intended by the Massachusetts senator. When the committees were announced from the Republican caucus on the 10th of March, 1871, by Mr. Howe of Wisconsin, Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania appeared as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations and Mr. Sumner was assigned to the chairmanship of a new committee,--Privileges and Elections,--created for the exigency.(1)

The removal of Mr. Sumner from his place had been determined in a caucus of Republican senators, and never was the power of the caucus more wrongfully applied. Many senators were compelled, from their sense of obedience to the decision of the majority, to commit an act against their conceptions of right, against what they believed to be justice to a political associate, against what they believed to be sound public policy, against what they believed to be the interest of the Republican party. The caucus is a convention in party organization to determine the course to be pursued in matters of expediency which do not involve questions of moral obligation or personal justice. Rightfully employed, the caucus in not only useful but necessary in the conduct and government of party interests. Wrongfully applied, it is a weakness, an offense, a stumbling-block in the way of party prosperity.

Mr. Sumner's deposition from the place he had so long honored was not accomplished, however, without protest and contest. Mr. Schurz made an inquiry of Mr. Howe as to the grounds upon which the senator was to be deposed; and the answer was that "the personal relations between the senator from Massachusetts and the President of the United States and the head of the State Department are such as preclude all social intercourse between them." "In brief," said Mr. Howe, "I may say that the information communicated to us was that the senator from Massachusetts refused to hold personal intercourse with the Secretary of State."

--Mr. Schurz, sitting near Mr. Sumner, immediately answered for that senator that "he had not refused to enter into any official relations, either with the President of the United States or with the Secretary of State; and that upon inquiry being made of him, Mr. Sumner had answered that he would receive Mr. Fish as an old friend, and would not only be willing but would be glad to transact such matters and to discuss such questions as might come up for consideration." And Mr. Sumner added: "In his own house."

--Mr. Wilson, the colleague of Mr. Sumner, spoke with great earnestness against the wrong contemplated by the act: "Sir," said he, "we saw Stephen A. Douglas, on this floor, at the bidding of Mr. Buchanan's administration, in obedience to the demands of the slave-holding leaders and the all-conquering slave power, put down, disrated, from his committee. We saw seeds then sown that blossomed and bore bitter fruit at Charleston in 1860. Now we propose to try a similar experiment. I hope and trust in God that we shall not witness similar results. I love justice and fair play, and I think I know enough of the American people to know that ninety-nine hundredths of the men who elected this administration in 1868 will disapprove this act." Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Logan and Mr. Tipton were the only Republican senators who joined with Mr. Wilson in openly deprecating the decree of the party caucus.

--Mr. Edmunds, who was one of the active promoters of Mr. Sumner's deposition, declared that the question was "whether the Senate of the United States and the Republican party are quite ready to sacrifice their sense of duty to the whims of one single man, whether he comes from New England, or from Missouri, or from Illinois, or from anywhere else." He described the transaction as a business affair of changing a member from one committee to another for the convenience of the Senate, and said: "When I hear my friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] and the senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz] making these displays about a mere matter of ordinary convenience, it reminds me of the nursery story of the children who thought the sky was going to fall, and it turned out in the end that it was only a rose-leaf that had fallen from a bush to the ground."

--Senator Sherman defended the right of the caucus to make the decision. "Whenever that decision is made known," said he, "every one, however high may be his position, however great his services, is bound by the common courtesies which prevail in these political bodies to yield at once. . . . I feel it my duty to make this explanation of the vote I shall give. I think I am bound by the decision made after full debate on this mere personal point, involving only the question whether the honorable senator from Massachusetts shall occupy the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations or the chairmanship of the Committee on Privileges and Elections."

Other incidents connected with the removal tended to give it the air of discourtesy to Mr. Sumner. One feature of it was especially marked and painful. Mr. Sumner's acquaintance in Europe, certainly in England, was larger than that of any other member of the Senate. His speech on the Alabama claims was the first utterance on the subject which had arrested the attention of England, and now, as if in rebuke of his patriotic position, the Queen's High Commissioners directly after their arrival in Washington were called to witness a public indignity to Mr. Sumner. The action of the Senate was, in effect, notice to the whole world that Mr. Sumner was to have no further connection with a great international question to which he had given more attention than any other person connected with the Government.

Mr. Sumner declined the service to which he was assigned, and from that time forward to the day of his death he had no rank as chairman, no place upon a committee of the Senate, no committee-room for his use, no clerk assigned to him for the needed discharge of his public duties. When Mr. Sumner entered the Senate twenty years before, the pro-slavery leaders who then controlled it had determined at one time in their caucus to exclude him from all committee service on account of his offensive opinions in regard to slavery, but upon sober second thought they concluded that a persecution of that kind would add to Mr. Sumner's strength rather than detract from it. He was therefore given the ordinary assignment of a new member by the Southern men in control and was thence regularly advanced until he became a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, under the chairmanship of James M. Mason, with Douglas and Slidell as fellow-members.

For his fidelity to principle and his boldness in asserting the truth at an earlier day Mr. Sumner was struck down in the Senate chamber by a weapon in the hands of a political foe. It was impossible to anticipate that fifteen years later he would be even more cruelly struck down in the Senate by the members of the party he had done so much to establish. The cruelty was greater in the latter case, as the anguish of spirit is greater than suffering of body. In both instances Mr. Sumner's bearing was distinguished by dignity and magnanimity. He gave utterance to no complaints, and silently submitted to the unjustifiable wrong of which he was a victim. That nothing might be lacking in the extraordinary character of the final scene of his deposition, the Democratic senators recorded themselves against the consummation of the injustice. They had no co-operation from the Republicans. The caucus dictation was so strong that discontented Republicans merely refrained from voting.

The personal changes in the Senate, under the new elections, were less numerous than usual. General Logan took the place of Richard Yates from Illinois, having been promoted from the House, where his service since the war had been efficient and distinguished.--Matt W. Ransom, a Confederate soldier who had held high command in General Lee's army, took the place of Joseph C. Abbott of North Carolina. Mr. Ransom had been well educated at the University of Chapel Hill, was a lawyer by profession, had been Attorney-General of his State, and had served several years in this Legislature. Severe service in the field during the four years of the war had somewhat impaired his health, but his personal bearing and the general moderation of his views rapidly won for him many friends in both political parties.

--General Frank P. Blair, jun., entered as senator from Missouri a few weeks preceding the 4th of March, filling the place made vacant by the resignation of Senator Drake, who was appointed to the Bench of the Court of Claims. General Blair's political career had been somewhat checkered and changeful. Originally a Democrat of the Van Buren type, he had helped to organize the Republican party after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He remained a Republican until the defection of Andrew Johnson, when he joined the Democrats, and became so vituperatively hostile that the Senate in 1866 successively rejected his nomination for Collector of Internal Revenue in the St. Louis district, and for Minister to Austria. He was a good soldier, rose to the rank of Major-General, and secured the commendation of General Grant, which was far more than a brevet from the War Department. His defeat for the Vice-Presidency had, if possible, increased his antagonism to the Republican party, and he now came to the Senate as much embittered against his late associates as he had been against the Democrats ten years before. He was withal a generous-minded man of strong parts, but the career for which nature fitted him was irreparably injured by the unsteadiness of his political course.

--Henry G. Davis, a native of Maryland, entered as the first Democratic senator from West Virginia. His personal popularity was a large factor in the contest against the Republicans of his State, and he was naturally rewarded by his party as its most influential leader. Mr. Davis had honorably wrought his own way to high station, and had been all his life in active affairs. As a farmer, a railroad man, a lumberman, an operator in coal, a banker, he had been uniformly successful. He came to the Senate with that kind of practical knowledge which schooled him to care and usefulness as a legislator. He steadily grew in the esteem and confidence of both sides of the Senate, and when his party attained the majority he was entrusted with the responsible duty of the chairmanship of the Committee on Appropriations. No more painstaking or trustworthy man ever held the place. While firmly adhering to his party, he was at all times courteous, and in the business of the Senate or in social intercourse never obtruded partisan views. He was re-elected without effort, but early gave notice that at the end of his second term he would retire from active political life.

--Powell Clayton, who succeeded Alexander McDonald as senator from Arkansas, was a native of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, a member of the well-known Clayton family long settled in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. He was educated at a military school in Pennsylvania and trained as a civil engineer. He was engaged in that profession in Kansas in 1860-61, and upon the outbreak of the war immediately enlisted in the Union Army. He was rapidly promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General, and made an admirable record for efficiency and bravery. When the war ended he was commanding a district in Arkansas. He remained there as a citizen of the State and was active and influential during the period of reconstruction. In 1868 he was elected Governor, and at the close of his term was chosen United States senator. He is a man of character,--quiet and undemonstrative in manner, but with extraordinary qualities of firmness and endurance.

The House of Representatives was organized without delay or obstruction. Mr. Blaine was re-elected Speaker,--receiving 126 votes to 92 cast for George W. Morgan of Ohio, who had been nominated as the Democratic candidate. The oath of office was administered to the Speaker by Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts, who by Mr. Washburne's retirement had become the member of longest continuous service. The vote of the opposing candidates showed that in the elections for this Congress the Democrats had made an obvious gain in the country at large. The Republicans for the first time since 1861 failed to command two-thirds of the House,--a circumstance of much less importance when Congress is in harmony with the Executive than when, in conflict with him, the necessity arises for passing bills over his veto. But while the majority was not large, the House received valuable accessions among the new members.

--Joseph R. Hawley, who now entered the House, was born in North Carolina of Connecticut parents. He was educated in the North and began the practice of law at Hartford in 1850. Gifted with a ready pen, he soon adopted the editorial profession, and was conducting a Republican journal in 1861 when the war broke out. He enlisted the day after Sumter was fired upon, and remained in the service until the rebel armies surrendered, when he returned to his home and became editor of the Hartford Courant, with which his name has been conspicuously identified for many years. His military record was faultless, as might well be inferred from the fact that he began as a private and ended with the brevet of Major-General. He at once entered upon a political career, which in a State so closely divided as Connecticut involves labor and persistence. His two contests for Governor in 1866 and 1867, with James E. English as his opponent, enlisted wide-spread interest. The men were both popular; English had maintained an honorable reputation as a War Democrat at home, and had voted in Congress for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Both could therefore appeal to the Union sentiment then so pronounced among the people. In the election of 1866 Hawley was victorious by a few hundred; in the election of 1867 English was victorious by a few hundred,--in a total poll each year of about 90,000 votes. In Congress General Hawley at once took active part in the proceedings and debates. A forcible speaker, with quick perception and marked industry, he had all the requisite for success in a Parliamentary body.

--Ellis H. Roberts took his seat as a Republican representative from the Utica district, New York, of which he is a native. Immediately after his graduation at Yale he became the editor of the Utica Morning Herald,--a position he has ever since held. The strength of Mr. Roberts, his intellectual resources, the variety and extent of his knowledge, the elegance and purity of his style, may be found in his editorial columns. No test of a man's power is more severe than the demand made by a daily newspaper. Without the opportunity for elaborate investigation of each subject as it arises, he must have a mind well stored with knowledge; without time for leisurely composition, he must possess the power of writing off-hand with force and precision. Tried by these requirements, Mr. Roberts has for a third of a century exhibited a high order of ability, with a constantly enlarging sphere of knowledge, a constantly growing power of logical statement. He entered Congress, therefore, with great advantages and resources. So well recognized were these, that the general opinion of his colleagues indicated him for the Ways and Means Committee, a position rarely assigned to any but an old member. Mr. Roberts took active and influential part in all the financial legislation, and soon acquired a strong hold upon the House. He always spoke clearly and forcibly, possessing at the same time the art and tact of speaking briefly. He was re-elected in 1872, but suffered defeat in the Republican reverse of 1874. If he had been sustained by the force of a strong Republican majority, he could not have failed to increase the distinction he gained in his brief service, and to become one of the recognized leaders of the House.

--William P. Frye took his seat from Maine. Though but thirty-nine years of age, he had for a considerable period been conspicuous in his State. He graduated at Bowdoin College at nineteen years of age (in 1850), and soon became professionally and politically active. From the first organization of the Republican party he supported its principles and its candidates with well-directed zeal. He served several terms in the Legislature and was one of the foremost figures in the House of Representatives in 1862, recognized as one of the ablest that ever assembled in Maine. He acquired a high reputation as an advocate and was thrice elected Attorney-General of the State. At the close of his service in that important office he was chosen to represent his district in Congress. His rank as a debater was soon established, and he exhibited a degree of care and industry in committee work not often found among representatives who so readily command the attention of the House.

--Charles Foster came from the north-western section of Ohio in which his father had been one of the pioneers and the founder of the town of Fostoria. He attracted more than the ordinary attention given to new members, from the fact that he had been able to carry a Democratic district, and, for a young man, to exert a large influence upon public opinion. He was distinguished by strong common sense, by a popular manner, by personal generosity, and by a quick instinct as to the expediency of political measures and the strength of political parties. These qualities at once gave him a position of consequence in the House superior to that held by many of the older members of established reputation. His subsequent career vindicated his early promise, and enabled him to lead the Republican party of Ohio to victory in more than one canvass which at the outset was surrounded with doubt and danger.

--Two of the most conspicuous and successful business men from the North-West appeared in this House. Charles B. Farwell, one of the leading merchants of Chicago, entered as a Republican; and Alexander Mitchell, prominent in railway and banking circles, came as a Democrat from Milwaukee. Mr. Farwell was a native of New York, and went to the West when a boy, with a fortune which consisted of a good education and habits of industry. When elected to Congress, he had long been regarded as one of the ablest and most successful merchants of Chicago. He was chosen over John Wentworth by a majority of more than five thousand.--Alexander Mitchell was a Scotchman by birth, with all the qualities of his race,--acute, industrious, wary and upright. He had taken a leading position in the financial affairs of the North-West, and maintained it with ability, being rated for years as a man of great wealth honestly acquired.

--Jeremiah H. Wilson of Indiana entered the House with the reputation of being a strong lawyer--a reputation established by his practice at the bar and his service on the bench.--H. Boardman Smith of the Elmira district, New York, was afterwards well known on the Supreme Bench of his State.--Jeremiah Rusk of Wisconsin came with a good war record, and subsequently became Governor of his State.--Mark H. Dunnell, from Minnesota, was a native of Maine, had been a member of each branch of the Maine Legislature, and for several years was Superintendent of Public Instruction.--John T. Averill was also a native of Maine. He had won the rank of Brigadier-General in the war, and had afterwards become extensively engaged in manufacturing in Minnesota.--James Monroe from the Oberlin district, Ohio, was a man of cultivation and of high character. He had served for several years in the Legislature of his State, and had been Consul-General at Rio Janiero under Mr. Lincoln's Administration.--Isaac C. Parker, a Republican from Missouri, made so good a reputation in the House that he was appointed to the United States District bench.--Walter L. Sessions, an active politician, entered from the Chautauqua district of New York.--Alfred C. Harmer, well known in Philadelphia, entered from one of the districts of that city.--John Hancock, a man of ability and character, entered from Texas.--Gerry W. Hamilton, with a fine legal reputation, came from Wisconsin.--Henry Waldron, who had served some years before, returned from Michigan.

The political disabilities imposed by the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution affected large classes in the Southern States. When the Amendment was under discussion in Congress, the total number affected was estimated at fourteen thousand, but subsequently it was ascertained to be much greater. It included not only those who had been members of Congress, or held any office under the United States, but all those who had been Executive or Judicial officers or members of the Legislatures in the revolted States. The Proclamation, making its ratification known to the people, was issued by Secretary Seward on the twentieth day of July, 1868; but in advance of this formal announcement Congress (then in session) began to relieve the persons affected. The first act was for the benefit of Roderick R. Butler of Tennessee, representative-elect to the Fortieth Congress. It was approved on the 19th of June (1868), and permission was given him to take a modified oath. On the 25th of June amnesty was extended to about one thousand persons, and during the remainder of the Congress some five hundred more were relieved from political disability. In the Forty-first Congress the liberality of the majority did not grow less; and during the two years thirty-three hundred participators in the rebellion--among them some of the most prominent and influential--were restored to the full privileges of citizenship; the rule being, in fact, that every one who asked for it, either through himself of his friends, was freely granted remission of penalty.

At the opening of the Forty-second Congress it was evident that the practice of removing the disabilities of individuals would not find favor as in the two preceding Congresses. There was a disposition rather to classify and reserve for further consideration the really offending men and give general amnesty to all others. To this end, Mr. Hale of Maine, on the 10th of April, 1871, moved to suspend the rules in order that a bill might be passed removing legal and political disabilities from all persons who had participated in the rebellion, except the following classes: first, members of the Congress of the United States who withdrew therefrom and aided the rebellion; second, officers of the Army and Navy, who, being above the age of twenty-one years, left the service and aided the rebellion; third, members of State Conventions who voted for pretended ordinances of secession. It was further provided that before receiving the benefit of this Act each person should take an oath of loyalty before the Clerk of a United States Court or before a United States Commissioner. Debate was not allowed and the bill was passed by more than the requisite two-thirds--ayes 134, noes 46.

When the Bill came before the Senate, Mr. Robertson of South Carolina attempted to put it on its passage, but objection being made it was referred under the rule, and thereby postponed for the session. With this result the pressure for individual relief of the disabled persons became so great, that at the next session of Congress a bill was prepared and passed in the House, containing some seventeen thousand names, to which the Senate proposed to add some three thousand. But the effect of this was still further to impress upon Congress the necessity of some generalization of the process of relief. The impossibility of examining into the merits of individuals by tens of thousands, and of establishing the quality and degree of their offenses, was so obvious that representatives on both sides of the House demanded an Act of general amnesty, excepting therefrom only the few classes whose names would lead to discussion and possibly to the defeat of the beneficent measure.

General Butler accordingly reported from the Judiciary Committee, on the 13th of May, 1872, a bill removing the disabilities "from all persons whomsoever, except senators and representatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the Judicial, Military and Naval service of the United States, heads of Departments, and foreign Ministers of the United States." This Act of amnesty, which left so few under disabilities (not exceeding seven hundred and fifty in all), would have been completed long before, but for the unwillingness of the Democratic party to combine with it a measure, originated and earnestly advocated by Mr. Sumner, to broaden the civil rights of the colored man, to abolish discrimination against him as enforced by hotels, railroad companies, places of public amusement, and in short, in every capacity where he was rendered unequal in privilege to the white man. But the Democratic leaders were not willing to accept amnesty for their political friends in the South, if at the same time they must take with it the liberation of the colored man from odious personal discriminations.

The Democrats were now to witness an exhibition of magnanimity in the colored representatives which had not been shown towards them. When the Amnesty Bill came before the House for consideration, Mr. Rainey of South Carolina, speaking for the colored race whom he represented, said: "It is not the disposition of my constituents that these disabilities should longer be retained. We are desirous of being magnanimous: it may be that we are so to a fault. Nevertheless we have open and frank hearts towards those who were our former oppressors and taskmasters. We foster no enmity now, and we desire to foster none, for their acts in the past to us or to the Government we love so well. But while we are willing to accord them their enfranchisement and here to-day give our votes that they may be amnestied, while we declare our hearts open and free from any vindictive feelings towards them, we would say to those gentlemen on the other side that there is another class of citizens in the country, who have certain rights and immunities which they would like you, sirs, to remember and respect. . . . We invoke you, gentlemen, to show the same kindly feeling towards us, a race long oppressed, and in demonstration of this humane and just feeling, I implore you, give support to the Civil-rights Bill, which we have been asking at your hands, lo! these many days."

There was no disposition, as General Butler explained, to unite the Civil-rights Bill with the Amnesty Bill, because the former could be passed by a majority, while the latter required two-thirds. With General Butler and the colored representatives speaking for the most radical sentiment of the House, and the Democrats eager for the bill if it could be disentangled from all connection with other measures, complete unanimity was reached, and the bill was enacted without even a division being demanded.

When the measure reached the Senate it was governed by an understanding that without being united in the same Act it should keep even pace with the Civil-rights Bill, and that while the Southern white man was to be relieved of his political disabilities the Southern black man should be endowed with his personal rights. On the 21st of May, therefore, the Civil-rights Bill was taken up for consideration in advance of the Amnesty Bill. In the temporary absence of Mr. Sumner from the Senate chamber, the equality recognized as to public schools and jury service was struck out, and in that form the bill was passed. The Amnesty Bill was immediately taken up; while it was pending Mr. Sumner returned and warmly denounced the fundamental change that had been made in the Civil-rights Bill. In consequence of what he considered a breach of faith on the question, he voted against the passage of the Amnesty Bill, Senator Nye of Nevada being the only one who united with him in the negative vote. Mr. Sumner's denunciations of the emasculated Civil-rights Bill were extremely severe; but he was pertinently reminded by Senator Anthony of Rhode Island that the bill was all that could be obtained in the Senate at this session, and perhaps more than could be enacted into law. The senator from Rhode Island had correctly estimated the probably action of the House, for although on three different occasions attempts were made to pass the bill under a suspension of the rules, the Democratic members, who numbered more than one-third of the House, voted solidly in the negative, and thus defeated the measure.

The colored representatives, who had been slaves, were willing to release their late masters from every form of disability, but the immediate friends of the masters were unwilling to extend the civil rights of the colored man. So far as chivalry, magnanimity, charity, Christian kindness, were involved, the colored men appeared at an advantage. Perhaps it is not surprising that lingering prejudices and the sudden change of situation should have restrained Southern white men from granting these privileges, but it must always be mentioned to the credit of the colored man that he gave his vote for amnesty to his former master when his demand for delay would have obstructed the passage of the measure.

In the stubborn opposition maintained by the Democratic party to the admission of colored men to the rights of citizenship, the closing argument of violent harangues was usually in the form of a question, "Do you want to see them in Congress?"--to which the natural and logical answer was that the right of the colored man to sit in Congress does not depend in the least upon the desire or the prejudice of other States and other districts. It is solely a matter within the judgment of the State or district which in a fair vote and honest election may choose to send him. The revolution in favor of human rights, promoted and directed by the Republican party, swept onward: the colored man, freed from slavery, attained the right of suffrage, and in due season was sent to Congress. Did harm result from it? Nay, was it not the needed demonstration of the freedom and justice of a republican government? If it be viewed simply as an experiment, it was triumphantly successful. The colored men who took seats in both Senate and House did not appear ignorant or helpless. They were as a rule studious, earnest, ambitious men, whose public conduct--as illustrated by Mr. Revels and Mr. Bruce in the Senate, and by Mr. Rapier, Mr. Lynch and Mr. Rainey in the House--would be honorable to any race. Coals of fire were heaped on the heads of all their enemies when the colored men in Congress heartily joined in removing the disabilities of those who had before been their oppressors, and who, with deep regret be it said, have continued to treat them with injustice and ignominy.

[(1) Objection was not interposed against Mr. Cameron personally. By seniority he was entitled to the place in the event of a vacancy. The controversy related solely to the refusal to give Mr. Sumner his old position.]

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Chapter XXII

The Presidential canvass of 1872 was anomalous in its character. Never before or since has a great party adopted as its candidate a conspicuous public man, who was not merely outside its own ranks, but who, in the thick of every political battle for a third of a century, had been one of its most relentless and implacable foes. In the shifting scenes of our varied partisan contests, the demands of supposed expediency had often produced curious results. Sometimes the natural leaders of parties had been set aside; men without experience and without attainments had been brought forward; the settled currents of years had been suddenly changed by the eddy and whirl of the moment; but never before had any eccentricity of political caprice gone so far as to suggest the bitterest antagonist of a party for its anointed chief. It was the irony of logic, and yet it came to pass by the progress of events which were irresistibly logical.

The course of affairs had been threatening a formidable division in the Republican party. It was in some degree a difference of policy, but more largely a clashing of personal interests and ambitions. The Liberal Republican movement, as the effort of dissatisfied partisans was termed, had its nominal origin, though not its exciting cause, in the State of Missouri in 1870. Missouri had presented the complications and conflicts which embarrassed all the Border States. The State had not seceded, but tens of thousands of her people had joined the rebel ranks. To prevent them from sharing in the government while fighting to overthrow it, these allies of the Rebellion had by an amendment to the State constitution been disqualified from exercising the rights of citizenship. The demand was now made that these disabilities imposed during the war should be removed. The Republicans, holding control of the Legislature, divided upon this question. The minority, calling themselves Liberals, under the leadership of Benjamin Gratz Brown and Carl Schurz, combined with the Democrats, and passed amendments which removed the disqualifications. The same combination, as a part of the same movement, elected Brown governor. An alliance, offensive and defensive, between Brown and General Frank Blair, as the chiefs of the Liberal and Democratic wings, cemented the coalition, and gave Missouri over to Democratic control.

The question which divided Missouri was not presented in the same form elsewhere. The disabilities against which the Liberals protested were local, and were ordained in the State constitution. They were wholly under State regulations. No such issue presented itself in the National arena. The laws of the nation imposed no disabilities upon any class of voters, and even the disqualification for office, which rested upon those who had deserted high public trust to join in the Rebellion, could be a vote of Congress be removed. Nevertheless, the creed of the Missouri Liberals, though little applicable outside their own borders, found an echo far beyond. Indeed, it was itself the echo of earlier demands. Mr. Greeley characterized the Republican allies of the Democrats in Missouri as bolters, but he had long before sounded his trumpet cry of "universal amnesty and impartial suffrage." With a political philosophy which is full of interest and suggestion in view of his own impending experiment, he had in 1868 advised the Democrats, if they did not nominate Mr. Pendleton on an extreme Democratic platform, to go to the other extreme and take Chief Justice Chase on a platform of amnesty and suffrage. He did not think they could succeed by any such manoeuvre; but he believed it would commit Democracy to a new departure, and be a long stride in the direction of loyalty and good government. If other leaders did not share his faith, not a few of them accepted his creed. Mr. Greeley's zealous and powerful advocacy had impressed it upon many minds as the true corner-stone of Reconstruction.

But this was obviously not a sufficient cause for division in the Republican ranks. Whatever special significance it might have possessed at an earlier period, the course of events had deprived it of its distinctive force. It was now a matter of sentiment rather than of practical efficacy. The readiness of Congress in responding to every application for the removal of disabilities was itself a generous amnesty. The Fifteenth Amendment had irrevocably established the principle of equal suffrage. With this practical advance, the demand of Liberalism did not leave room for any serious difference. More potent causes were at work. The administration of President Grant in some of its public measures had furnished pretexts, and in some of its political dispensations had supplied reasons, for discontent in various Republican quarters. The pretexts were loudly emphasized: the reasons, more powerful in their effect, were less plainly and directly proclaimed. The former related to questions of public policy and to differences of opinion which would hardly have been irreconcilable: the latter sprang from personal disappointments and involved the rivalry of personal interests, which throughout history have been the pregnant source of the bitterest partisan contention.

The Liberals vigorously denounced what they characterized as the military rule of General Grant. They criticised and condemned the personal phases of the Administration:--they repeated the Democratic charge that it was grasping undue power; they decried the channels through which its influence was felt in the South; they complained that its patronage was appropriated by leaders inimical to themselves; they saw a strong organization growing up, with its centre in the Senate and combining the great States, from which they were somewhat offensively excluded. The deposition of Senator Sumner from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations had estranged him and alienated his friends.

In the State of New York the personal currents were especially marked. Governor Fenton had, during his two terms, from 1865 to 1869, acquired the political leadership, and held it until Mr. Conkling's rising power had created a strong rivalry. The struggle of these antagonistic interests appeared in the State Convention of 1870, when Mr. Greeley was defeated for governor, and Stewart L. Woodford was nominated. In 1871 it appeared again in still more decisive form. Through the contention of these opposing wings, two general committees and two organizations of the party had been created in the city of New York, each claiming the seal of regularity, and each sending a full delegation to the State Convention. One represented the friends of Mr. Greeley and Mr. Fenton: the other represented the friends of Mr. Conkling. The importance and significance of the contest were fully recognized. It was a decisive trial of strength between two divisions. Mr. Fenton and Mr. Conkling, colleagues in the Senate, were both present upon the scene of battle. Mr. Fenton had skill and experience in political management: Mr. Conkling was bold and aggressive in leadership. Mr. Fenton guided his partisans from the council chamber through ready lieutenants: Mr. Conkling was upon the floor of the Convention and took command in person. After several persuasive appeals, the Convention was about to compromise the difficulty and admit both delegations with an equal voice and vote, when Mr. Conkling took the floor and by a powerful speech succeeded in changing its purpose. Upon his resolute call the Fenton-Greeley delegation was excluded, and his own friends were left in full control of the Convention and of the party organization.

Under ordinary circumstances such a schism would have seemed altogether unfortunate. At this juncture it looked peculiarly bold and hazardous, for the "Tweed Ring" had complete control of New York; and apparently the only hope, and that a feeble one, of rescuing the city and State from its despotic and unscrupulous thraldom was in a united Republican party. But the "Tweed Ring," in the very height of its arrogant and defiant power, was on the eve of utter overthrow and annihilation. The opportune exposure and conclusive proof of its colossal frauds and robberies came just then. The effect of the startling revelation was such that the most absolute political oligarchy ever organized in this country crumbled to dust in a moment, and the Republicans carried New York for the first time since 1866.

The unexpected success of 1871 crowning the triumph in the State Convention fully confirmed the power of Mr. Conkling as the leader of the party in New York. Mr. Greeley and his followers, already opposed to the National Administration, now gave way to a still more unrestrained hostility. All the antipathy which they felt for their antagonists in the State was transferred to the President. They ascribed their defeat to the free exercise of the Federal power; and the indictment, which they had long been framing, was made more severe from their renewed personal disappointment. In this temper and position they were not alone. The discontent with the National Administration was stimulated and increased by powerful journals like the New-York Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, and the Cincinnati Commercial.

The drift of events placed the protesting Republicans in an embarrassing situation. The renomination of General Grant was seen to be inevitable; and they were left to determine whether they would remain in the party and acquiesce in what they were unable to prevent, or whether they would try from the outside the opposition which was impotent from the inside. They were thus driven by events to extend into the National field the political experiment which had been successfully undertaken in the State of Missouri. The movement assumed apparently large proportions, and for a time wore a threatening look. On the surface it was more wide-spread than the Buffalo Free-soil revolt which defeated the Democratic party in 1848; but its development was different, and the conditions were wholly dissimilar. Now, as then, there was a curious blending of principle and of personal resentment, but the issue presented was less enkindling than the sentiment of resistance to the aggressions of slavery. The element of opposition in the impending schism was, therefore, not as strong at the decisive point as in the earlier outbreak.

The National Convention of the Liberal Republicans, which was the first public step in the fusion with the Democracy, was held at Cincinnati on the first day of May (1872), under a call emanating from the Liberal State Convention of Missouri. There were no organizations to send delegates, and it was necessarily called as a mass convention. The attendance was large, especially from the States immediately adjoining the place of meeting and from New York. It was clear that with an aggregate so large and numbers so disproportionate from the different States the disorganized and irresponsible mass must be resolved into some sort of representative convention, and those present from the several States were left to choose delegates in their own way. The New-York delegation included Judge Henry R. Selden, General John Cochrane, Theodore Tilton, William Dorsheimer (who two years later was elected Lieutenant-Governor on the Democratic ticket with Samuel J. Tilden), and Waldo Hutchins, who has since been a Democratic member of Congress.--David Dudley Field, though participating in the preliminary consultations, was excluded from the delegation through the influence of Mr. Greeley's friends, because of his free-trade attitude.

--Other leading spirits were Colonel McClure and John Hickman of Pennsylvania; Stanley Matthews, George Hoadly, and Judge R. P. Spalding, of Ohio; Carl Schurz, William M. Grosvenor, and Joseph Pulitzer, of Missouri; John Wentworth, Leonard Swett, Lieutenant-Governor Koerner, and Horace White, of Illinois; Frank W. Bird and Edward Atkinson of Massachusetts; David A. Wells of Connecticut; and John D. Defrees of the District of Columbia. Men less conspicuous than these were present in large numbers from many States.--The proportion of free-traders outside of New York was a marked feature of the assemblage, and had an important bearing on some of the subsequent proceedings. From New York, also, a number were present, and they were of course opposed to Mr. Greeley; but Mr. Greeley's friends succeeded in keeping them off the list of delegates.

Stanley Matthews was made temporary chairman. In his brief speech he said that those who had assembled in this gathering were still Republicans, and he urged in justification of their independent action that the forces in control of the party machinery had perverted it to personal and unwarrantable ends. "As the war had ended," he continued, "so ought military rule and military principles." This imputation of a military character to the National Administration was the key-note of all the expressions. Mr. Carl Schurz was the leading spirit of the Convention, and amplified the same thought in his more elaborate address as permanent President.

The platform was the object of much labor, as well as the theme of much pride, on the part of its authors. It was designed to be a succinct statement and a complete justification of the grounds on which the movement rested. It started from the Republican position and aimed to be Republican in tone and principle, only marking out the path on which Liberal thought diverged from what were characterized as the ruling Republican tendencies. It recognized the equality of all men before the law, and the duty of equal and exact justice; it pledged fidelity to the Union, to emancipation, to enfranchisement, and opposition to any re-opening of the questions settled by the new Amendments to the Constitution; it demanded the immediate and absolute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the Rebellion; it declared that local self-government with impartial suffrage would guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power, and insisted upon the supremacy of the civil over the military authorities; it laid great stress upon the abuse of the civil service and upon the necessity of reform, and declared that no President ought to be a candidate for re-election; it denounced repudiation, opposed further land-grants, and demanded a speedy return to specie payments.

On these questions there was no division in the Liberal ranks. But there was another issue, which caused a sharper controversy and came to a lame and impotent conclusion. The large numbers of free-traders who participated in the Convention has been noted. Indeed, its call emanated from free-traders, and outside of New York free-traders constituted its controlling forces. The Missouri group was unanimously and especially devoted to free trade; and the Illinois, Ohio, and New-England influences in the Convention were for the most part in full sympathy with it. The New-York element, which centred in Mr. Greeley, shared his view of protection. Whatever other reasons he might have had for joining the movement, his lifelong and conspicuous championship of Protection would have made it impossible for him to sustain any demonstration against that great doctrine. Even before his nomination was anticipated he was the most important factor in the revolt against the Administration, and any division (of a division) which sacrificed or endangered the chief pillar of strength seemed peculiarly fatuous and perilous.

Nevertheless the free-traders made a persistent effort to enforce their views, and a strenuous struggle ensued. The policy which Mr. Greeley had recommended finally prevailed. He knew there was a radical difference among the Liberals on this question. He could not surrender his position, and the free-traders would not surrender their position. He therefore proposed that they should acknowledge the differences and waive the question. This suggestion was accepted; and a compromise was effected by declaring that the differences were irreconcilable, remitting the subject to the people in their Congressional districts and to the decision of Congress free from Executive interference or dictation. Thus the only agreement reached was an agreement to disagree.

With this difficulty adjusted, the Convention was ready to proceed to the choice of a candidate. The struggle had been actively in progress for several days, and had developed sharp antagonisms. In its earlier stages it bore the appearance of a contest between Judge David Davis and Charles Francis Adams. Judge Davis had long been credited with aspirations and with some elements of political strength. He had been Lincoln's friend; he was rich, honest, and popular. He had watched politics from the Supreme Bench with judicial equipoise and partisan instincts, and by many discerning men was regarded as a highly eligible candidate. Mr. Adams was austere, cold, even repellent in his manner; but it was urged that the traditions of his name and his distinguished diplomatic services would appeal to the judgment of the people and take from the Republican party some of its best elements. He was earnestly supported by many of the strongest Liberals, who felt that their only hope of success lay in the selection of a candidate who was experienced in public life, and who could inspire public confidence.

The supporters of Mr. Adams displayed violent hostility to Judge Davis. They charged his friends with bringing a great body of hirelings from Illinois, and with attempting to "pack" the Convention,--with resorting, in short, to the alleged practices of the Republicans who were still opposing the Democratic party. They announced that even if Judge Davis should be nominated they would not sustain him. This influential and unyielding opposition was fatal to the Illinois candidate. As the Davis canvass declined the Greeley sentiment increased, and it soon became evident that the contest would lie between Adams and Greeley. On the first ballot the vote stood, Adams 205, Greeley 147, Trumbull 110, Gratz Brown 95, Davis 92½, Curtin 62, Chase 2½. The minor candidates were withdrawn as the voting proceeded, and on the sixth ballot Greeley had 332, Adams 324, Chief Justice Chase 32, Trumbull 19. There was at once a rapid change to Greeley, and the conclusion was not long delayed. He was declared by formal vote to be the nominee of the Convention. For the Vice-Presidency, Gratz Brown, Senator Trumbull, George W. Julian, and Gilbert C. Walker were placed in nomination. Mr. Brown was successful on the second ballot.

The result of the balloting created surprise and disappointment. Mr. Greeley's name had not been seriously discussed until the members assembled in Cincinnati, and no scheme of the Liberal managers had contemplated his nomination. It was evident from the first that with his striking individuality, his positive views, and his combative career, he had both strength and weakness as a candidate; but whatever his merits or demerits, his selection was out of the reckoning of those who had formed the Liberal organization. It was certainly a singular and unexpected result, that a Convention which owed its formal call to a body of active and aggressive free-traders, should commit its standard to the foremost champion of Protection in the country.

But there was another and still more important element of incongruity--another reason why the nomination was foreign to the whole theory of the political experiment of 1872. The indispensable condition attaching to the Liberal plan was its endorsement by the Democracy. This demanded the selection of a candidate who, while representing the Liberal Republican policy, would be acceptable to the Democratic allies. No man seemed so little likely to fulfil this requirement as Mr. Greeley. From the hour when he first entered political life and acquired prominence in the wild Whig canvass for Harrison and Tyler in 1840, he had waged incessant and unsparing war against the Democrats. He had assailed them with all the weapons in his well-filled armory of denunciation; and not only had every conspicuous Democratic leader received his stalwart blows, but the whole party had repeatedly felt the force of his fearless and masterful onset.

There was naturally great curiosity to see how his nomination would be received: first, by the projectors of the Liberal revolt, and second, by the Democracy. Most of the Liberals promptly acquiesced, though a few protested. Especially among the Ohio representatives there was great discontent. Stanley Matthews humorously and regretfully admitted that he was "not a success at politics." Judge Hoadly published a card calling the Cincinnati result "the alliance of Tammany and Blair," but still hoping for some way of escape from Grant. Most of the German Liberals rejected the ticket, doubtless finding other objections emphasized by their dissent from Mr. Greeley's well-known attitude on sumptuary legislation. The free-trade Liberals of New York held a meeting of protest, presided over by William Cullen Bryant, and addressed by David A. Wells, Edward Atkinson, and others who had participated in the Cincinnati Convention. But this opposition possessed little importance. The positive political force which had entered into the Liberal movement stood fast, and the really important question related to the temper and action of the Democrats.

Their first feeling was one of chagrin and resentment. They had encouraged the Republican revolt, with sanguine hope of a result which they could cordially accept, and they were deeply mortified by an issue whose embarrassment for themselves could not be concealed. They had counted on the nomination of Mr. Adams, Judge Davis, Senator Trumbull, or some moderate Republican of that type, whom they could adopt without repugnance. The unexpected selection of their life-long antagonist confounded their plans and put them to open shame. At the outset, the majority of the Democratic journals of the North either deplored and condemned the result or adopted a non-committal tone. Some of them, like the New-York World, emphatically declared that the Democracy could not ratify a choice which would involve a stultification so humiliating and so complete. A few shrewder journals, of which the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Saint-Louis Republican were the most conspicuous, took the opposite course and from the beginning advocated the indorsement of Mr. Greeley.

In the South the nomination was received with more favor. Mr. Greeley's readiness to go on the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis, his earnest championship of universal amnesty, and his expressed sympathy with the grievances of the old ruling element of the slave States, had created a kindly impression in that section. The prompt utterances of the Southern journals indicated that no obstacle would be encountered in the Democratic ranks below the Potomac. At the North, as the discussion proceeded, it became more and more evident that however reluctant the party might be, it really had to alternative but to accept Mr. Greeley. It had committed itself so fully to the Liberal movement that it could not now abandon it without certain disaster. Its only possible hope of defeating the Republican party lay in the Republican revolt, and the revolt could be fomented and prolonged only by imparting to it prestige and power. The Liberal leaders and journals did not hesitate to say that if it came to a choice between Grant and a Democrat, they would support Grant. With this avowal they were masters of the situation so far as the Democracy was concerned, and the Democratic sentiment, which at first shrank from Greeley, soon became resigned to his candidacy.

While the work of reconciling the free-traders to the nomination of a Protectionist, and of inducing the Democracy to accept an anti-slavery leader, was in full progress, the Republican National Convention met at Philadelphia on the 5th of June. The venerable Gerritt Smith led the delegation from New York, with William Orton, Horace B. Claflin, Stewart L. Woodford, William E. Dodge, and John A. Griswold among his associates. Governor Hayes came from Ohio; General Burnside from Rhode Island; Governor Hawley from Connecticut; Governor Claflin and Alexander H. Rice from Massachusetts; Henry S. Lane and Governor Conrad Baker from Indiana; Governor Cullom from Illinois; James Speed from Kentucky; Amos T. Akerman from Georgia; John B. Henderson from Missouri; William A. Howard from Michigan; Ex-Senator Cattell and Cortlandt Parker from New Jersey; Governor Fairchild from Wisconsin; John R. Lynch, the colored orator, from Mississippi; Morton McMichael, Glenni W. Scofield, and William H. Koontz from Pennsylvania; Thomas Settle from North Carolina; James L. Orr from South Carolina.

Mr. McMichael, whose genial face and eloquent voice were always welcome in a Republican Convention, was selected as temporary chairman. "The malcontents," said he, "who recently met at Cincinnati were without a constituency; the Democrats who are soon to meet at Baltimore will be without a principle. The former, having no motive in common but personal disappointment, attempted a fusion of repellent elements which has resulted in explosion; the latter, degraded from the high estate they once held, propose an abandonment of their identity which means death." The only business appointed for the first day was speedily completed, and left ample time for public addresses. Gerritt Smith, General Logan, Senator Morton, Governor Oglesby, and others made vigorous party appeals, and delivered enthusiastic eulogies upon General Grant. Among the speakers were several colored men. It was the first National Convention in which representatives of their race had appeared as citizens, and the force and aptitude they displayed constituted one of the striking features of the occasion. William H. Gray of Arkansas, B. B. Elliott of South Carolina, and John R. Lynch of Mississippi made effective speeches which were heartily applauded.

With the completion of the organization, by the choice of Judge Settle of North Carolina as permanent president, the Convention was ready on the second day for the nominations; and on the roll-call General Grant was named for President without a dissenting vote. Then came the contest in which the chief interest centred. Mr. Colfax had, at the beginning of the year, written a letter announcing that he would not be a candidate for re-election as Vice-President. He had undoubtedly alienated some of the friendship and popularity he had so long enjoyed. Under these circumstances Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts appeared as a candidate, and made rapid headway in party favor. He had always been a man of the people, and, though not shining with brilliant qualitites, had acquired influence and respect through his robust sense, his sound judgment, and his practical ability. In ready debate, and in the clear and forcible presentation of political issues, he held a high place among Republican leaders. Mr. Colfax had recalled his withdrawal, and as the Convention approached, the contest was so even and well balanced as to stimulate both interest and effort.

The struggle was practically determined, however, in the preliminary caucusses of two or three of the large State delegations. When the roll-call was completed on the first and only ballot, Wilson had 364½ votes and Colfax had 321½. The 22 votes of Virginia had been cast for Governor Lewis, the 26 of Tennessee for Horace Maynard, and the 16 of Texas for Governor Davis. The Virginia delegation was the first to get the floor and change to Wilson, thus securing his nomination; and the others promptly followed. Among the powerful influences which controlled the result were the combination and zealous activity of the Washington newspaper correspondents against Mr. Colfax, who had in some way estranged a friendship that for many years had been most helpful to him.

The platform came from a committee, including among its members General Hawley, Governor Hayes, Glenni W. Schofield, Ex-Attorney-General Speed, Mr. James N. Matthews, then of the Buffalo Commercial, and other representative men. That the year was largely one of personal politics, rather than of clear, sharp, overmastering issues, might be inferred from the scope and character of the resolutions. It was an hour for maintaining what had been gained, rather than for advancing to new demands. Equal suffrage had been established, and the danger of repudiation which had threatened the country in 1868 had apparently passed away. The necessity and duty of preparing for specie resumption, which soon after engrossed public attention, were not yet apprehended or appreciated. Between the two periods the chief work was that of practically enforcing the settlements which had been ordained in the Constitutional Amendments.

The platform, after reciting the chapter of Republican achievements, declared "that complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be established and effectually maintained throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate Federal and State legislation." It asserted that "the recent amendments to the National Constitution should be cordially sustained because they are right; not merely tolerated because they are law." It answered the Liberal arraignment of the civil service by declaring that "any system of the civil service under which the subordinate positions of the Government are rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing, and we therefore favor a reform of the system by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage." Besides these points, the Republican platform opposed further land-grants to corporations, recommended the abolition of the franking privilege, approved further pensions, sustained the Protective tariff, and justified Congress and the President in their measures for the suppression of violent and treasonable organizations in the South.

The Democratic National Convention met at Baltimore on the 9th of July. The intervening two months had demonstrated that it could do nothing but follow the Cincinnati Convention. The delegations were distinctly representative. New York sent Governor Hoffman, General Slocum, S. S. Cox, Clarkson N. Potter, and John Kelly. Among the Pennsylvania delegates were William A. Wallace, Samuel J. Randall, and Lewis Cassidy. Henry B. Payne came from Ohio; Thomas F. Bayard from Delaware; Montgomery Blair from Maryland; Henry G. Davis from West Virginia; Senator Casserly and Ex-Senator Gwin from California; Charles R. English and William H. Barnum from Connecticut; Senator Stockton and Ex-Governor Randolph from New Jersey. The Confederate forces were present in full strength. Generals Gordon, Colquitt, and Hardeman came from Georgia; Fitz-Hugh Lee, Bradley T. Johnson, and Thomas S. Bocock from Virginia; General John S. Williams from Kentucky; Ex-Governor Vance from North Carolina; Ex-Governor Aiken from South Carolina; John H. Reagan from Texas; and George G. Vest from Missouri. Mr. August Belmont, after twelve years of service and defeat, appeared for the last time as chairman of the National Democratic Committee. Thomas Jefferson Randolph of Virginia (grandson of the author of the Declaration of Independence), a venerable and imposing figure, was made temporary chairman, and Ex-Senator James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin, permanent president. Mr. Doolittle, having been first a Democrat, then a Republican, then a Democrat again, could well interpret the duplicate significance of the present movement; and he made a long speech devoted to that end.

On the second day the Committee on Resolutions reported the Cincinnati platform without addition or qualification. There was something grim and grotesque in the now demonstrated purpose of the Democratic Convention to accept the platform which Mr. Greeley had constructed with especial regard for the tender sensibilities of the Liberal Republicans. While the Democrats as a body had persistently opposed emancipation, and regarded it as a great political wrong, the party now resolved to maintain it. Hostile throughout all its ranks to any improvement in the status of the negro, they now determined in favor of his "enfranchisement." Resisting at every step the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, they now resolved to "oppose any re-opening of the questions that have been settled" by the adoption of these great changes in the organic law. With the Southern States dominant in the Convention, their delegates (all former slave-holders and at a later period engaged in rebellion in order to perpetuate slavery) now resolved with docile acquiescence to "recognize the equality of all men before the law; and the duty of the Government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political."

The Confederate leaders, still sore and angry over their failure to break up the Union, now declared that they remembered "with gratitude the heroism and sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic," and that no act of the Democratic party "should ever detract from their justly earned fame, nor withhold the full reward of their patriotism." Hitherto viewing the public debt as the price of their subjugation, they now declared that "the public credit must be sacredly maintained;" and they heartily denounced "repudiation in every form and guise." In their determination to make a complete coalition with the other wing of Mr. Greeley's supporters, the Confederate Democrats determined to accept any test that might be imposed upon them, to endure any humiliation that was needful, to assert and accept any and every inconsistency with their former faith and practice. It is somewhat interesting to compare the platform to which the Democrats assented in 1872 with any they had ever before adopted, or with the record of their senators and representatives in Congress upon all the public questions at issue during the years immediately preceding the Convention.

The report which committed the Democracy to so radical a revolution in its platform of principles met with protest from only an inconsiderable number of the delegates, and was adopted by a vote of 670 to 62. The Convention was now ready for the nominations. It had been plain for some weeks that the Cincinnati ticket would be accepted. The only question was whether the Democratic Convention should formally nominate Greeley and Brown, or whether it should simply indorse them without making them the regular Democratic candidates. It was urged on the one hand that to put the formal seal of Democracy on them might repel some Republican votes which would otherwise be secured. It was answered on the other hand that the passive policy would lose Democratic votes, which were reluctant at the best and could only be held by party claims. There was more danger from the latter source than from the former, and the general sentiment recognized the necessity of stamping the ticket with the highest Democratic authority. There was but one ballot. Mr. Greeley received 686 votes; while 15 from Delaware and New Jersey were cast for James A. Bayard, 21 from Pennsylvania for Jeremiah S. Black, 2 for William S. Groesbeck. For Vice-President Gratz Brown received 713, John W. Stevenson of Kentucky 6, with 13 blank votes.

Mr. Greeley's letter accepting the Democratic nomination appeared a few days later. He frankly stated that the Democrats had expected and would have preferred a different nomination at Cincinnati, and that they accepted him only because the matter was beyond their control. He expressed his personal satisfaction at the endorsement of the Cincinnati platform, and affected to regard this act as the obliteration of all differences. The only other point of the letter was an argument for universal amnesty. This was the one doctrine upon which the parties to the alliance could most readily coalesce, and Mr. Greeley gave it singular prominence, as if confident that it was the surest way of winning Democratic support. He emphasized his position by referring to the case of Mr. Vance, who had just been denied his seat as Senator from North Carolina. Mr. Greeley made this case the chief theme of his letter, and insisted that the policy which excluded the chosen representative from a State, whoever he might be, was incompatible with peace and good will throughout the Union.(1)

With Grant and Greeley fairly in the field, the country entered upon a remarkable canvass. At the beginning of the picturesque and emotional "log cabin canvass of 1840," Mr. Van Buren, with his keen insight into popular movements, had said, in somewhat mixed metaphor, that it would be "either a farce or a tornado." The present canvass gave promise on different grounds of similar alternatives. General Grant had been tried, and with him the country knew what to expect. Mr. Greeley had not been tried, and though the best known man in his own field of journalism, he was the least known and most doubted in the field of Governmental administration. No other candidate could have presented such an antithesis of strength and of weakness. He was the ablest polemic this country has ever produced. His command of strong, idiomatic, controversial English was unrivaled. His faculty of lucid statement and compact reasoning has never been surpassed. Without the graces of fancy or the arts of rhetoric, he was incomparable in direct, pungent, forceful discussion. A keen observer and an omnivorous reader, he had acquired an immense fund of varied knowledge, and he marshaled facts with singular skill and aptness.

In an era remarkable for strong editors in the New-York Press,--embracing Raymond of the Times, the elder Bennett of the Herald, Watson Webb of the Courier-Enquirer, William Cullen Bryant of the Evening Post, with Thurlow Weed and Edwin Crosswell in the rival journals at Albany,--Mr. Greeley easily surpassed them all. His mind was original, creative, incessantly active. His industry was as unwearying as his fertility was inexhaustible. Great as was his intellectual power, his chief strength came from the depth and earnestness of his moral convictions. In the long and arduous battle against the aggressions of Slavery, he had been sleepless and untiring in rousing and quickening the public conscience. He was keenly alive to the distinctions of right and wrong, and his philanthropy responded to every call of humanity. His sympathies were equally touched by the sufferings of the famine-stricken Irish and by the wrongs of the plundered Indians. Next to Henry Clay, whose ardent disciple he was, he had done more than any other man to educate his countrymen in the American system of protection to home industry. He had on all occasions zealously defended the rights of labor; he had waged unsparing war on the evils of intemperance; he had made himself an oracle with the American farmers; and his influence was even more potent in the remote prairie homes than within the shadow of Printing-House Square. With his dogmatic earnestness, his extraordinary mental qualities, his moral power, and his quick sympathy with the instincts and impulses of the masses, he was in a peculiar sense the Tribune of the people. In any reckoning of the personal forces of the century, Horace Greeley must be counted among the foremost--intellectually and morally.

When he left the fields of labor in which he had become illustrious, to pass the ordeal of a Presidential candidate, the opposite and weaker sides of his character and career were brought into view. He was headstrong, impulsive, and opinionated. If he had the strength of a giant in battle, he lacked the wisdom of the sage in council. If he was irresistible in his own appropriate sphere of moral and economic discussion, he was uncertain and unstable when he ventured beyond its limits. He was a powerful agitator and a matchless leader of debate, rather than a master of government. Those who most admired his honesty, courage, and power in the realm of his true greatness, most distrusted his fitness to hold the reins of administration. He had in critical periods evinced a want both of firmness and of sagacity. When the Southern States were on the eve of secession and the temper of the country was on trial, he had, though with honest intentions, shown signs of irresolution and vacillation. When he was betrayed into the ill-advised and abortive peace negotiations with Southern commissioners at Niagara, he had displayed the lack of tact and penetration which made the people doubt the solidity and coolness of his judgment. His methods of dealing with the most intricate problems of finance seemed experimental and rash. The sensitive interests of business shrank from his visionary theories and his dangerous empiricism. His earlier affiliation with novel and doubtful social schemes had laid him open to the reproach of being called a man of isms.

Mr. Greeley had moreover weakened himself by showing a singular thirst for public office. It is strange that one who held a commanding station, and who wielded an unequaled influence, should have been ambitious for the smaller honors of public life. But Mr. Greeley had craved even minor offices, from which he could have derive no distinction, and, in his own phrase, had dissolved the firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley because, as he conceived, his claims to official promotion were not fairly recognized. This known aspiration added to the reasons which discredited his unnatural alliance with the Democracy. His personal characteristics, always marked, were exaggerated and distorted in the portraitures drawn by his adversaries. All adverse considerations were brought to bear with irresistible effect as the canvass proceeded, and his splendid services and undeniable greatness could not weigh in the scale against the political elements and personal disqualifications with which his Presidential candidacy was identified.

The political agitation became general in the country as early as July. Senator Conkling inaugurated the Grant campaign in New York with an elaborate and comprehensive review of the personal and public issues on trial. Senator Sherman and other leading speakers took the field with equal promptness. On the opposite side, Senator Sumner, who had sought in May to challenge and prevent the renomination of General Grant by concentrating in one massive broadside all that could be suggested against him, now appeared in a public letter advising the colored people to vote for Greeley. Mr. Blaine replied in a letter pointing out that Mr. Greeley, in denying the power of the General Government to interpose, had committed himself to a policy which left the colored people without protection.(2)

The September elections had ordinarily given the earliest indication in Presidential campaigns; but circumstances conspired this year to make the North-Carolina election, which was held on the 1st of August, the preliminary test of popular feeling. The earliest returns from North Carolina, coming from the eastern part of the State, were favorable to the partisans of Mr. Greeley. They claimed a decided victory, and were highly elated. The returns from the Western and mountain counties, which were not all received for several days, reversed the first reports, and established a Republican success. This change produced a re-action, and set the tide in the opposite direction. From this hour the popular current was clearly with the Republicans. The September elections in Vermont and Maine resulted in more than the average Republican majorities, and demonstrated that Mr. Greeley's candidacy had not broken the lines of the party. Early in that month a body of Democrats, who declined to accept Mr. Greeley, and who called themselves "Straightouts," held a convention at Louisville, and nominated Charles O'Connor for President and John Quincy Adams for Vice-President. The ticket received a small number of votes in many States, but did not become an important factor in the National struggle.

In anticipation of the October elections Mr. Greeley made an extended tour through Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, addressing great masses of people every day and many times a day during a period of two weeks. His speeches, while chiefly devoted to his view of the duty and policy of pacification, discussed many questions and many phases of the chief question. They were varied, forcible, and well considered. They presented his case with an ability which could not be exceeded, and they added to the general estimate of his intellectual faculties and resources. He called out a larger proportion of those who intended to vote against him than any candidate had ever before succeeded in doing. His name had been honored for so many years in every Republican household, that the desire to see and hear him was universal, and secured to him the majesty of numbers at every meeting. So great indeed was the general demonstration of interest, that a degree of uneasiness was created at Republican headquarters as to the ultimate effect of his tour.

The State contests had been strongly organized on both sides at the decisive points. In New York the Democrats nominated Francis Kernan for Governor,--a man of spotless character and great popularity. The Republicans selected General John A. Dix as the rival candidate, on the earnest suggestion of Thurlow Weed, whose sagacity in regard to the strength of political leaders was rarely at fault. General Dix was in his seventy-fifth year, but was fresh and vigorous both in body and mind. In Indiana the leading Democrat, Thomas A. Hendricks, accepted the gubernatorial nomination and the leadership of his party, against General Thomas M. Browne, a popular Republican and a strong man on the stump. Pennsylvania was the scene of a peculiarly bitter and angry conflict. General Hartranft, the Republican candidate for Governor, had been Auditor-General of the State, and his administration of the office was bitterly assailed. The old factional differences in the State now entered into the antagonism, and he was strenuously fought by an element of his own party under the inspiration of Colonel Forney, who, while professedly supporting Grant, threw all the force of the Philadelphia Press into the warfare against Hartranft. This violent opposition encouraged the partisans of Mr. Greeley with the hope that they might secure the prestige of victory over the Republicans in Pennsylvania, whose October verdicts had always proved an unerring index to Presidential elections. But they were doomed to disappointment. The people saw that the charges against General Hartranft were not only unfounded but malicious, and he was chosen Governor by more than 35,000 majority. Ohio gave a Republican majority on the same day of more than 14,000; and though Mr. Hendricks carried Indiana by 1,148, this narrow margin for the strongest Democrat in the State was accepted as confirming the sure indications in the other States.

The defeat of Mr. Greeley and the re-election of General Grant were now, in the popular belief, assured. The result was the most decisive, in the popular vote, of any Presidential election since the unopposed choice of Monroe in 1820; and on the electoral vote the only contests so one-sided were in the election of Pierce in 1852, and the second election of Lincoln in 1864, when the States in rebellion did not participate. The majorities were unprecedented. General Grant carried Pennsylvania by 137,548, New York by 53,455, Illinois by 57,006, Iowa by 60,370, Massachusetts by 74,212, Michigan by 60,100, Ohio by 37,501, and Indiana by 22,515. Several of the Southern States presented figures of similar proportion. In South Carolina the Republican majority was 49,587, in Mississippi 34,887, and in North Carolina 24,675. Mr. Greeley carried no Northern state, and only six Southern States,--Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. But these great majorities were not normal, and did not indicate the real strength of parties. The truth is, that after the October elections Mr. Greeley's canvass was utterly hopeless; and thousands of Democrats sought to humiliate their leaders for the folly of the nomination by absenting themselves from the polls. The Democratic experiment of taking a Republican candidate had left the Republican party unbroken; while the Democratic party, if not broken, was at least discontented and disheartened,--given over within its own ranks to recrimination and revenge.

The political disaster to Mr. Greeley was followed by a startling and melancholy conclusion. He was called during the last days of the canvass to the bedside of his dying wife, whom he buried before the day of election. Despite this sorrow and despite the defeat, which, in separating him from his old associates, was more than an ordinary political reverse, he promptly returned with unshaken resolve and intrepid spirit to the editorship of the Tribune,--the true sphere of his influence, the field of his real conquests. But the strain through which he had passed, following years of incessant care and labor, had broken his vigorous constitution. His physical strength was completely undermined, his superb intellectual powers gave way. Before the expiration of the month which witnessed his crushing defeat he had gone to his rest. The controversies which had so recently divided the country were hushed in the presence of death; and all the people, remembering only his noble impulses, his great work for humanity, his broad impress upon the age, united in honoring and mourning one of the most remarkable men in American history.

[(1) Zebulon B. Vance had served in Congress prior to the war. He had participated in the Rebellion and had thus become subject to the disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment. His disabilities were removed at a later date, but at this time their remission had not been asked and they were still resting upon him. With the full knowledge that he was thus disqualified he was elected to the Senate, and the Senate declined to recognize an election defiantly made in the face of the Constitutional objection.]

[(2) Senator Sumner retired from the canvass and sailed for Europe in September. Hostile as he was to President Grant, he saw in the end that his defeat would subject the nation to Democratic rule and to a ruinous re-action, which Mr. Greeley as President could not prevent.]

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Chapter XXIII

The friends of General Grant intended that his second inauguration (March 4, 1873) should be even more impressive than the first; but the skies were unpropitious, and the day will long be remembered, by those who witnessed the festivities, for the severity of the cold,--altogether exceptional in the climate of Washington. It destroyed the pleasure of an occasion which would otherwise have been given to unrestrained rejoicing over an event that was looked upon by the great majority of the people of the United States as peculiarly auspicious.

For a man who had always been singularly reticent concerning himself, both in public and private, the President gave free expression to what he regarded as the mistreatment and abuse he had received from political opponents. He looked forward, he said, "with the greatest anxiety for release from responsibilities which at times are almost overwhelming," and from which he had "scarcely had a respite since the eventful firing on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, to the present day." "My services," said he, "were then tendered and accepted under the first call for troops growing out of the event. I did not ask for place or position, and was entirely without influence or the acquaintance of persons of influence, but was resolved to perform my part in a struggle threatening the very existence of the Nation. I performed a conscientious duty without asking promotion or command, and without a revengeful feeling towards any section or individual. Notwithstanding this, throughout the war and from my candidacy for my present office in 1868 to the close of the last Presidential campaign, I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history, which to-day I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict which I gratefully accept as my vindication."

Surprise was generally expressed at this manifestation of personal feeling on the part of the President. He had undoubtedly been called upon to confront many unpleasant things, as every incumbent of his office must; but General Grant was surely in error in considering himself defamed beyond the experience of his predecessors. The obloquy encountered by Mr. Jefferson in 1800, by both Adams and Jackson in 1828, and by Mr. Clay, as a candidate, for twenty years, far exceeded in recklessness that from which the President had suffered. A military education and an army life had not prepared General Grant for the abandoned form of vituperation to which he was necessarily subjected when he became a candidate for the Presidency. For this reason, perhaps, he endured it less patiently than his predecessors, who had been subjected to it in worse form and more intolerant spirit. But General Grant had the good fortune, in great degree denied to his predecessors, to see his political enemies withdraw their unfounded aspersions during his lifetime, to see his calumniators become his personal and official eulogists, practically retracting the slanders and imputations to which they had given loose tongue when the object at stake was his defeat for the Presidency.

The President made changes in his Cabinet and had lost the two Massachusetts members,--E. Rockwood Hoar, Attorney-General, and Mr. Boutwell, Secretary of the Treasury. The former resigned in 1870; the latter in 1873, to take the seat in the Senate made vacant by the election of Henry Wilson to the Vice-Presidency. These gentlemen were among the most valued of President Grant's advisers, and the retirement of each was deeply regretted. The changes in the Cabinet continued through President Grant's second term.(1)

The Forty-third Congress organized on the first Monday in December, 1873. Among the new senators were some men already well known, and others who subsequently became conspicuous in the public service:--

--William B. Allison of Iowa had served eight years in the House, closing with March 4, 1871, and was now promoted to the Senate by the people of his State, who appreciated his sterling qualities. For industry, good judgment, strong common sense, and fidelity to every trust, both personal and public, Mr. Allison has established an enviable reputation. He devoted himself to financial questions and soon acquired in the Senate the position of influence which he had long held in the House. In both branches of Congress his service has been attended with an exceptional degree of popularity among his associates of both parties.

--Aaron A. Sargent, a native of Massachusetts, had served six years in the House at two different periods (beginning in 1861) as a representative from California. He was originally a printer and editor, but turned his attention to the law and became a member of the bar in 1854. He enjoyed the distinction in California of being a pioneer of 1849, and was thoroughly acquainted with the development of the State at every step in her wonderful progress. No man ever kept more eager watch over the interests of his constituency or was more constant and indefatigable in his legislative duties.

--John J. Ingalls, a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Williams College, sought a home in Kansas directly after the completion of his law studies in 1858. He at once took part in public affairs, holding various offices under the Territorial and State Governments in succession; was for some years editor of a prominent paper; and was engaged steadily in the practice of the law until his election to the Senate. His training and culture are far beyond that ordinarily implied by the possession of a college diploma. His mind has been enriched by the study of books and disciplined by controversy at the Bar and in the Senate. As a speaker he is fluent and eloquent, but perhaps too much given to severity of expression. He possesses in marked degree the dangerous power of sarcasm, and in any discussion which borders upon personal issues Mr. Ingalls is an antagonist to be avoided. But outside the arena of personal conflict he is a genial man. He devotes himself closely to his senatorial duties, and exhibits the steady growth which uniformly attends the superior mind.

--John P. Jones entered the Senate from Nevada in his forty-third year. Though born in Wales, he was reared from infancy in the northern part of Ohio. He went to California before he attained his majority, and subsequently became a citizen of Nevada. His Welsh blood, his life in the Western Reserve, and his long experience as a miner on the Pacific slope, combined to make a rare and somewhat remarkable character. His educational facilities embraced only the public schools of Cleveland, but he has by his own efforts acquired a great mass of curious and valuable information. A close observer of men, gifted with humor and appreciating humor in others, he is a genial companion and always welcome guest. He is a man of originality and works out his own conclusions. His views of financial and economical questions are often in conflict with current maxims and established precedents, but no one can listen to him without being impressed by his intellectual power.

--Richard J. Oglesby, who took the place of Lyman Trumbull as senator from Illinois, is a native of Kentucky, but went to Illinois when twelve years of age. He was admitted to the bar as soon as he attained his majority, in 1845. He was a soldier in the Mexican war, and spent two years as a miner in California. On returning to Illinois he took active part in politics, and was influential in promoting the nomination of Mr. Lincoln for the Presidency in 1860. He enlisted in the Union Army as soon as the civil war began, went to the field as a Colonel and retired from it as a Major-General. He was Governor of his State from 1865 to 1869, and was re-elected to the same office in 1872 but was immediately transferred to the Senate. Few men have enjoyed a greater degree of personal popularity among neighbors, acquaintances, and the people of an entire States, than General Oglesby. His frankness, his kindly disposition, his sympathy with the desires and the needs of the great mass of the people, his pride in Illinois and his devotion to her interests, all combined to give him not merely the political support but the strong personal attachment of his fellow-citizens.

--John H. Mitchell, a native of Pennsylvania who went to the Pacific coast before he had fairly passed from the period of boyhood, now returned as senator from Oregon at thirty-seven years of age. He had been diligent and successful as a lawyer, and had acquainted himself in a very thorough manner with the wants and the interests of his State, to which he devoted himself with assiduity and success. He was an accurate man and always discharged his senatorial duties with care and fidelity.

The new senators from the South were in themselves the proof that the Republicans still had control in several of the reconstructed States, and that in others the Democrats had regained complete ascendency.--Stephen W. Dorsey, who had been in the military service from Ohio and settled in Arkansas after the war, now appeared as senator from that State, at thirty-two years of age.--John J. Patterson, a native of Pennsylvania, came from South Carolina, and Simon B. Conover, a native of New Jersey, from Florida.--Georgia had been recovered by the Democrats, and now sent John B. Gordon as senator to succeed Joshua Hill. General Gordon had been conspicuous in the Confederate service, commanding a corps in the army of General Lee. He enjoyed at the time of his election great personal popularity in his State.--North Carolina, though carried on the popular vote for General Grant, had elected a Democratic Legislature; and A. S. Merrimon, prominent at the bar of his State and of long service on the bench, now appeared with credentials as senator to succeed John Pool.

The most conspicuous additions to the House of Representatives of the Forty-third Congress were E. Rockwood Hoar of Massachusetts, Lyman Tremaine of New York, L. Q. C. Lamar of Mississippi, William R. Morrison of Illinois, John A. Kasson of Iowa, and Hugh J. Jewett of Ohio. These gentlemen were already widely known to the country. Judge Hoar and Mr. Tremaine served but one term; Mr. Jewett resigned to take the Presidency of the Erie Railroad; Mr. Morrison, Mr. Kasson, and Mr. Lamar acquired additional distinction by subsequent service. Among those now entering who grew into prominence were Julius C. Burrows, George Willard, and Jay A. Hubbell of Michigan; Charles G. Williams of Wisconsin; Richard P. Bland (of "Bland dollar" fame), T. T. Crittenden, and Edwin O. Stanard of Missouri; Horace F. Page of California; Greenbury L. Fort of Illinois; James Wilson and James W. McDill of Iowa; William A. Phillips of Kansas; Lorenzo Danford, James W. Robinson, Milton I. Southard, and Richard C. Parsons from Ohio; Lemuel Todd, A. Herr Smith, and Hiester Clymer of Pennsylvania; Eppa Hunton and John T. Harris of Virginia; John M. Glover and Aylett H. Buckner of Missouri. Henry J. Scudder, a very intelligent gentleman whose service should have been longer, came from the Staten Island district, New York. Milton Sayler and Henry B. Banning entered from the Cincinnati districts, the latter with the distinction of having defeated Stanley Matthews. Stephen A. Hurlbut and Joseph G. Cannon entered from Illinois. Each soon acquired a prominent position in the House,--General Hurlbut as a ready debater, and Mr. Cannon as an earnest worker. Mr. Cannon, indeed, became an authority in the House on all matters pertaining to the Postal Service of the United States.

--Thomas C. Platt came from the Binghamton district of New York. He had been an active man of business and had gained personal popularity. He developed an aptitude for public affairs and soon acquired influence in his State. He was not a trained debater, nor had he, when he entered Congress, official experience of any kind. But he was gifted with strong common sense, and had that quick judgment of men which contributes so essentially to success in public life.

--William Walter Phelps came from the Passaic district of New Jersey. He is a member of the well-known Connecticut family of that name,--a family distinguished for integrity and independence of character, and for success in great financial enterprises. Mr. Phelps received a thorough intellectual training and graduated with distinction at Yale College in 1860. He was soon after admitted to the bar of New York, and took part in the management of various corporations. He has an admirable talent for extempore speech. The inheritance of a large fortune has perhaps in some degree hindered Mr. Phelps's success in a political career; but it has not robbed him of manly ambition, or lowered his estimate of a worthy and honorable life.

--Stewart L. Woodford entered from one of the Brooklyn districts. Graduating at Columbia College in 1854, he was soon after admitted to the bar, but left his practice to enlist in the Union service when the civil war began. He was a good solider, and reached the rank of Brigadier-General. He was elected Lieutenant-Governor of New York in 1866 at thirty-one years of age. He has acquired wide popularity as a platform speaker. He enjoys the unlimited confidence and respect of friends and neighbors,--the best attestation that can be given of a man's real character.

--Stephen B. Elkins was for four years a most efficient delegate in Congress from New Mexico. He was a distinguished graduate of Missouri University, and though reared in a community where Southern influences prevailed was an earnest Union man. He went to New Mexico soon after attaining his majority, served in the Legislative Assembly, became prominent at the bar, was Attorney-General of the Territory, and afterwards United-States District Attorney. He entered Congress in his thirty-second year.

--Two other delegates who were in Congress at the same time, Richard C. McCormick of Arizona, and Martin Maginnis of Montana,--the one a Republican and the other a Democrat,--became distinguished for the zeal and ability with which they guarded the interests of their constituents.

The long and honorable service of Edward McPherson as Clerk of the House, terminated with the close of the Forty-third Congress. He had held the position for twelve consecutive years--a period which followed directly after four years of service as representative in Congress from the Gettysburg district. When first elected to Congress he was but twenty-eight years of age. The Clerkship of the House is a highly responsible office, and no man could discharge its complex duties with greater intelligence, fidelity and discretion than did Mr. McPherson throughout the whole period of his service.(2) Beyond his official duties he rendered great service to the public by the compilation of political handbooks for Presidential and Congressional elections. The facts pertinent to political discussion were impartially presented and admirably arranged. Mr. McPherson's larger works, the histories of the Rebellion and of Reconstruction, are invaluable to the political student.

On Friday, the sixth day of March, 1874, Charles Sumner was in the Senate chamber for the last time. He took active part in the proceedings of the day, debating at some length the bill proposing an appropriation for the Centennial celebration at Philadelphia. On Monday, the 9th, to which day the Senate adjourned, his absence was noticed, but not commented on further than that one member remembered Mr. Sumner's complaining of a sense of great fatigue after his speech of Friday. The session of Monday lasted but a few minutes, as the Senate adjourned from respect to the memory of Ex-President Fillmore, who had died the day before at his home in Buffalo. On Tuesday there were rumors withing the circle of Mr. Sumner's intimate friends that he was ill, but no special anxiety was felt until near nightfall, when it was known that he was suffering from a sudden and violent attack of angina pectoris, and grave apprehensions were felt by his physicians. By a coincidence which did not escape observation, it was the anniversary of the day on which three years before he was removed from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations. He died in the afternoon of the next day, Wednesday, March 11 (1874). On Thursday the funeral services were held in the Senate chamber, and were marked with a manifestation of personal sorrow on the part of multitudes of people, more profound than had attended the last rites of any statesman of the generation,--Abraham Lincoln alone excepted. Formal eulogies were pronounced upon his life and character on the 27th of April, his colleague Mr. Boutwell presenting the appropriate resolutions in the Senate, and his intimate friend of many years, E. Rockwood Hoar, in the House. The eulogies in both branches were numerous and touching. They were not confined to party, to section, or to race.

Whoever was first in other fields of statesmanship, the pre-eminence of Mr. Sumner on the slavery question must always be conceded. Profoundly conversant with all subject of legislation, he yet devoted himself absorbingly to the one issue which appealed to his judgment and his conscience. He held the Republican party to a high standard,--a standard which but for his courage and determination might have been lowered at several crises in the history of the struggle for Liberty. He did not live to see the accomplishment of all the measures to which he had dedicated his powers. He died without seeing his Civil Rights Bill enacted into law. For that only he desired to live. To his colleague and faithful friend, Henry Wilson, who followed him so soon, he said mournfully: "If the publication of my works were completed and my Civil Rights Bill passed, no visitor could enter the door that would be more welcome than Death." He was weary of life. He was solitary, without kindred, without domestic ties. He had been subjected at intervals for eighteen years to great suffering, which with the anxieties of public life and the solitude which had become burdensome wore away his energy. However much his wisdom may be questioned by those who were not his political friends, whatever criticism may be made of the zeal which not infrequently was assumed to be ill-timed and mis-judged, Mr. Sumner must ever be regarded as a scholar, an orator, a philanthropist, a philosopher, a statesman whose splendid and unsullied fame will always form part of the true glory of the Nation.

An incident related by Mr. Dawes in his eulogy of Mr. Sumner strikingly illustrates the shortsightedness and miscalculation of the Southern statesmen preceding the Rebellion. Mr. Sumner's first term in the Senate began just as the last term of Colonel Benton closed. Soon after his arrival in Washington the Massachusetts senator met the illustrious Missourian. They became well acquainted and friendly. In the ensuing year the two eminent men had a conversation on public affairs. The Compromise of 1850 had been approved by both the great parties in their National Conventions, and Franklin Pierce had just been chosen President. The power of the South seemed fixed, its control of public events irresistible. To the apprehension of the political historian the Slave power had not been so strong since the day of the Missouri Compromise, and its statesmen looked forward to policies which would still further enhance its strength. Colonel Benton said to Mr. Sumner: "You have come upon the stage too late, sir. All our great men have passed away. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster are gone. Not only have the great men passed away, but the great issues, too, raised from our form of government and of deepest interest to its founders and their immediate descendants, have been settled, sir. The last of these was the National Bank, and that has been overthrown forever. Nothing is left you, sir, but puny sectional questions and petty strifes about slavery and fugitive-slave laws, involving no National issues."

It is instructive to remember that in little more than eight years after this conversation, and but three years after Colonel Benton's death, the civil war began, and opened to Mr. Sumner the opportunity of leading in a political and social revolution almost without parallel in modern times.

A singular interest was added to the moral eulogies of Mr. Sumner by the speech of Mr. Lamar of Mississippi, who had just returned to the House of Representatives which he left thirteen years before to join his State in secession. It was a mark of positive genius in a Southern representative to pronounce a fervid and discriminating eulogy upon Mr. Sumner, and skilfully to interweave with it a defense of that which Mr. Sumner like John Wesley believed to be the sum of all villainies. Only a man of Mr. Lamar's peculiar mental type could have accomplished the task. He pleased the radical anti-slavery sentiment of New England: he did not displease the radical pro-slavery sentiment of the South. There is a type of mind in the East that delights in refined fallacies, in the reconciling of apparent contradictions, in the tracing of distinction and resemblances where less subtle intellects fail to perceive their possibility. There is a certain Orientalism in the mind of Mr. Lamar, strangely admixed with typical Americanism. He is full of reflection, full of imagination; seemingly careless, yet closely observant; apparently dreamy, yet altogether practical.

It is the possession of these contradictory qualities which accounts for Mr. Lamar's political course. His reason, his faith, his hope, all led him to believe in the necessity of preserving the Union of States; but he persuaded himself that fidelity to a constituency which had honored him, personal ties with friends from whom he could not part, the maintenance of an institution which he was pledged to defend, called upon him to stand with the secession leaders in the revolt of 1861. He was thus ensnared in the toils of his own reasoning. His very strength became his weakness. He could not escape from his self-imposed thraldom and he ended by following a cause whose success could bring no peace, instead of sustaining a cause whose righteousness was the assurance of victory.

Alexander H. Stephens took his seat in the same Congress with Mr. Lamar. He had acquired a commanding reputation in the South by his sixteen years' service in the House from 1843 to 1859. He had been trained in the Whig school, and had early espoused the strong Federal principles which recognized the doctrine of secession as a heresy, and disunion as a crime. In joining the Rebellion he renounced a creed of Nationality in which the Democratic promoters of the Confederacy had never believed. He incurred thereby a heavier responsibility than those who, trained in the strict construction school, found sovereignty in the State and recognized no superior allegiance to the National Government; who in fact denied that there was any such power existing as a National Government. If Mr. Stephens had maintained his original devotion to the National idea, a noble course lay before him; but when he drifted from his moorings of loyalty to the Union he surrendered the position that could have given him fame. He was rewarded with the second office in the Confederacy--which may be taken as the measure of his importance to the Secession cause, according to the estimate of the original conspirators against the Union.

Mr. Stephens was physically a shattered man when he resumed his seat in Congress, but the activity of his mind was unabated. With all their disposition to look upon as an illustrious statesman, it must be frankly confessed that he made little impression upon the new generation of public men. Instead of the admiration which his speeches were once said to have elicited in the House, the wonder now grew that he ever could have been considered an oracle or a leader. He had been dominated in the crises of his career by the superior will and greater ability of Robert Toombs; and he now appeared merely as a relic of the past in a representative assembly in which his voice was said to have been once potential.

At the close of the Forty-first Congress in the month of February, 1871, an Act was passed providing a government for the District of Columbia. It repealed the charters of the cities of Washington and Georgetown, destroyed the old Levy court which existed under the statutes of Maryland before the District was ceded, and placed over the entire territory a form of government totally differing from any which had theretofore existed. It consisted of a Governor, and a Legislative Assembly composed of a Council and a House of Delegates. The Governor and the Council were to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and the House of Delegates was to be elected by the people; thus making the government conform in essential respects to that which had been provided for the earlier Territories of the United States. Powers assimilating mainly with those granted to new Territories were conferred upon the government of the District, including the power to borrow money to an amount equivalent to "five per cent of the assessed value of property in said District;" and to borrow without charter limitations, "provided the law authorizing the same shall, at a general election, have been submitted to the people, and have received a majority of the votes cast for members of the Legislative Assembly at such election."

It was a radical change, and the powers were granted because of the necessity, which was generally felt, that something should be done for the improvement of the National Capital. Alexander R. Shepherd, a native of the District, engaged in business as a plumber and known to be a man of remarkable energy and enterprise, was appointed Governor of the District by President Grant and was confirmed by the Senate. He was a personal friend in whom the President reposed boundless confidence. In the course of little more than three years, which was the duration of the new government, an astonishing change was effected in the character and appearance of the city of Washington. From an ill-paved, ill-lighted, unattractive city, it became a model of regularity, cleanliness, and beauty. No similar transformation has ever been so speedily realized in an American city, the model being found only in certain European capitals where public money had been lavishly expended for adornment.

Of course so great an improvement involved the expenditure of large sums, and the District of Columbia found itself in debt to the amount of several millions. An agitation was aroused against what was alleged to be the corrupt extravagance of the government; the law authorizing it was repealed and the District placed under the direction of three Commissioners, who have since administered its affairs. Whatever fault may be found, whatever charges may be made, the fact remains that Governor Shepherd wrought a complete revolution in the appearance of the Capital. Perhaps a prudent and cautious man would not have ventured to go as fast and as far as he went, but there was no proof that selfish motives had inspired his action. He had not enriched himself, and when the government ended he was compelled to seek a new field of enterprise in the mineral region of Northern Mexico. The prejudice evoked towards Governor Shepherd has in large part died away, and he is justly entitled to be regarded as one who conferred inestimable benefits upon the city of Washington. The subsequent growth of population, the great number of new and handsome residences, the rapid and continuous rise in the value of real estate, the vastly increased number of annual visitors, have given a new life to the National Capital which dates distinctly from the changes and improvements which he inaugurated.

The Republican party naturally considered itself invested with a new lease of power. The victory in the Presidential election of 1872 had been so sweeping, both in the number of States and in the popular majorities, that it seemed as if no re-action were possible for years to come. The Liberal-Republican organization had been practically dissolved by the disastrous defeat of Mr. Greeley, and the Democracy had been left prostrate, discouraged and rent with personal feuds. But the financial panic of 1873 precipitated a new element into the political field, and led to a counter-revolution that threatened to be as irresistible as the Republican victory which it followed. The first warning came in the election of William Allen Governor of Ohio in 1873, over Edward F. Noyes, the Republican incumbent. It was followed by the defeat of General Dix and the election of Samuel J. Tilden Governor of New York the ensuing year, and by such a re-action throughout the country as gave to the Democratic party control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1859.

The extent of the political revolution was made apparent in the vote of the House of Representatives on the 6th of March, 1875, when the Forty-fourth Congress was duly organized. Michael C. Kerr of Indiana, long and favorably known as one of the Democratic leaders of the House, was nominated by his party for Speaker, and the Republicans nominated Mr. Blaine, who for the past six years had occupied the Chair. Mr. Kerr received 173 votes; Mr. Blaine received 106. The relative strength of the two parties had therefore been reversed from the preceding Congress. It was a species of revolution which brought to the front many men not before known to the public.

--Among the Democrats, now the dominant party, the most prominent of the new members from the South was John Randolph Tucker of Virginia, a distinguished lawyer who had been the Attorney-General of his State and always a zealous adherent of the State-rights' school; Alfred M. Scales of North Carolina, a member of the House in 1857-59 and afterwards Governor of his State; Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, who had become distinguished as a member of the Confederate Senate, and who as a popular orator and ready debater had attained high rank in the South; Joseph C. S. Blackburn and Milton J. Durham of Kentucky,--the former a fluent speaker, the latter an indefatigable worker; Washington C. Whittihorne and John D. C. Atkins of Tennessee,--the latter a member of the House in the Thirty-fifth Congress; John H. Reagan of Texas, Confederate Postmaster-General; Otho R. Singleton and Charles E. Hooker of Mississippi,--the former a member of the House as early as 1853; Charles J. Faulkner of West Virginia, a prominent Democrat before the war, and conspicuously identified with the rebellion; Thomas L. Jones of Kentucky, who had already served in the House; Randall L. Gibson and E. John Ellis, young and ambitious men from Louisiana; and John Goode, jun., of Virginia, who had been a member of the Confederate Congress. The growing strength of the South was noticeable in the House, and was the main reliance of the Democratic party.

--From the North the most distinguished Democrats were Abram S. Hewitt and Scott Lord from New York; Frank Jones of New Hampshire, a successful business man of great and deserved popularity; Charles P. Thompson, a well-known lawyer of Massachusetts; Chester W. Chaplin, a railroad magnate from the same State; George A. Jenks, a rising lawyer from Pennsylvania; John A. McMahon of Ohio, apt and ready in discussion; Alpheus S. Williams of Michigan, a West-Point graduate, a General in the civil war, and in his younger days an intimate friend and traveling-companion of the "Chevalier" Wikoff; William Pitt Lynde of Milwaukee, a noted member of the Wisconsin Bar.--From Illinois three Democrats entered who became active in the partisan arena in after years,--Carter H. Harrison, William M. Springer, and William A. J. Sparks. John V. LeMoyne, son of the eminent anti-slavery leader, Franics J. LeMoyne, entered as a Democratic member from Chicago.

--The most prominent Republicans among the new members were Martin I. Townsend of the Troy district, New York, not more distinguished for his knowledge of the law than for his rare gifts of wit and humor; Elbridge G. Lapham of Canandaigua and Lyman R. Bass of Buffalo, both well known at the bar of Western New York; Simeon B. Chittenden, a successful merchant of the city of New York; Winthrop W. Ketchum, for many years in the Legislature of Pennsylvania; Charles H. Joyce of Vermont, with a good war record; William M. Crapo, a lawyer with large practice at New Bedford, Massachusetts; Julius H. Seelye, the able and learned President of Amherst College; Henry L. Pierce, a well-known manufacturer of Massachusetts; and Thomas J. Henderson of Illinois, a Brigadier-General in the Union Army.--Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire was a member of the bar, enlisted early in the war, and attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He had been in both branches of the Legislature of his State, and was a leader in the Prohibition cause.

In the Senate, the Democratic gain, though it had not changed the control of the body, was very noticeable. William W. Eaton of Connecticut, an old-fashioned Democrat, honest, sincere, and outspoken in his sentiments, succeeded Governor Buckingham. Francis Kernan of New York, who had already served in the House of Representatives, took the seat of Governor Fenton. Joseph E. McDonald of Indiana, a man of strong parts, succeeded Daniel D. Pratt. William A. Wallace of Pennsylvania, an extreme partisan, but an agreeable gentleman and loyal friend, took the place of John Scott. Allen T. Caperton, an estimable man who had served in the Confederate Senate, now succeeded Arthur L. Boreman of West Virginia. Samuel B. Maxey of Texas, a graduate of West Point, succeeded J. W. Flanagan. Charles W. Jones of Florida succeeded Abijah Gilbert. Robert E. Withers of Virginia succeeded John F. Lewis. Last and most prominent of all, Ex-President Andrew Johnson succeeded William G. Brownlow from Tennessee.

These nine Democrats took the place of nine Republicans, making a net difference in the Senate of eighteen,--a difference somewhat increased by the fact that Francis M. Cockrell, a decided Democrat, took the place of Carl Schurz, who, as between political parties, was always undecided. Nor was this uniform series of Democratic gains balanced in any degree by Republican gains. The new Republican senators all took the places of Republican predecessors. The other new Democratic senators took the places of Democratic predecessors. The Republicans had lost the power to command two-thirds of the Senate, and had entered upon that struggle which led soon after to a contest for the mastery of the body. More and more it became evident that as the commissions of the present Republican senators from the South should expire, their places would be filled by Democrats; and that with thirty-two senators in a compact body from the recent slave States, it would require a strong Republican union in the North to maintain a majority.

Among the Republicans who now entered the Senate were General Burnside, who succeeded William Sprague from Rhode Island; Angus Cameron, who succeeded Matthew H. Carpenter from Wisconsin; Isaac P. Christiancy, who succeeded Zachariah Chandler from Michigan; Samuel J. R. McMillan, who succeeded William R. Washburn, who had served out the remnant of Mr. Sumner's term. Newton Booth, who had been Governor of California, now took his seat in the Senate as the colleague of Mr. Sargent. Governor Booth had suddenly come into prominence on the Pacific coast, and though professing a general allegiance to the Republican party, he had been and continued to be somewhat independent in his views and his votes, especially upon railroad questions.

Ex-President Johnson signalized his return by beginning in the Senate just where he had left off in the Presidency. Two weeks after the session convened he seized the occasion of a resolution relating to Louisiana affairs to recount some incidents in his own Administration, and gave to his whole speech the color of a vindictive attack upon President Grant. The motive was somewhat concealed under decorous language, but the attack was nevertheless personal and direct. He assailed Sheridan's military administration in Louisiana, defended that of General Hancock, accused President Grant of designing to seize a third term of his office, imputed evil motives to him for accepting gifts from friends, considered the liberties of the country in danger from his administration, and thought that his tyranny was not concealed by the gloved hand. He seemed to have nursed his wrath during the six years he had passed in private life, and to have aspired to the Senate simply for the revival of animosities and for the renewal of controversies with those for whom he cherished special hatred.

The impression made upon the Senate and upon the country by Mr. Johnson's speech was unpleasant. His anger, peculiarly unbecoming his years and his station, was directed especially against the men who would not follow him in his desertion of the party which had elevated him to power. At least twice before, in the history of the Federal Government, it had been demonstrated that a President who for any cause runs counter to the views and wishes of the party that elected him is doomed to disappointment, and is fortunate if he escape disgrace. Mr. Johnson had drunk the cup of humiliation to its dregs, and the remaining energies of his life seemed now devoted to the punishment, or least the denunciation, of those who had obstructed and defeated his policies while President. Revenge is always an ignoble motive, pardonable, if at all, when inspired by the hot blood of youth, but to be regarded as not only lamentable but pitiable in men who approach threescore and ten. The extra session closed on the 24th of March. Mr. Johnson did not live to resume his seat. On the last day of the ensuing July (1875) he died peacefully at his home in East Tennessee among friends who had watched his progress from poverty and illiteracy to the highest position in the Republic. He was in the sixty-seventh year of his age.

The annual message of the President contained no reference to the condition of the South. The stringent and persistent prosecution in the United States courts of members of the organized bands of Ku-Klux had tended to dissolve that organization and to restrain its members from the commission of such outrages as had distinguished the earlier period of their existence. There was hope in the minds of sanguine people of the North that an era of peace and harmony had begun in the South, which would be characterized by a fair recognition of the rights of all the population, that free suffrage would be protected, that the hand of violence would be stayed, and that the Centennial year would find every State of the Republic in the enjoyment of material prosperity, of the fair administration of the law, of the enforcement of equal rights.

No body of men rejoiced over this prospect more heartily than Republican senators and representatives, for if it should prove true they would have cause of gratulation both as patriots and partisans. The complete pacification of the country on the basis of equal and exact justice was the leading desire of all right-minded men, and the free suffrage which this implied would give to the Republicans the opportunity for a fair trial of strength in the advocacy of their principles before the Southern people. The picture was one which would well adorn the great National anniversary so near at hand, but many men feared that it was a picture only and not a reality.

An occasion arose four weeks after the delivery of the President's message, to test the real feelings of the House concerning the Southern question. Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania introduced a bill removing the political disabilities from every person in the United States. Since the broad Act of Amnesty in 1872, which excepted only a few classes from its operation, a considerable number of Southern gentlemen had been relieved upon individual application; but the mass of those excepted were still under the disability. The disposition of the Republicans was to grant without hesitation an amnesty almost universal, the exceptions, with a majority of the party probably, being limited to three persons,--Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, and Jacob Thompson. Mr. Randall brought his bill to a vote on the 10th of January, 1876. By the Constitution it required a vote of two-thirds, but fell short of the number, the ayes being 175, the noes 97. The negative vote was wholly Republican; while the affirmative vote included all the Democratic members together with a small number of Republicans.

Mr. Blaine moved to amend by excepting Jefferson Davis from the benefits of the bill. The situation was peculiar. Upon a direct vote, if the amendment were submitted, very few Republicans could be found who would include Mr. Davis by name in the amnesty; and there was a large number of Democrats who wished to be saved from the embarrassment implied in such a procedure. They appreciated the difference between voting for a bill of general amnesty which included Jefferson Davis without name, and voting for an amendment which named him and him only for restoration to eligibility to any office under the Government of the United States. No punishment was inflicted upon Mr. Davis; no confiscation of his property was attempted or desired; Congress did not wish to deny him the right of suffrage. He was simply deprived of the right to aspire to the honors of the Republic. The Democrats being a majority of the House could prevent the amendment of the bill, and the Republicans being more than one-third could prevent the passage of the bill. It was a singular case of playing at parliamentary cross-purposes, and afforded the ground, as it proved in the end, for a prolonged and somewhat exciting discussion.

The reason assigned for excepting Jefferson Davis was not that he had been a rebel, for rebels were restored by thousands; not that he had been in Congress, for Southern Congressmen were restored by scores if not by hundreds; not that he had been the chief of the revolutionary government, for that would only be a difference of degree in an offense in which all had shared. The point of objection was that Mr. Davis, with the supreme power of the Confederacy in his hands, both military and civil, had permitted extraordinary cruelties to be inflicted upon prisoners of war. He was held to be legally and morally responsible, in that, being able to prevent the horrors of Andersonville prison, he did not prevent them.

The debate took a somewhat wide range, engaging Mr. Blaine and General Garfield as the leading participants on the Republican side, and Benjamin H. Hill, Mr. Randall, and Mr. Cox on the Democratic side. Upon a second effort to pass the bill with an amendment requiring an oath of loyalty as a prerequisite to removal of disabilities, it failed to secure the necessary two-thirds, the ayes being 184, the noes 97. All that the Republicans demanded was a vote on the exclusion of Jefferson Davis, and this was steadily refused. Many gentlemen of the South are still under disability because of the parliamentary tactics pursued by the Democratic party of the House of Representatives at that time. If a vote had been allowed on Jefferson Davis, his name would have been rejected, and the bill, which included even Robert Toombs and Jacob Thompson, would have been passed without delay. If Mr. Davis though that he was ungenerously treated by the Republicans, he must have found ample compensation in the conduct of both Southern and Northern Democrats, who kept seven hundred prominent supporters of the rebellion under disability for the simple and only reason that the Ex-President of the Confederacy could not share in the clemency.

[(1) In the history of the Federal Government only one administration (that of Franklin Pierce) has completed its full term without a single change in the Cabinet announced at its beginning. The following are the members of General Grant's Cabinet, the changes in which were in the aggregate more numerous than in the Cabinet of any of his predecessors:--

Secretaries of State.--Elihu B. Washburne, Hamilton Fish. Secretaries of the Treasury.--George S. Boutwell, William A. Richardson, Benjamin H. Bristow, Lot M. Morrill. Secretaries of War.--John A. Rawlins, William W. Belknap, Alphonso Taft, James Donald Cameron. Secretaries of the Navy.--Adolph E. Borie, George M. Robeson. Postmasters-General.--John A. J. Creswell, James W. Marshall, Marshall Jewell, James N. Tyner. Attorneys-General.--E. Rockwood Hoar, Amos T. Akerman, George H. Williams, Edwards Pierrepont, Alphonso Taft. Secretaries of the Interior.--Jacob D. Cox, Columbus Delano, Zachariah Chandler.

By this it will be seen that twenty-four Cabinet officers served under General Grant. But his number does not include Alexander T. Stewart, who though confirmed did not enter upon his duties as Secretary of the Treasury; or General Sherman, who was Secretary of War ad interim; or Eugene Hale, who was appointed Postmaster-General, but never entered upon service. Mr. Taft is counted only once, though he served in two Departments.]

[(2) Pennsylvanians have filled the Clerkship of the House for forty years in all. The best known, besides Mr. McPherson, are Matthew St. Clair Clarke, Walter S. Franklin and John W. Forney.]

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Chapter XXIV

The course of President Grant's Administration in regard to the Finances had proved in all respects successful. The first bill which received his signature was the Act "to strengthen the public credit," approved March 18, 1869. It pledged the Government to the payment in coin, or its equivalent, of all obligations, notes, and bonds, except those where the law authorizing the issue stipulated that payment might be made in "lawful money," which simply meant legal-tender notes. The demand for this declaratory Act arose from a desire to undo the evil which had been caused by the resolution of the Democratic party in the preceding Presidential election in favor of paying all public debts in paper, except where coin was specifically named in the law. The position of each party was therefore precisely the reverse of the other: the Republicans held the normal law of payment of Government obligations to be in coin, unless payment in paper money had previously been agreed upon; the Democrats held that all Government obligations might be discharged in paper, unless payment in coin had previously been agreed upon. This was the division line in the Presidential canvass of 1868, and it was the division line among parties in the Forty-first Congress. In the House, where the Act had been reported by General Schenck, the vote on its passage was 98 ayes to 47 noes. No Democrat voted in the affirmative. A few Republicans, under the lead of General Butler, voted in the negative.

When the Act was reported to the Senate, Mr. Thurman offered an amendment declaring that "nothing in this Act shall apply to the obligations commonly called Five-twenty bonds." This would reserve three-fourths of the bonded debt from the operation of the law, and would effectively defeat its object. Every Democrat in the Senate who voted on the question, voted in favor of Mr. Thurman's amendment. Mr. Morton of Indiana and one or two other Republican senators voted with the Democrats, but the amendment was defeated by a decisive vote.

--Mr. Garrett Davis offered an amendment, "that the just and equitable measure of the obligation of the United States upon their outstanding bonds, is the value at the time in gold and silver coin of the paper currency advanced and paid to the Government on those bonds." Mr. Davis argued earnestly in favor of his amendment. He declared it to be "robbery and iniquity for this Congress to make the people of the United States pay nearly $900,000,000 more than by law and equity they are bound to pay."

--Mr. Bayard seconded the arguments of Mr. Davis. "Suppose, instead of issuing paper money," said Mr. Bayard, "it had pleased Congress to order a debasement of our National coinage. Suppose twenty-five per cent more of alloy or worthless metal had been injected into our currency, and with that base coinage men had come forward to buy your bonds, what would be thought of the man who, when the day of payment of those bonds arrived, should say, 'I gave you lead, or lead in certain proportions; but for all the worthless metal I handed you, you must give me back gold'? Whether he was more maddened or more dishonest would be the only question arising in men's minds." Mr. Bayard used this analogy to illustrate the wrong of paying the bonds of the Government in coin, and expressed the belief that the debasing of the coinage would have been "far more Constitutional and right than the power which Congress exercised when they issued paper money."

When President Grant sent his first annual message to Congress (December, 1869), the National debt, less cash in the Treasury, amounted to $2,453,559,735, the cash being $194,674.947. The aggregate obligations bearing interest in coin had risen to $2,107,938,000; while the three per cent certificates and the Navy pension-fund, which alone carried interest in currency, amounted to $61,195,000. The debt bearing no interest, composed of old demand-notes, legal-tenders, fractional currency, and certificates for gold deposited, had fallen to $431,861,763. The seven-thirty notes had disappeared from the financial statement, and the bonds authorized by the Act of March 3, 1865, amounted to $958,455,700. The rate of interest on the bonds still stood at six per cent, except on the old debt of 1858 and 1860, and upon $194,567,300 of the ten-forties issued under the Act of March 3, 1864. One of the chief recommendations in the President's message was the refunding of the debt in bonds, with interest not exceeding four and a half per cent. He urged legislation for redeeming the legal-tenders at their market value, at the option of the holder, increasing the rate from day to day or week to week. He believed "that immediate resumption, even if practicable, would not be desirable," but that "a return to a specie basis should be commenced immediately." He expressed the belief that the revenue might be at once reduced $60,000,000 or possibly $80,000,000 a year. In connection with this feature of the message, Secretary Boutwell submitted a well-matured plan for funding the debt and expressed entire confidence in its success.

The result was the refunding Act of July 14, 1870. It was a broad and effective measure. It was subsequently modified by the Act of Jan. 20, 1871, permitting the payment of interest quarterly, and increasing the amount of bonds bearing five per cent interest. The two laws for purposes of refunding, taken together, authorized the issue of $500,000,000 at five per cent, $300,000,000 at four and a half per cent, and $1,000,000,000 at four per cent,--all to be payable in coin, to be exempt from taxation, and to be issued without any increase of the debt. The fives were redeemable after ten years, the four-and-a-halfs after fifteen years, the fours after thirty years. The laws were not enacted without considerable legislative controversy. The exemption from taxation and the payment in coin were stubbornly though unsuccessfully resisted. A proposition to state the interest in sterling money and in francs, as well as in dollars, so that the bonds might be more easily negotiated abroad, was vigorously pressed, but was happily defeated.

Further reduction of the revenue was effected by the Act of July 4, 1870. There was an earnest effort to repeal the income tax, but it was retained for the year, and was to terminate at the end of 1871. The duties on tea, coffee, sugar, and some articles of iron and steel, were diminished. In presenting the conference report Mr. Schenck estimated that the reduction in customs charges by the Bill would be $27,000,000, and in the internal taxes more than $50,000,000. Many persons feared that the reduction of taxes was too rapid, but it was impossible to resist a movement so popular as the removal of the burdens left by the war. Under such a pressure it was probable that Congress might not have sufficient regard to the prospective needs of the Government.

The condition of trade, wise legislation, and the hope of refunding the debt with rapid reduction of interest, were producing beneficent results; but the expectations of the Secretary of the Treasury in regard to the prompt sale of the new bonds were rudely shocked by the war between France and Germany, which was declared immediately after Congress had clothed him with enlarged powers. At home, as well as in Europe, the money markets were so far disturbed that prudence forbade immediate action. After a necessary postponement and careful preparation Mr. Boutwell gave notice that on March 6, 1871, books would be opened in this country and in Europe for subscriptions to the bonds. Preference was awarded to subscribers for the five per cents within the limit of $200,000,000. On the anniversary of the passage of the Act, July 14, 1871, a proposition came from a syndicate of London bankers to take this whole amount of the five per cents. The National banks, with a few individuals in this country, subscribed for $117,518,950, and the residue was conceded to the foreign syndicate.

The leading arguments in the House for the policy of refunding were made by Mr. Dawes and by Mr. Ellis H. Roberts. The gain to the Government, as they proved, would be obvious and great. If the new bonds were exchanged for the whole amount of six per cents already issued, and were to run only till the time of redemption, the saving, without compounding interest, would amount to an enormous aggregate, certainly exceeding $600,000,000. The country was therefore disappointed that events beyond the sea had for a time suspended the operations of funding, and compelled the Treasury to maintain its high rate of interest. The suspension was not due to the neglect or mismanagement of any executive officer, or to lack of foresight on the part of Congress in providing the requisite legislation. It was simply a case in which the money market for the time prevented the Secretary of the Treasury from accomplishing any large proportion of the total funding operations contemplated by the Government.

When the Forty-second Congress met in December, 1871, the gold premium was 101-1/8 @ 110-3/8. The funding process was in its early stages. Specie was going to Europe at the rate of $66,000,000 per annum, and the balance of trade for that fiscal year was running against the United States to the amount of $183,000,000. It was a period of financial theories. The prejudice against National banks seemed to increase, and the fiat of a Government so rich and powerful as that of the United States would, it was maintained, suffice to make all the notes it might put out available for money, and the volume ought to be abundant enough to stimulate every nerve of production and trade.

Against such appeals the more conservative sentiment of the country held that honor and safety demanded the redemption of the United-States notes in coin at the earliest practicable day. The steps proposed to this end were extreme and therefore unwise. A large number of financiers urged the repeal of the legal-tender clause, the funding of the notes into bonds with some limitations, and further contraction of their volume by direct withdrawal. The argument was presented that if a man could not pay his overdue note he would deem it a privilege to give a new obligation to run on interest for a longer period, and the Nation ought to prove itself as honest as its citizens. This specious plea assumed that the legal-tender note was simply a promise to pay, with only the qualities of an individual obligation. It neglected to consider its different and essential character as a circulating medium. The advocates of the repeal of the legal-tender clause included many able lawyers, who however did not meet the objection that this clause was an element in the value of the currency, only less important than that of positive redemption. Nor did they seem to perceive that the abrogation of this feature in the contract between the Government and the note-holders would lead to confusion and distress in commercial circles, and would violate the obligations of common honesty.

The debate went on in Congress and in the press, but no general scheme of legislation could be agreed upon. Congress took up the tariff and the internal revenue, and passed the Acts of March 5, May 1, and June 6, 1872. By the first Act, all internal taxes were removed from fish, fruits, and meats. By the second, all duties on tea and coffee were absolutely removed after the first day of the ensuing July, reducing the revenue by this single Act to the extent of $20,000,000 per annum. The last Act (June 6) made a reduction of ten per cent in the customs duties on all importations of cotton, wool, iron, steel, paper, rubber, glass, and leather, with a number of specific changes in the tariff, and a large addition to the free list. The effect of the three Acts upon the revenue of the Government was a diminution of $44,000,000 in custom receipts and $20,650,000 in internal taxes. The machinery for collecting the internal revenue was greatly simplified and improved. A proposition introduced by Mr. Clinton L. Merriam of New York proved to be of great convenience and safety to the National banks. It permitted the Secretary of the Treasury to issue certificates of deposit in denominations of $5,000 without interest, in exchange for notes, and these certificates became available for the reserves of the banks and for settlements of clearing-house balances.

The Forty-third Congress met in a period of discouragement and disaster. The financial panic which swept over New York in the preceding September (1873) was followed by deep depression throughout the country. Wrecks of business enterprises were everywhere visible, the financial markets of the world were disturbed and alarmed, doubt and hesitation filled the minds of senators and representatives. A black flag seemed to overhand the finances of the Government as well as of individuals. Plans for funding the public debt were checked, the movement for resumption was weakened. The situation gave fresh arguments to the champions of the fiat dollar. It affected commerce and diminished the revenue by arresting production and by reducing imports. The division of opinion among senators and representatives was very pronounced, as was shown in the bills introduced, in the amendments submitted, and still more significantly in the debates upon the President's message. The first definite action was upon a currency bill introduced in the Senate. As reported from the Finance Committee, the first section fixed the maximum limit of United-States notes at $382,000,000. The limit was raised to $400,000,000 on motion of Mr. Wright of Iowa, and the Senate refused to allow any clause for future reduction. This was $44,000,000 beyond the amount of legal-tender notes then in circulation. An enlargement of the circulation of the National banks was made at the same time, by which in connection with the greenbacks there might be an addition of $100,000,000 to the paper currency of the country. The two Houses differed as to details, but soon agreed upon a bill containing the general provisions proposed in the Senate.

This action of Congress followed an earnest popular demand, resulting from the distrust which had become so general in consequence of the panic. A large proportion of the business men, especially in the West and South-West, believed that an increased circulation of notes would bring great relief. At the beginning of the session of Congress, President Grant had clearly intimated that he had come to the same conclusion. He said in his annual message: "In view of the great actual contraction that has taken place in the currency, and the comparative contraction continuously going on, due to the increase of manufactures and all the industries, I do not believe there is too much of it now for the dullest period of the year. Indeed, if clearing-houses should be established, thus forcing redemption, it is a question for your consideration whether banking should not be made free, retaining all the safeguards now required to secure bill-holders." But nearly five months had elapsed since the President had expressed these views, and during that time he had come to more conservative conclusions, and he now vetoed the bill, which did not seem so radical in its provisions as his own recommendation had been. To make National banking free before compelling the banks to redeem their notes in coin, would have proved a measureless inflation, and the President wisely receded from the position assumed in his annual message.

An important Act, changing the Customs laws, was reported from the Committee on Ways and Means by Mr. Ellis H. Roberts, who had made the investigation which led to it with great care and sagacity. It received the assent of both branches, though some amendments were added to it in the Senate. It was radical in its nature. It changed methods which had prevailed from the foundation of the Government, and it has withstood all criticism since its enactment. Instead of moieties and perquisites theretofore allowed to customs officers in the chief cities for the detection of frauds upon the revenue, specific salaries were established; and the modes of procedure against violators of the law were more clearly defined, and made more efficient.

The various propositions in this Congress fairly illustrate the conflicting views on financial matters held among the people. The business depression continued. The country looked to Congress for relief, and yet did not agree upon any measures of relief. The party in the majority was held responsible for the condition of industry and trade, and the elections in the autumn of 1874 showed how wide-spread and intense was the dissatisfaction with the existing order of things. The very freedom and breadth of discussion which were essential to secure unity of action were taken as ground of censure, and the failure to provide for a return to specie payment was brought as an indictment against the majority in Congress by those who had shown the least faith in the National credit and the least regard for the National honor.

For the first time since the organization of the Republican party and its accession to power in the Union, an opposition majority was elected to the House of Representatives. The Republican leaders took warning, and agreed that before losing control of the lower House they would secure the passage of an Act for the resumption of specie payment. President Grant and Secretary Bristow were earnest in recommending a measure of that character. Personal conferences to compare views, to consolidate Republican opinion, and to induce harmony of action were held early in the second session of the Forty-third Congress. Concessions were made, a middle ground was secured, and a measure was finally perfected. The long discussion had demonstrated the difficulties of the situation. But public necessity and party interest combined to induce a sacrifice of financial theories in order that practical results might be achieved.

The bill reported to the Senate by Mr. Sherman on the 21st of December (1874) embodied the conclusions which had been reached in private conference. The next day he gave notice that he would press it to an immediate vote. Mr. Thurman and Mr. Schurz spoke of it as a party measure agreed upon in caucus. The former argued at some length against the bill. The latter stated that "with the present volume of currency it is impossible to resume and maintain redemption," and he sought unsuccessfully to secure the cancellation of legal-tender notes at the rate of $2,000,000 per month. Mr. Bayard charged that the bill was rather adverse than favorable to resumption. The Senate passed the bill on the same day by a vote of 32 to 14. Not a single Democratic member of the Senate supported it. The negative vote was Democratic, with the exception of Sprague of Rhode Island and Tipton of Nebraska.

The House did not consider the bill until the 7th of January, directly after the holidays. It was then passed by 125 ayes to 106 noes, a much closer vote than had been anticipated. The Democrats were unanimous against it, and were strengthened by the accession of some twenty Republicans. These were of two classes. Judge Kelley stood as the representative of one, deeming it unwise and premature to force specie payment at that time; the other class was represented by Mr. Dawes and the Messrs. Hoar of Massachusetts, General Hawley of Connecticut, and some others from New England, who thought the measure that came from the Senate was incomplete, in that it did not provide for specie payment soon enough, or take means sufficiently energetic to secure it at the date named. With these exceptions the Act was a Republican measure, unanimously opposed by the Democratic party.

In approving the Act President Grant took the somewhat unusual step of sending to the Senate a special message. While declaring the measure a subject of congratulation, he suggested further legislation to make it more effective. His recommendations included first an increase of the revenue; second the redemption of legal-tender notes in coin, reckoned at a premium of ten per cent in the beginning and gradually diminishing until the date named in the Act for resumption; third an addition to the facilities for coinage, in one or more of the Western cities, so as to save to the miner the cost of transporting bullion to the principal mint at Philadelphia. Congress responded only to the first of the President's recommendations.

The policy of increasing the revenue became the subject of earnest discussion for the remainder of the Forty-third Congress. The rapid repeal of taxes, in which each session of Congress had vied with the one preceding it for a series of years, had produced its legitimate result in an impending deficiency in the Treasury. This was now remedied by the Act approved March 3, 1875, to protect the sinking-fund and provide for the exigencies of the Government. This Act repealed the provision for a reduction of ten per cent in certain customs duties under the Act of June 6, 1872, which had really been passed without full consideration or due appreciation of its probably effect. The Act also increased the duties on sugars and certain other articles, raised the tax on spirits from 70 to 90 cents a gallon, and on tobacco from 20 to 24 cents per pound, and modified in many respects the regulations concerning the collection of revenue from these products.

Such was the action as originally devised for resumption of specie payment. The most remarkable feature of the bill to that end was the promptness with which it was passed, after the long period of preparatory debate in both Houses of Congress on the subject. Nearly ten years had elapsed since the war closed, and although the subject was one which constantly engaged the attention of financiers and to a large extent enlisted the interest of the public, it had never been framed into a practical legislative measure. It had now been accomplished, as might well be said, in a day. The pressure upon the Republicans, caused by the Democratic victory of the preceding autumn, was very great. The Democratic senators and representatives, though recording themselves unanimously in opposition to the measure, were not willing to risk its defeat by the parliamentary strategy of delay, as they might easily have done. Their party leaders had no faith in the measure, but they knew how troublesome was the subject; they knew that it had proved the stumbling-block in the Republican policy for years, and they were more than willing that it should be taken out of the way on the eve of their accession to the control of the House of Representatives. If the Act should prove to be successful their hostility to it might be forgotten and they could well arraign their opponents for so long neglecting to enact it. If on the other hand it should prove unsuccessful, it would remain a standing reproach to the financial policy of the Republican party. Benefits as they well knew are soon forgotten, while injuries are tenaciously remembered; and this they believed was as true of parties as of persons. In short, as the leaders of the Democracy viewed it, the Resumption Act, passed over their combined vote, could do them no harm, while the chances were that it would inure to their advantage.

The Territory of Colorado, which was prevented by Andrew Johnson from entering the Union in 1866, was now, after the lapse of ten years, admitted as a State under a bill approved by General Grant in the closing year of his Presidency. The Territory had in the long interval developed great wealth in the precious metals, in rich deposits of iron and coal, and most surprising of all, in its agricultural resources. The two senators, Jerome B. Chaffee and Henry M. Teller, were kinsmen and were among the pioneers of the Territory who had been deeply concerned in its progress and development. Mr. Chaffee had represented the Territory in Congress for the six years immediately preceding its admission as a State, and had worked with energy and success for the interest of his constituents. He was somewhat impaired in health when he took his seat in the Senate, and did not desire to remain in public life. Mr. Teller continued in the Senate for a longer period, and acquired political leadership in his State.

Michael C. Kerr, who was elected Speaker of the Forty-fourth Congress, was prevented by ill-health from presiding for any considerable length of time. Owing to marked symptoms of pulmonary disease he was warned by friends that he should not accept a position so laborious and so exhausting as the Speakership. It was beyond his strength. He died during the Congressional recess on the 19th of August, 1876, in the fiftieth year of his age. At the meeting of Congress in the following December, Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania (who had been Mr. Kerr's competitor in the Democratic caucus) was chosen Speaker. He had represented a Philadelphia district for thirteen years and had acquired a thorough knowledge of the rules and methods of the House. He is a strong partisan, with many elements of leadership. He is fair-minded towards his political opponents, generous to his friends, makes no compromise with enemies, never neglects his public duties, and never forgets the interests of the Democratic party.

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Chapter XXV

Between 1860 and 1876 the Presidential nominations of the Republican party had been predetermined and practically unopposed. The second nomination of Mr. Lincoln and the two nominations of General Grant were so unmistakably dictated by public opinion that they came without a contest. In 1876, for the first time since the Republican party had acquired National power, the candidate was not selected in advance, and the National Convention met to make a choice, not simply to register a popular decree. This freedom of action imparted a personal interest to the preliminary canvass and a struggle in the Convention itself, which previous nominations had lacked. The public excitement was enhanced by the close and doubtful balance between the two parties. For the first time since its original success, the power of the Republican party had been seriously broken in 1874. The war and reconstruction periods were receding, and with the lessening stress of their demands, the popular conviction of the necessity of Republican rule was losing much of its force. New questions were pressing forward, and parties were largely judged by these later tests.

The open field and free choice on the Republican side developed several competitors for the nomination.--Senator Morton of Indiana naturally held a prominent place. His ability, his party devotion, his fearless services as the War Governor of a State which was disturbed with tumult and sedition, his conspicuous part in the Reconstruction contests in the Senate, all marked him as entitled to great consideration.

--Senator Conkling was earnestly sustained by the Republican organization of New York, of which he was then the undisputed chief. His friends went to the National Convention with the power of the largest delegation and with the influence of the most important State. He had the additional aid of the good will and good wishes of President Grant.

--Mr. Bristow of Kentucky was also a candidate. As Secretary of the Treasury he had been zealous in pushing investigation and prosecution of the whiskey frauds then rife. His mode of procedure created the impression that he was acting independently of the Administration of which he was a part, if not in studied conflict with it, and this demonstration, while objectionable to many, commended him to a considerable body of Republicans who were inclined on that account to associate him with the growing cry for administrative reform. He had the advantage also of strong local influence. He came from a State adjoining the city where the Convention was to be held, and through the newspapers the surrounding atmosphere was colored in his favor.

--But Ohio, which has long held a prominent part in shaping the National counsels, had a candidate more distinctively her own. Rutherford B. Hayes had been chosen Governor the preceding year under circumstances which attested his popular strength. In 1873 the Democrats had elected the venerable William Allen, and had won a still more emphatic victory the following year in choosing members of the House of Representatives. In 1875 the Republicans put forward General Hayes to defeat Mr. Allen and reclaim the State, and his success vindicated the wisdom of their choice. He had already served two terms as Governor, and was regarded as a safe and judicious executive. He was entirely free from factional entanglements, and was considered by many wise political leaders to be a peculiarly available candidate.

--The delegates from Pennsylvania, like those from Ohio, presented their Governor as a candidate. But worthy as General Hartranft was conceded to be, the circumstances surrounding the movement for him inspired the general belief that he was brought forward less with the expectation of a serious effort on his behalf than for the purpose of making his candidacy the means of holding the delegation in hand.

--The only other candidate who had an active support was Mr. Blaine of Maine.

The National Convention met at Cincinnati on the 14th of June and became at once the centre of popular attention. Among the delegates were many men of position and influence in their respective States, and some with national reputation. Massachusetts sent E. Rockwood Hoar, George F. Hoar, Richard A. Dana, jun., and James Russell Lowell. Among the Maine delegates were Eugene Hale, William P. Frye, Nelson Dingley, jun., Charles A. Boutelle, and Seth L. Milliken. General Hawley and Samuel Fessenden came from Connecticut, and Governor Van Zandt and Nelson W. Aldrich from Rhode Island. New York had a strong representation, including Alonzo B. Cornell, Theodore M. Pomeroy, James N. Matthews of the Buffalo Express, George William Curtis, Stewart L. Woodford, Clarence A. Seward, William H. Robertson, Charles Emory Smith, then editor of the Albany Journal, Frank Hiscock, and Thomas C. Platt. The Ohio delegation was led by the venerable Senator Wade and by Governor Noyes. J. Donald Cameron, then Secretary of War, Henry M. Hoyt, afterward Governor, General Bingham, John Cessna, and Edward McPherson, appeared at the head of the Pennsylvania forces.

Among other notable delegates were Robert G. Ingersoll and Charles B. Farwell of Illinois; Richard W. Thompson of Indiana; Judge Harlan, later of the Supreme Court, and Ex-Attorney-General Speed of Kentucky; Governor Packard and Senator Kellogg of Louisiana; Henry P. Baldwin and William A. Howard of Michigan; William J. Sewell, George A. Halsey, Garrett A. Hobart, and Frederick Potts of New Jersey; Alexander Ramsey and Dwight M. Sabin of Minnesota; John P. Jones of Nevada; Nathan Goff, jun., of West Virginia; Philetus Sawyer of Wisconsin; Jerome B. Chaffee and Henry M. Teller of Colorado,--all of whom were then or at a later period prominent in the public councils. Theodore M. Pomeroy of New York was made temporary chairman of the Convention, and Edward McPherson of Pennsylvania permanent president. The first day was chiefly occupied with political addresses.

The report of the committee on resolutions was looked for with especial interest. The exigent political issue of the hour was the Currency question. Congress had the year before passed the Resumption Act providing for a return to specie payments in 1879. While there was no serious conflict among Republicans over the general policy, there were differences of opinion as to the wisdom of explicitly indorsing the act with its designation of time and its obligation of immediate preparatory measures. A long struggle took place in the committee on these points and on cognate questions. After a protracted debate the whole subject of framing the platform was entrusted to a sub-committee, composed of General Hawley, Ex-Attorney-General Speed, Governor Dingley of Maine, Governor Chamberlain of South Carolina, James H. Howe of Wisconsin, Governor C. C. Waters of Arkansas, and Charles Emory Smith of New York. Several of these gentlemen possessed experience in the line of duty to which they were assigned. The youngest man of the list, Mr. Emory Smith, then editor of the Albany Journal, had for years taken part in preparing the platforms for Republican conventions in New York, and had become distinguished for the skill and felicity of his language, the aptness with which he embodied the popular thought, and the precision with which he described the issue at stake.

The platform reported to the Convention was clear and emphatic upon the leading issues. It improved the occasion of the Centennial year to repeat the cardinal truths and principles of the Declaration of Independence; it recognized the pacification of the South and the protection of all its citizens as a sacred duty; the enforcement of the Constitutional Amendments was enjoined; and the obligation of removing any just cause of discontent was coupled with that of securing to every American citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political, and public rights; the Public Credit Act, the measure first signed by President Grant, was referred to with the declaration that its "pledge must be fulfilled by a continuous and steady progress to specie payments." The platform also embraced a distinct declaration for a radical reform of the civil service, making a broader and more precise enunciation than was contained in the Liberal platform of 1872, though the assigned reason for that revolt, as given by its champions, was the alleged hostility of the Republican party to improvement in the Government service. The Protective policy was upheld; the extirpation of polygamy was demanded; and an investigation into the Chinese question, then beginning to distract California, was recommended.

With the platform adopted, the Convention proceeded at once to the task of nominating candidates. Mr. Thompson of Indiana presented Senator Morton. The name of Mr. Bristow was submitted by Judge Harlan, and supported by Mr. Curtis and Richard H. Dana, jun. Colonel Ingersoll followed in advocacy of Mr. Blaine, with a speech which placed him at once in the front rank of popular orators. He was seconded by Mr. Frye of Maine, and by Mr. Turner, a well known colored preacher from Georgia. Senator Conkling was eloquently presented by Mr. Stewart L. Woodford; and Governor Hayes by Ex-Governor Noyes, with a few words of approval from Ex-Senator Wade. Marshall Jewell was nominated by Mr. Kellogg of Connecticut; and General Hartranft by Lynn Bartholomew of Pennsylvania. The speeches, as a whole, were pointed and inspiring. Under their stimulating influence the Convention was eager to begin the balloting, but the gathering shades of evening compelled an adjournment to the next morning.

With the opening of the third day the Convention immediately proceeded to the first ballot. The result was: Blaine 285, Morton 124, Bristow 113, Conkling 99, Hayes 61, Hartranft 58, Jewell 11, William A. Wheeler 3. Hartranft's 58 was the solid vote of Pennsylvania; Hayes had the solid 44 of Ohio and a few scattering votes from other States; Conkling had all but one of New York's 70, with 8 from Georgia, 7 from North Carolina, and the remainder scattering; Morton's vote, apart from the 30 of Indiana, came wholly from the South; Bristow's support was divided among nineteen States and one Territory; and Blaine's vote came from twenty-eight States and seven Territories.

The second ballot, taken after the Convention had decided against the unit rule and allowed each delegate to vote as he chose, showed a gain of 11 votes for Blaine, 1 for Bristow, 3 for Hayes, and 5 for Hartranft, with a loss of 4 for Morton and of 6 for Conkling. Jewell had dropped out. The third and fourth ballots proceeded without any material change. On the fifth ballot the solid vote of Michigan was cast for Governor Hayes, and other changes were made which carried his aggregate to 104; while Morton fell to 95. On the sixth ballot the vote for Blaine rose to 308, and that for Hayes to 113, while other candidates lost. When the seventh ballot opened New York retired for consultation on one side of the hall, and Pennsylvania on the other. It was evident that the decisive moment had come. As the roll-call advanced, other candidates were withdrawn and it became a contest between Hayes and Blaine. A large majority of the supporters of Morton, Conkling and Bristow went to Hayes. Pennsylvania gave 28 votes for Hayes and 30 for Blaine. The ballot as concluded stood, Hayes 384, Blaine 351, and Bristow 21. The last named all favored Governor Hayes and his nomination was thereupon made unanimous. For the Vice-Presidency William A. Wheeler and Stewart L. Woodford of New York, Marshall Jewell and Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut, and Frederick T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, were indicated; but before the close of the first ballot Mr. Wheeler was nominated by acclamation.

The ticket thus presented was a surprise to the country. The candidates like all who are nominated against public expectation, failed to excite enthusiasm in the earlier part of the canvass. But both were regarded as able, judicious, and prudent men, and they steadily grew in public favor as the contest waxed warm. Governor Hayes had not been prominent during his brief service in Congress, but his repeated election over the strongest Democrats of Ohio, and his three terms as Governor, had made an excellent impression on the country. He was especially respected for the firmness and fidelity with which he waged battle for honest money against the financial heresies which had at that time taken deep root in his State. Mr. Wheeler had achieved reputation in Congress as a discreet legislator and a practical man of affairs, and was cordially received by the different factions which at that time divided the Republican party of New York.

The Democratic National convention assembled at St. Louis two weeks after the nomination of Hayes and Wheeler. The party leaders and managers came together with more hope of success than they had dared to entertain at any period since the beginning of the civil war. The Democratic victories of 1874 had encouraged them with a confidence which the partial re-action of 1875 had not diminished. They were recovering possession of the South; they were profiting from political discontent in the North which they strove in every way to develop; they were gaining in assurance just in proportion as the war feeling was dying out; and they were reaping the usual advantage of the opposition party in a period of financial depression. Learning wisdom from the blundering course of 1868 and the disastrous experiment of 1872, they were now to uplift the banner of pure Democracy under Democracy's most skillful leadership.

Interest in the movement was deepened by the organized and irresistible force with which Mr. Samuel J. Tilden had assumed leadership and was advancing to the Presidential nomination. Mr. Tilden was in some respects the most striking figure in the Democratic party since Andrew Jackson. Though more than threescore, he had been a conspicuous party chief only three or four years. He had moved forward to unchallenged personal supremacy with a vigor and rapidity which in the political life of the United States have seldom been equaled. His sudden elevation was not the result of accidental circumstances of which he was the fortunate beneficiary. He was the conscious and masterful creator of his position. The sceptre of power in the Democratic party did not drop into his hands; he seized it, and wielded it at his own will. He moulded the conditions which suited his designs, and when the hour was come he assumed the command as of divine right.

But though he thus blazed forth with unexpected brilliancy, his whole life had in fact been a school of preparation. His public career in official position had it is true been limited. He served in the Legislature of 1846 and in the Constitutional Conventions of 1846 and 1867. In both he bestowed especial attention upon the canal policy of the States. He bore a prominent part with Mr. Van Buren in the Barnburners' Revolt of 1848, in which he and some of his associates departed for a brief period from a lifelong pro-slavery record, and rode Free-soil as the stalking-horse of personal resentments and factional designs. He professed devotion to the Wilmot Proviso as earnestly as one of the old Abolitionists, and turned from it as if its advocacy had been the amusement of a summer vacation. He occasionally appeared in National Conventions, and he acted for some years as chairman of the Democratic State Committee of New York. This was the total of his public service until he set forth upon what was the immediate preliminary movement to his Presidential campaign.

But from his earliest manhood he had been a close student of political affairs. He was a devotee of Jackson in his youth, and became one of the ardent disciples of Van Buren, whom he adopted as mentor and model. His earlier political papers are dignified and elevated in tone beyond his years, and show a strong intellect and careful reflection; but they are in the stately and turgid style of the period and lack the decisive and original force of his later productions.

Even when he followed the vigorous Dean Richmond as chairman of the Democratic State Committee, he did not suggest the creative political power which he afterwards revealed. He was regarded rather as a respectable figure-head. It was on this assumption that he escaped completely in the notorious election frauds of New York in 1868. His name was appended to the private call for the earliest possible approximate returns from the interior, a call which meant that the authors only wanted a clue to determine how large a majority must be counted in the metropolis to secure the State. Mr. Tilden denied all knowledge of the letter. Without even consulting him, his authority had been appropriated by the "Tweed Ring," just then rising to its colossal power. During the entire period of its profligate ascendency, Mr. Tilden continued as chairman of the State Committee, but he did not share its corrupt counsels or sanction its audacious schemes. The worst reproach which lies against him is that of remaining too long a passive witness. There was no bond of affiliation between him and the vulgar adventurers who had taken the Democratic party and the city of New York by the throat. He had no sympathy with their coarse and reckless measures. Aside from his abhorrence of their riotous corruption every instinct of self-preservation impelled him to desire their overthrow, for while they ruled he had little hope of influence or preferment. When the exposure of their monstrous robberies had opened the way to their downfall, Mr. Tilden grappled with the menaced Ring and helped to complete its destruction. He labored to capture its intrenchments in the Legislature, fought the conspiracy with a non-partisan combination, went to the Assembly himself, co-operated in the legal prosecution, promoted the impeachment of the corrupt judges, and proved a powerful and capable ally in rescuing the State from this shameful domination.

The extermination of the "Tweed Ring" was Mr. Tilden's opportunity. His hour had come; he promptly grasped the party leadership thus left open. Starting out deliberately for the Presidential nomination, his plan embraced three leading features: his stepping stone was the governorship, his shibboleth was administrative reform, his method was organization to a degree which has never been surpassed. He was swept into the Governor's chair on the crest of the Democratic tidal wave in 1874, and once there every effort was directed to the Presidential succession. He had the sagacity to perceive that in order to gain any solid foothold in the country the Democratic party needed to cut loose from its discredited past and secure a new rallying-cry. It was loaded down with its odious war record; it was divided on fiscal questions; it had fought a losing battle for twelve years on the defensive; and if it was to struggle with any hope it must discover a line on which it could boldly take the aggressive.

Mr. Tilden fancied that he found this pathway to a new career in the resounding demand for a radical reform of administrative methods, and from the hour of his accession to the governorship he sought to give it effect in reality or in semblance. He had received applause and secured promotion from his aid in the overthrow of the "Tweed Ring," and he now declared war against the affiliated "Canal Ring," whose destruction had already been made sure. The circumstances were peculiarly propitious for his whole movement. The extinguishment of the war debt of the State, already nearly accomplished, would bring an immediate and large reduction of taxes. The amendment to the State Constitution (already passed and just producing its effect) prohibiting any taxation or any appropriation for expenditures on the canals, beyond their revenues, would starve the Canal Ring by cutting off its supply. Mr. Tilden became Governor at the right hour to reap the harvest which others had sown. It is seldom that any administration is signalized by two events so impressive and far-reaching as the crumbling of a formidable and long-intrenched foe to honest administration like the Tweed Ring, and a decrease of the tax budge by nearly one-half. It was Mr. Tilden's rare fortune that his Governorship was coincident with these predetermined and assured results. It would be unjust to deny to him the merit of resisting the canal extortionists and hastening their extinction, but it would be equally untrue not to say that in the work of the reformer he did not forget the shrewd calculations of the partisan. He understood better than any other man the art of appropriating to himself the credit of events which would have come to pass without his agency, and of reforms already planned by his political opponents.

By a fortunate concurrence of conditions which he partly made, and which with signal ability he wholly turned to account, Mr. Tilden thus gained the one commanding position in the Democratic party. He held the most vital State of the North in his grasp. He embodied the one thought which expressed the discontent with Republicanism and the hope of the Democracy. He evinced a power of leadership which no man in his party could rival. The Democracy before his day could count but four chiefs of the first rank--Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, and Van Buren. Mr. Tilden was not indeed a leader of the same class with these masters who so long a period shaped the whole thought and policy of their party, but he displayed political capacity of a very high order. He was trained in the school of the famous Albany Regency, and had exhibited much of its ingenuity and power. He placed his reliance both upon ideas and organization. He sought to captivate the popular imagination with a striking thought, and he supported it with the most minute and systematic work. In his own State he discarded all leaders of equal rank with himself, and selected active young men or mere personal followers as his lieutenants. He bore no brother near the throne. In other States he secured strong alliances to promote his interests, and called into existence a National force which was as potent as it was compact.

His political observations covered nearly half a century, and spanned the successive epoches which stretched from the struggle over Nullification to the war of secession and the work of Reconstruction. But through most of this long and stirring era he was engaged in the practice of his profession and the acquisition of wealth. In this work he was peculiarly successful. To the subtlety of an acute legal mind he added the sagacity of a keen business man. He attained especial, indeed almost unrivaled eminence as a corporation lawyer, and thus gained a practice which leads to larger rewards than can be found in other legal fields. While acquiring great reputation he amassed a great fortune, and when at last he entered upon his political career he combined the resources of a full treasury with the arts of an unrivalled manager.

Mr. Tilden has been the subject of vehement and contradictory judgments. His friends have well-nigh canonized him as representing the highest type of public virtue; his foes have painted him as an adept in craft and intrigue. His partisans have held him up as the evangel of a new and purer dispensation; his opponents declare that his ability is marred by selfishness and characterized by cunning. His followers have exalted him as the ablest and most high-minded statesman of the times; his critics have described him as a most artful, astute, and unscrupulous politician. The truth doubtless lies between the two extremes. Adroit, ingenious and wary, skillful to plan and strong to execute, cautious in judgment and vigorous in action, taciturn and mysterious as a rule and yet singularly open and frank on occasions, resting on the old traditions yet leading in new pathways, surprising in the force of his blows and yet leaving a sense of reserved power, Mr. Tilden unquestionably ranks among the greatest masters of political management that our day has seen. Certain it is that his extraordinary success and his exceptional position had inspired the Democratic party with the conviction that he was the one man to command victory, and he moved forward to the Presidential nomination with a confidence which discouraged his opponents and inspired his supporters with a sense of irresistible strength.

When the Convention assembled a futile attempt was made to organize a movement against Mr. Tilden. His undisguised autocracy in New York had provoked jealousies and enmities which were more imposing in name than in numbers. John Kelly, now the master-spirit of reconstructed Tammany, and esteemed as a man of personal integrity, led an implacable warfare, openly proclaiming that Mr. Tilden's nomination would prove fatal to Democratic success in New York. In this pronounced hostility Mr. Kelly had the avowed approval or the secret sanction of conspicuous Democrats whom Mr. Tilden's absorption of power had thrust into the background. Augustus Schell, chairman of the National committee, encouraged the opposition; Erastus Corning was on the ground sustaining it; Chief Justice Church and his friends were known to be in sympathy with it. Attempts were made to secure support for Governor Allen of Ohio, for Governor Hendricks of Indiana, and for General Hancock; but no one of these demonstrations, nor all of them combined, could resist the steady set of the current towards Mr. Tilden, and the organization and all the action of the Convention were clearly in the hands of his friends.

The interests of Mr. Tilden were committed to the care of Mr. Dorsheimer, who had left the Republican ranks but four years before. His chief associate was Senator Kernan. The most prominent delegates from other States were William A. Wallace and Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania, James R. Doolittle and William F. Vilas of Wisconsin, Judge Abbott of Massachusetts, Daniel W. Voorhees and Governor Williams of Indiana, Leon Abbott of New Jersey, General Thomas Ewing of Ohio, Robert M. McLane of Maryland, John A. McClernand of Illinois, and Henry Watterson of Kentucky. The opening speech of Mr. Augustus Schell, as chairman of the National Committee, was notable only in demanding the repeal of the Resumption Act, a demand which expressed the prevailing Democratic sentiment, and which was the more significant as coming from one of the most conservative of the Democratic leaders--one who had large financial interest in New York. Mr. Henry Watterson was made temporary chairman, and General John A. McClernand of Illinois permanent president of the Convention.

The platform, reported from the Committee on Resolutions, was believed to have been prepared under the eye of Mr. Tilden, and was clothed, as general rumor had it, in the rhetoric of Mr. Manton Marble. It was the most elaborate paper of the kind ever put forth by a National Convention. It was marked by the language of an indictment, and contained the extended argument of a stump speech. Its one pervading thought, emphasized in resonant phrase, iterating and reiterating, "that reform is necessary," was an additional proof of its origin. But with all its effusiveness of expression, it lacked definiteness in the enunciation of principles. Only two or three propositions upon pending issues were explicitly set forth. It accepted the Constitutional Amendments; denounced "the present tariff levied upon nearly four thousand articles as a masterpiece of injustice, inequality, and false pretense;" demanded that "all custom-house taxation should be only for revenue;" and then addressed itself to a somewhat vituperative arraignment of the Republican party. On the vital question of the currency it charged that party with "enacting hindrances to the resumption of specie payments," adding: "As such a hindrance we denounce the resumption clause of the Act of 1875, and we here demand its repeal." A controversy arose as to whether simply the resumption clause should be repealed or the entire policy condemned; and a discussion upon that question, led by General Ewing on the one side and by Mr. Dorsheimer on the other, was one of the interesting features of the Convention. General Ewing had made a minority report embodying his views, but at the close of the discussion it was defeated by a vote of 550 to 210, and the platform as it had been arranged under Mr. Tilden's eye was adopted.

The presentation of candidates followed. No one entertained a doubt of the result, but Governor Hendricks, Senator Bayard, General Hancock, Joel Parker, and Governor Allen, were formally named by their respective States. Mr. Tilden was effectively presented by Senator Kernan. The first ballot practically decided the contest. Mr. Tilden received 404½, Mr. Hendricks 140½, General Hancock 75, Governor Allen 34, Senator Bayard 33, with 37 scattering. Mr. Tilden lacked but a few votes of the requisite two-thirds, and before the second ballot was concluded his nomination was declared to be unanimous. The work was complete by the choice of Mr. Hendricks of Indiana for Vice-President. The ticket thus presented was the result of political skill, as it embodied the largest measure of Democratic strength. It united the two States of the North which with a solid vote from the South would control the country. One candidate suited the hard-money element; the other the soft-money element. One aimed to draw recruits; the other to hold the old-time Democrats.

Mr. Tilden's letter of acceptance was directed chiefly to the state of the currency and to the conditions and methods of resuming specie payments. He had no sympathy with the soft-money ideas which dominated so large a section of his party, but he was constrained to support the demand of his own platform for the repeal of the Resumption clause, and he undertook to do it by urging that a system of preparation was all-important, and that the promise of a specific day was of no importance,--forgetting that the Act and the date contemplated and provided preparation. Though the letter was of unusual length it was almost exclusively devoted to these financial questions, and only briefly referred to civil service reform at the conclusion. On that subject his utterances had the same defect of indefiniteness. He described recognized evils, without indicating any practical remedy. Mr. Hayes had been more specific. He had positively declared against the use of official patronage in elections and removed himself from all temptation by giving the voluntary pledge that if elected he would not be a candidate for a second term. Mr. Tilden did not bind himself by any personal pledge, but expressed the "conviction that no reform of the civil service in this country will be complete and permanent until the Chief Magistrate is Constitutionally disqualified for re-election."

The canvass was not marked by striking incidents. Mr. Hayes, who had no inclination for political management, left the conduct of the campaign in the hands of party leaders. It was throughout practically directed by one of the most resolute and competent of men--Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. Mr. Tilden was not an orator, and did not follow the example of Mr. Seymour or Mr. Greeley in going before the people, but skillfully and quietly directed all the movements of the canvass. In spite of his personal fidelity to hard money, the equivocal position of his party was used against him with great effect. The fact that the Republicans had passed the Resumption measure, and that the Democrats had demanded the repeal of its most important feature, made a clear and sharp issue, and the pronounced record of Mr. Hayes as the leader of the fight against the inflationists in Ohio, emphasized the Republican attitude.

The Southern question, though treated as secondary, came into marked prominence. It was brought forward by the course of events. If the solid South was to constitute the chief pillar of Democratic strength, it would exercise a dominant influence in Democratic councils, and the North might naturally regard the possible consequences of its ascendency with misgiving and alarm. So strong did this feeling grow, that Mr. Tilden was compelled, before the close of the campaign, to put forth a letter pledging himself, in the event of his election, to enforce the Constitutional Amendments and resist Southern claims. But every one understood at the same time that the vote of the recent slave States entered into Mr. Tilden's calculations as necessary to his election. The solid South, New York, Indiana, Connecticut, and New Jersey, and possibly Oregon, was the political power embraced in his calculations.

The October States, Ohio and Indiana (Pennsylvania having ceased to vote in that month), did not indicate a decisive result. Ohio went Republican by 9,000; Indiana went Democratic by 5,000 majority. Benjamin Harrison led the Republican forces in the latter State, and but for some troubles which preceded his nomination, and with which he was in no way connected, would probably have carried the State. Both parties therefore came to the Presidential election in November without confidence as to the result. The reports during the night after the polls had closed led to the general belief that Mr. Tilden had been chosen. He had carried New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana, exactly according to his calculations. Had he secured a solid vote in the South? It was widely feared that he had; but very late in the night, or rather very early the next morning, Mr. Chandler, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, received information which convinced him that the Republicans had triumphed in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, and with great confidence he sent over the wires of the Associated Press, too late for many of the morning papers, a telegram which became historic: "Rutherford B. Hayes has received one hundred and eighty-five electoral votes, and is elected."

The Democratic party, and especially its chief, Mr. Tilden, had calculated so confidently upon a solid South that the possible loss of three States was not to be calmly tolerated; yet the States in doubt were those in which Republican victory was from the first possible if not probable. In South Carolina and Louisiana, not only was there a considerable number of white Republicans, but in each State the colored men (who were unanimously Republican) outnumbered all the white men. The disparity in South Carolina was so great that the white population was but 289,000, while the colored population was 415,000. In Florida the two races were nearly equal in number, and owing to a large influx of white settlers from the North the Republicans were in a decided majority. Upon an honest vote a Republican majority in each of the three States was indisputably assured.

Both Republicans and Democrats persisted in claiming a victory in the three States, and as the leaders were positive in their conclusions the masses of each party became greatly excited. Partisan papers were full of threats, and from the South constant rumors indicated a danger of mob violence. The first step toward checking the excitement was the proposition that each party should send a certain number of prominent men to the disputed States to see "a fair count." This was accepted and representative men of both parties were soon present in New Orleans, in Columbia, and in Tallahassee, the capitals of the three disputed States. The Committee of Republicans sent to Louisiana was appointed by the President. Their investigation was very thorough, and their report, made in due form, was transmitted with the accompanying testimony by the President to Congress.

President Grant took precautions against disturbance by strengthening the military forces at the points in the South where violence was most feared; and on the 10th of November, three days after the Presidential election, he sent to General Sherman, commanding the Army, the following memorable dispatch: "Instruct General Auger in Louisiana and General Ruger in Florida to be vigilant with the force at their command to preserve peace and good order, and to see that the proper and legal boards of canvassers are unmolested in the performance of their duties. Should there be any grounds of suspicion of a fraudulent count on either side it should be reported and denounced at once. No man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result. The country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns."

The result of the contests in the three States, as determined by the legal canvassing boards, gave the electoral votes in each of them to Hayes and Wheeler; and on the 6th day of December, when the electors met in the several states, the result of the count from all the States of the Union showed 185 electors for Hayes and Wheeler, 184 for Tilden and Hendricks. The Democrats had hoped to the last that at least one of the States, or at least one of the electors in the three States, would be returned for Tilden and Hendricks, and when they found that every vote of the three States was counted for Hayes and Wheeler their anger knew no bounds. Threats were openly made that Hayes should never be inaugurated. One fiery editor promised that a hundred thousand Democrats would march to Washington and take possession of the Government in the name of the President whom they claimed to have been duly elected.

President Grant, noticing the condition of the public mind and giving full heed to the possibility of danger, quietly strengthened the military forces in and about Washington, with the intention simply of suppressing disorder, but as excited Democrats declared, with the design of installing Hayes by the aid of the Army of the United States. At no time in General Grant's career did his good judgment, his cool temperament, and his known courage prove more valuable to his countrymen. Every honest man knew that the President's intention was to preserve order and to see that the conflict in regard to the Presidency was settled according to law. To avert the reign of a mob he rightfully took care that the requisite military force should be at the Capital. No greater proof of General Grant's power to command was given, even on the battle-field, than the quieting effect of his measures upon the refractory and dangerous elements that would have been glad to disturb the public peace.

The portentous question which engaged the thoughts of all patriotic men was the count of the electoral votes when the certificates from the several States should be submitted to Congress. By a joint rule, adopted in February, 1865, by the two Houses, preliminary to counting the electoral votes cast at the Presidential election of 1864, it was directed that "no electoral vote objected to shall be counted except by the concurrent votes of the two Houses." This rule necessarily expired with the Congress which adopted it, but it was observed as a regulation (no one raising a question against it) in counting the electoral votes of 1868 and 1872. Certain Democrats now put forth the untenable claim that a joint rule adopted twelve years before and never renewed should be considered in full force. On the other hand, certain Republicans held that the Vice-President was clothed with the power to open and count the electoral votes and declare the result, the two Houses of Congress being present merely as spectators. According to the first construction it would be necessary only for the House of Representatives, which had a Democratic majority, to reject even one of the three disputed States from the count, and Mr. Tilden would be left with a majority of the electors. According to the second construction, the acting Vice-President, Mr. Ferry, who was a Republican, could count the three States in favor of Mr. Hayes, against the protest of either or both branches, and he would be President-elect.

It was soon found necessary to abandon both pretensions. On the 14th of December the House adopted a resolution (reported from the Judiciary Committee by Mr. Knott of Kentucky, and originally introduced by Mr. McCrary of Iowa) which, recognizing in a preamble that "there are differences of opinion as to the proper mode of counting the electoral votes for President and Vice-President," provided for the appointment of a "committee of seven members, to act in conjunction with any similar committee to be appointed by the Senate, to prepare and report without delay such a measure, either legislative or Constitutional, as may in their judgment be best calculated to accomplish the desired end; and that said committee have leave to report at any time." The Senate on the 18th of December appointed a similar committee empowered to confer and act with the committee of the House of Representatives. (1)

From the two committees acting as one, Mr. Edmunds on the 19th of January (1877) reported a bill "to provide for and regulate the counting of votes for President and Vice-President, and the decision of questions arising thereon, for the term commencing March 4, 1877." Under the regulations of the proposed bill it was agreed that "no electoral vote or votes from any State from which but one return has been received shall be rejected, except by the affirmative vote of the two Houses," in this respect reversing the joint rule of 1865. Where more than one return had been received a reference to an Electoral Commission was provided--the Commission to be composed of five members of the Senate, five members of the House and five justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. When the Electoral Commission should decide any question submitted to it, touching the return from any State, the bill declared that the decision should stand, unless rejected by the concurrent votes of the two Houses. Every member of the Senate and House committees, with the exception of Senator Morton of Indiana, joined in the report. After an elaborate and very able debate the bill was passed in the Senate on the 24th of January by ayes 47, noes 17. Two days later it passed the House by a large majority, ayes 194, noes 86.

The mode prescribed in this act for selecting the members of the Electoral Commission was by viva voce vote in the Senate and in the House,--it being tacitly agreed that the Senate should appoint three Republicans and two Democrats,--each political party in caucus selecting its own men. In regard to the Commissioners to be taken from the Supreme Bench, it was ordered that the "Justices assigned to the First, Third, Eighth, and Ninth circuits shall select, in such manner as a majority of them may deem fit, another Associate Justice of the said Court; which five persons shall be members of such Commission." The four Justices thus absolutely appointed were Nathan Clifford, Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, and William Strong. From the hour when the Electoral Bill was reported to the Senate the assumption was general that the fifth Justice selected for the Commission would be David Davis. It was currently believed that Mr. Abram S. Hewitt had given the assurance or at least strong intimation that Judge Davis would be selected, as one of the arguments to induce Mr. Tilden to support the Electoral Bill.

Originally a Republican, Judge Davis had for some years affiliated with the Democratic party, and had in the late election preferred Mr. Tilden to Mr. Hayes. Without any imputation of improper motives there can hardly be a doubt that the Democrats, in their almost unanimous support of the Electoral Bill, believed that Judge Davis would be selected, and by parity of reasoning the large Republican opposition to the bill might be attributed to the same cause. But an unlooked-for event disturbed all calculations and expectations. On the 26th of January the House was to vote on the Electoral Bill, and a large majority of the members were committed to its support. To the complete surprise of both parties it happened that Judge Davis was elected senator from Illinois on the preceding afternoon, January 25th. Chosen by the Democratic members of the Legislature, reckoned as a Democratic senator elect, there was an obvious impropriety, which Judge Davis saw as quickly as others, in his being selected; and the four judges unanimously agreed upon Joseph P. Bradley as the fifth judicial member of the Commission.(2)

The Electoral Commission was organized on the thirty-first day of January, 1877. Eminent counsel were in attendance on both sides,(3) and the hearing proceeded with regularity.

The case of Florida was the first adjudicated before the Commission, and the electors supporting Hayes and Wheeler were declared to have been regularly chosen. Only eight of the Commission certified the result--Justices Miller, Strong, and Bradley, Senators Edmunds, Morton, and Frelinghuysen, Representatives Garfield and Hoar--the eight Republicans. It was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 44 to 24. The House voted against confirming it; but, according to the Electoral law, the decision of the Commission could not be set aside unless both Houses united in an adverse vote. The cases of the two other States, Louisiana and South Carolina, were in like manner decided in favor of the Republican electors.

The complication in Oregon was next decided. As soon as Mr. Tilden's campaign managers began to fear that the electoral votes of the three Southern States might be given to Hayes and Wheeler, they turned their attention to securing an electoral vote elsewhere for Tilden and Hendricks. The plan devised was to find in some Northern State (with a Democratic Governor) an elector who might be disqualified under some technical disability. Oregon seemed to furnish the desired conditions. One of the Republican electors, John W. Watts, was postmaster in a small office, and was therefore declared to be ineligible; and Governor Grover gave the certificate to E. A. Cronin, who had received 1,049 fewer votes than Watts, but who had the largest number of the three Democratic candidates for electors. On the 6th of December, the day appointed for the meeting of the Electors, the two Republican Electors to whom Governor Grover had given certificates (W. H. Odell and J. C. Cartwright) refused to meet with Cronin or recognize him in any way; whereupon the officially certified list of votes and certificates of election were, by Governor Grover's order, delivered to Cronin and withheld from the Electors legally chosen by the voters of the State. The two Electors who had received certificates of their election then obtained a certified copy of the returns, met and elected Watts to fill the vacancy, and then proceeded to cast three votes for Hayes. Cronin thereupon immediately elected to fill the vacancies, two men who had not been voted for at all by the people, organized a fraudulent Electoral College, and went through the farce of casting his own vote for Tilden, while his two confederates (J. N. T. Miller and John Parker) voted for Hayes. The extraordinary and illegal action of Governor Grover had been urged through telegrams by Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and by Mr. Manton Marble, a close personal friend of Mr. Tilden. The Electoral Commission summarily condemned the fraudulent proceedings and gave the three Electoral votes of Oregon to Hayes and Wheeler. The Democratic members of the Commission united with the Republicans in rejecting the factitious votes cast by the men associated with Cronin, but at the same time they voted to deprive Hayes of Watts' vote and to give the vote of Cronin to Tilden.

The proceedings in the Commission and in Congress were not closed until the second day of March (1877). Meanwhile the capital and indeed the country, were filled with sensational and distracting rumors: First, that the Democratic majority in the House would "filibuster" and destroy the count; second, that they had agreed not to "filibuster" by reason of some arrangement made with Mr. Hayes in regard to future policies in the South. Every mischievous report was spread; and for five weeks the country was kept in a state of uneasiness and alarm, not knowing what a day might bring forth. But in the end the work of the Commission was confirmed; and Mr. Hayes was declared to have been elected by the precise vote which Mr. Chandler, on behalf of the Republican National Committee, claimed the day after the polls closed in November--185 Republican electors, 184 Democratic electors. It was the first instance in the history of the country where a succession to the Presidency had been disputed. Differences of opinion in regard to the legality and regularity of the election in single States had arisen in more than one Presidential election; but it happened in these cases that the counting of the vote of the disputed States either way would not affect the decision, and therefore no test was made.

The result was undoubtedly a great disappointment to Mr. Tilden, and even greater to his immediate friends and supporters. They at once raised the cry that they had been defrauded, that Mr. Hayes had received title to his office against the law and against the evidence, that he was to occupy a place which the people had voted to confer upon Mr. Tilden. In every form of insinuation and accusation, by almost every Democratic paper in the country, it was affirmed that Mr. Hayes was a fraudulent President. This cry was repeated until the mass of the party believed that they had been made the victims of a conspiracy, and had been entrapped by an Electoral Commission. Yet the first authoritative movement for the committee that reported the Electoral Bill was from a Southern Democrat in the House, and the Electoral Bill itself was supported by an overwhelming number of Democrats in both branches; whereas the joint vote of the Republicans was, by a large majority, against the bill.

The vote of the Democrats in favor of the Electoral bill, as compared with the Democrats who voted against it in both branches, was in the proportion of more than ten to one; whereas but two-fifths of the Republicans in the two Houses voted for the bill, and three-fifths against it. Only a single Democrat in the Senate, Mr. Eaton of Connecticut, cast a negative vote; and he acknowledged in doing it that the State Senate of Connecticut, controlled by the Democrats, had requested him to support the bill. All the leading Democrats of the Senate--Mr. Thurman, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Pinkney Whyte--made earnest speeches in favor of it. Mr. McDonald of Indiana declared that the popular sentiment of his State was overwhelmingly in favor of it, and he reproached Mr. Morton for opposing it. Other prominent Republicans in the Senate--Mr. Sherman, Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania, Mr. Hamlin, Mr. Blaine--earnestly united with Mr. Morton in his opposition to the measure.

The division was the same in the House. Mr. Henry B. Payne of Ohio, Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, Mr. Clarkson N. Potter, Mr. Samuel S. Cox, and nearly all the influential men on the Democratic side, united in supporting the bill; while General Garfield, Mr. Frye, Mr. Kasson, Mr. Hale, Mr. Martin I. Townsend, and the leading Republicans of the House, opposed it. The House was stimulated to action by a memorial presented by Mr. Randall L. Gibson from New Orleans, demanding the passage of the bill; while Governor Vance of North Carolina, afterwards elected senator, telegraphed that the North-Carolina Legislature had almost unanimously passed resolutions in favor of it. The Democrats, therefore, had in a remarkable degree concentrated their influence and their votes in support of the measure.(4) It was fashioned precisely as they desired it. They agreed to every line and every letter. They agreed that a majority of the Commission, constituted as they ordained it should be, might decide these questions, and when the final decision was made they cried out in anger because it was not in Mr. Tilden's favor. One of the ablest judges of the Supreme Court, Joseph P. Bradley, has been made subject of unmerited censure because he decided the points of law according to his own convictions (sustained by the convictions of Justices Miller and Strong), and not according to the convictions of Justices Clifford and Field.

The Democratic dissatisfaction was instinctive and inevitable. In the very nature of things it is impossible after an election to constitute a Commission whose decisions will be accepted by both political organizations as impartial. It is, or it certainly should be, practicable to establish by law, before the election to which it may first apply, a permanent mode of adjudicating disputed points in the return of Presidential votes. Yet with the serious admonition of 1876, Congress has neglected the duty which may well be regarded as the most important and most imperative that can devolve upon it. The government of a Republic is left to all the chances of anarchy so long as there is no mode established by law for determining the election of its Chief Executive officer.

The disappointment of the Democratic masses continued after the inauguration of President Hayes, and it took the form of a demand for an investigation. It was not expected, of course, that any thing could be done to affect the decision of the Electoral Commission, but the friends of Mr. Tilden clamored for an exposure of Republican practices in the Presidential campaign. The Democrats in Congress were less eager for this course than the Democrats outside of Congress. It was understood that personal and urgent requests--one coming from Mr. Tilden himself--were necessary to induce Mr. Clarkson N. Potter to take the lead by offering on the 13th of May, 1878, a resolution for the appointment of a select committee of eleven "to inquire into the alleged false and fraudulent canvass and return of votes by State, county, parish, and precinct officers in the States of Louisiana and Florida, and into all the facts which in the judgment of said committee are connected with or are pertinent thereto." The resolution was adopted, and a committee was appointed, with power to sit during the recess of Congress.(5)

Congress adjourned on the 20th of June, and after a short vacation Mr. Potter's committee entered upon its extensive inquiries. Perhaps with the view of stimulating the Democratic members of the committee to zeal in the performance of their duty, Mr. Manton Marble early in August published a carefully prepared letter on the electoral counting of 1876. Mr. Marble was unsparing in his denunciation of the Republicans for having, as he alleged, obtained the election of Hayes and Wheeler by corruption in the Southern States. He dealt with unction upon the fact that the absolute trust of Mr. Tilden and his adherents in the Presidential contest had been in moral forces. As the accusations put forth were attributed to Mr. Tilden, and only the remarkable rhetoric of the letter to Mr. Marble, the public interest was fully aroused, and the threatened exposures impatiently awaited.

The majority of the committee reported, though perhaps with greater elaboration, substantially the same facts and assumptions that had been brought against the Republicans in the Southern States directly after the election, nearly two years before. If any thing new was produced, it was in detail rather than in substance, and undoubtedly showed some of the loose practices to which the character of Southern elections has given rise. Between the violence of the rebel organizers, and the shifts and evasions to which their opponents, both white and colored, have been subjected, the elections in many of those States have undoubtedly been irregular; but the Committee did not establish any fraudulent voting on the part of Republicans. Freely analyzed, indeed, the accusations against the colored voters were in another sense still graver accusations against the white voters. Duplicity is a weapon often employed against tyranny by its victims, and there is always danger that a popular election where law is unfairly administered and violence constantly impending, will bring into play on both sides the worst elements of society.

But all interest in the investigation as it was originally designed, was suddenly diverted by incidents which were wholly unlooked for when Mr. Potter moved his resolution and when Mr. Marble wrote his letter--giving an unexpected conclusion to the grand inquest so impressively heralded.

It happened that during an inquiry into the Oregon case by a Senate Committee, some thirty thousand political telegrams (mainly in cipher) had been brought into the custody of the committee by subpoenas to the Western Union Telegraph Company. The great mass of these telegrams were returned to the Company without translation. About seven hundred, however, had been retained by an employé of the committee. The re-opening of the Presidential controversy by the Democrats, and especially the offensive letter of Mr. Marble, led to a renewed effort to decipher the reserved telegrams. The translation was accomplished by an able and ingenious gentleman on the editorial staff of the New-York Tribune (Mr. William M. Grosvenor), and the result disclosed astonishing attempts at bribery on the part of Democratic agents in South Carolina, Florida, and Oregon. What may have been done of the same character in Louisiana can only be inferred, for no dispatches from that State were found.

The gentlemen who went to Florida in Mr. Tilden's interests were Mr. Manton Marble, Mr. C. W. Woolley, and Mr. John F. Coyle. Mr. Marble's sobriquet in the cipher dispatches was Moses. Mr. Woolley took the suggestive pseudonym of Fox, while Mr. Coyle was known as Max. Their joint mission was to secure the Electoral vote of the State, by purchase if need be, not quite as openly, but as directly as if they were negotiating for a cargo of cotton or offering money for an orange-grove. Mr. Marble was alarmed soon after his arrival by finding that the Democratic electors had "only about one hundred majority on certified copies, while the Republicans claimed the same on returns." Growing anxious, he telegraphed on November 22 to Mr. William T. Pelton (a nephew of Mr. Tilden): "Woolley asked me to say let forces be got together immediately for contingencies either here or in Louisiana." A few days later Mr. Marble telegraphed: "Have just received a proposition to hand over at any time required, Tilden decision of Board and certificate of Governor, for $200,000." Mr. Pelton thought the "proposition too high," and thereupon Mr. Marble and Mr. Woolley each found that an Elector could be secured for $50,000, and so telegraphed Mr. Pelton. Mr. Pelton, with commendable economy, warned them that he did not wish to pay twice for the same article, and with true commercial caution advised the Florida agents that "they could not draw until the vote of the Elector was received." According to Mr. Woolley the power was received too late, and on the 5th of December Mr. Marble closed the interesting correspondence with these words to Mr. Pelton: "Proposition failed. Finished responsibility as Moses. Last night Woolley found me and said he had nothing, which I knew already. Tell Tilden to saddle Blackstone."

Mr. Smith W. Weed went on a similar errand to South Carolina. He did not attempt to hide behind any disguised name, and simply telegraphed over his own initial. On the 16th of November he informed Mr. Henry Havermeyer, who seemed to be co-operating with Mr. Pelton in New York, that "the Board demand $75,000 for giving us two or three electors," and that "something beyond will be needful for the interceder, perhaps $10,000." At a later hour of the same day he thought that he had made a better bargain, and telegraphed Mr. Havermeyer that "it looks now as though the thing would work at $75,000 for all seven votes." The next day Mr. Weed began to fear the interposition of the court, and advised Mr. Havermeyer to "press otherwheres; for no certainty here, simply a hope." Twenty-four hours later Mr. Weed's confidence revived, and on the 18th he telegraphed,--"Majority of board have been secured. Cost is $80,000,--one parcel to be sent of $65,000; one of $10,000; one of $5,000; all to be in $500 or $1,000 bills, notes to be accepted as parties accept and given up upon votes of South Carolina being given to Tilden's friends. Do this at once and have cash ready to reach Baltimore Sunday night." Mr. Weed then started to Baltimore with the intention of meeting a messenger from New York with the money. Mr. Pelton was there but had not brought the money, and both went to New York to secure it.

Meanwhile the Canvassing Board of South Carolina reported the returns to the court, showing on their face the election of the Hayes Electors, and of a Democratic Legislature which would count the vote for Governor. The Board also reported that the votes of Lawrence and Edgefield Counties ought to be thrown out, which would make a Republican Legislature. On the 22d the court issued an order to the Board to certify the members of the Legislature according to the face of the returns, but to revise and correct the Electoral vote according to the precinct returns. Without receiving this order the Canvassing Board, whose powers expired by statutory limitation on that day, perceiving the purpose of the Court to prevent any count of the Electoral vote, declared and certified the election of the Republican electors, rejected the votes of Lawrence and Edgefield Counties, certified the election of a Republican Legislature, and then adjourned without day.

This result put an end to the plans of Mr. Weed and Mr. Pelton for bribing the Canvassing Board. But their resources were not yet exhausted. On the 4th of December Mr. Pelton offered to furnish $20,000 if it "would secure several electors." This plan also failing, he telegraphed, advising "that the Court under the pending quo warranto proceedings should arrest the Electors for contempt, and imprison them separately during Wednesday," the day for casting their votes for President and Vice-President; "for," as he plaintively added, "all depends on your State." Imprisoning "separately" was essential, for if they were imprisoned together they could have cast the Electoral vote.

In Oregon the attempt to bribe was quite as bold as in the two Southern States. Mr. George L. Miller of Omaha, member of the National Democratic Committee for Nebraska, had been requested by Mr. Pelton to go to Oregon, but had sent in his stead one J. N. H. Patrick, who upon his arrival at Portland began an active telegraphic correspondence with Mr. Pelton. On the 28th of November he telegraphed Mr. Pelton that Governor Grover would issue a certificate of election to one Democratic Elector (Cronin), and added, "Must purchase Republican Elector to recognize and act with the Democrat, and secure vote to prevent trouble. Deposit $10,000 to my credit." This telegram was endorsed by Senator Kelly, to whom Mr. Abram S. Hewitt had on the 17th of November telegraphed at San Francisco when on his way to Washington, that circumstances required his immediate return to Oregon to consult Governor Grover. Mr. Pelton replied to Mr. Patrick, "If you will make obligation, contingent on result in March, it will be done, and incremable slightly if necessary," to which Mr. Patrick responded that the fee could not be made contingent; whereupon the sum of $8,000 was deposited to his credit on the 1st of December, in New York, but intelligence of it reached Oregon too late to carry out any attempt to corrupt a Republican Elector.

As nothing had been known of these extraordinary facts when Mr. Potter moved for the appointment of his investigating committee, the House of Representatives, on the 20th of January, 1879, directed that committee to investigate the cipher telegrams. Before this committee the genuineness of the telegrams and the correctness of the translation by the Tribune were abundantly established. Some of the principal persons connected with them appeared before the committee to explain and to excuse. Senator Kelly had previously stated that he endorsed Mr. Patrick's dispatch without knowing its contents, a statement probable in itself and sustained by Mr. Kelly's good reputation. Mr. Marble swore that he transmitted to headquarters information of the opportunities for corruption merely "as danger signals." Mr. Weed admitted and tried to justify his efforts to bribe the South Carolina Canvassing Board. Mr. Pelton admitted all his attempts and took upon himself the full responsibility, saying that if money became actually necessary, he intended to call for it upon Mr. Edward Cooper and the members of the National Democratic Committee. Mr. Cooper swore that he first knew that Mr. Pelton was conducting such negotiations when he went to Baltimore; and that when on the next day he received from Mr. Pelton a cipher telegram requesting that the $80,000 should be sent to him at Baltimore, he informed Mr. Tilden what Pelton was doing, whereupon he was recalled and "the thing was stopped." Under cross-examination by Mr. Reed of Maine, Mr. Tilden swore that he knew nothing of any of the telegrams; that the first he knew of the Florida transactions was when they were mentioned to him by Mr. Marble after his return from Florida; that he was informed by Mr. Cooper of the South Carolina negotiations and stopped them; that he scorned to defend his title by such means as were employed to acquire a felonious possession. Neither Mr. Patrick nor Mr. Woolley appeared before the committee.

Two general conclusions may safely be drawn from the voluminous evidence: first, that the Democratic agents in the contested States of Florida, South Carolina, and Oregon earnestly and persistently endeavored to change the result from Hayes to Tilden by the use of large sums of money as bribes to official persons to violate their duty; second, that the negotiations for that purpose do not show that any member of any Canvassing Board or any Presidential Elector ever contemplated betraying his trust for such inducement. The interest throughout the investigation centred upon Mr. Tilden, and concerning him and his course there followed general discussion--angry accusation and warm defense. There is nothing in the testimony to contradict the oath taken by Mr. Tilden and there has been no desire to fasten a guilty responsibility upon him. But the simple fact remains that a Presidential canvass which began with a ponderous manifesto in favor of "reform" in every department of the Government, and which accused those who had been entrusted with power for sixteen years of every form of dishonesty and corruption, ended with a persistent and shameless effort to bribe the electors of three States!

[(1) The joint committee respecting the mode of counting the electoral votes consisted of the following members:--

SENATORS: George F. Edmunds of Vermont, F. T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, John A. Logan of Illinois, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Allen G. Thurman of Ohio, Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, and Matt W. Ransom of North Carolina.

General Logan was detained in Illinois, and Mr. Conkling was substituted on the committee.

REPRESENTATIVES: Henry B. Payne of Ohio, Eppa Hunton of Virginia, Abram S. Hewitt of New York, William M. Springer of Illinois, George W. McCrary of Iowa, George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, and George Willard of Michigan.]

[(2) The Commission as organized was as follows:--

JUSTICES of the Supreme Court: Nathan Clifford, Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, William Strong, Joseph P. Bradley.

SENATORS: George F. Edmunds, Oliver P. Morton, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Thomas F. Bayard, Allen G. Thurman.

REPRESENTATIVES: Henry B. Payne, Eppa Hunton, Josiah G. Abbott, James A. Garfield, George F. Hoar.]

[(3) The following counsel attended:--

On the Democratic side: Judge Jeremiah S. Black, Charles O'Connor, John A. Campbell, formerly of the Supreme Court, Lyman Trumbull, Montgomery Blair, Matthew H. Carpenter, Ashbel Green, George Hoadly, Richard T. Merrick, William C. Whitney, Alexander Porter Morse.

On the Republican side: William M. Evarts, Stanley Matthews, E. W. Stoughton, Samuel Shellabarger. In addition to regular counsel the objectors to any certificate or vote were allowed to be heard by two of their number. Senators Howe, Christiancy, Sherman, McDonald, Sargent, Mitchell, C. W. Jones, Conover and Cooper, together with Representatives Kasson, William Lawrence, David Dudley Field, Tucker, Hunt, McCrary, Hurlbut, Dunnell, Cochrane, Thompson and Woodburn were appointed to this duty.]

[(4) The following is an exact statement of the vote on the Electoral Bill in both branches:--

In the Senate 26 Democrats voted for the Bill and 1 against it. " " " 21 Republicans " " " " " 16 " " In the House 160 Democrats " " " " " 17 " " " " " 31 Republicans " " " " " 69 " "

In the two Houses jointly, 186 Democrats voted for the Electoral Bill and 18 against it, while 52 Republicans voted for the Bill and 75 against it.]

[(5) The following were the members composing the committee:--

Clarkson N. Potter of New York, William R. Morrison of Illinois, Eppa Hunton of Virginia, William S. Stenger of Pennsylvania, John A. McMahon of Ohio, J. C. S. Blackburn of Kentucky, _William M. Springer_ of Illinois, Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, Jacob D. Cox of Ohio, Thomas B. Reed of Maine, Frank Hiscock of New York.]

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