Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 2

by Samuel J. Tilden

JUST WHAT CHANDLER DID, AND HOW THE PLAN WAS LAID TO DEFEAT THE POPULAR CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT

[From the New York "Times" of June 15, 1887.]

"The New York Sun, after three days of hard labor, has finally produced a curious reply to the Times's comments upon Mr. William E. Chandler's connection with the election of 1876. The best answer to its series of misrepresentations will be found in the following statement of what did actually occur at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on the morning of Nov. 8 of that year.

"As stated on Saturday last in the Times, a gentleman entered the Fifth Avenue Hotel at the Twenty-third Street door about 6.30 o'clock in the morning, possibly a little before that hour. He went at once to the rooms of the national committee and found them occupied only by a number of servants in the hotel, who were engaged in cleaning and setting the rooms to rights. He was informed that everybody had gone home or to bed a couple of hours before. He left the room and started for the clerk's desk to ascertain the number of Mr. Zachariah Chandler's room. While opening the first door in the direction of the reading-room, on his way to the office of the hotel, he came in collision with a small man, wearing an immense pair of goggles, his hat drawn down over his ears, a great-coat with a heavy military coat, and carrying a grip-sack and a newspaper in his hand. The newspaper was the New York Tribune. The gentleman did not recognize the stranger, but the stranger recognized the gentleman immediately. The stranger cried out: 'Why, Mr. Blank, is that you?' The gentleman knew the voice, and said: 'Is that you, Mr. Chandler?' He answered: 'Yes, I have just arrived from New Hampshire by train. D—n the men who brought this disaster upon the Republican party.' The gentleman replied: 'The Republican party has sustained no disaster. If you will only keep your heads up here, there is no question of the election of President Hayes. He has been fairly and honestly elected.'

"Chandler replied: 'Look at this paper.' The answer was that the paper had not the news, and the gentleman began to give Mr. Chandler an idea of the situation, when Chandler interrupted him, saying: 'I have just got the key to my room; come up-stairs.' Upon entering the room, Mr. Chandler placed his grip-sack in the corner, took off his overcoat, sat down in a chair—the gentleman taking the only other one in the room—and Chandler said: 'Now go ahead.' The visitor went over the ground carefully, State by State, from Maine to Oregon, counting the electoral vote in each State, and showing the vote as it was finally counted for Hayes and Tilden. After he had finished, William E. Chandler said: 'Well, what do you think should be done?' The gentleman replied:

"'Telegraph immediately to leading Republicans, men in authority, in South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, California, Oregon, and Nevada.' Mr. Chandler made no direct reply to this proposition, but said:

"'We must go and see Zach.'

"The gentleman said:

"'Do you know the number of his room?' William E. Chandler replied:

"'Yes, I know where it is.' To which the gentleman answered:

"'If you don't know exactly, I'd better go to the office and get the number; I was going there when I met you.' Chandler said: 'No, I know where it is,' and led the way around to the Twenty-fourth Street side of the hotel. After proceeding a short distance down the corridor he looked up at the number over a door and said: 'This is Chandler's room.' Then he began to knock and kick at the door. The noise at once awakened the inmate, and there proceeded from the room a series of shrill screams and shrieks, followed by an affrightened female voice crying out: 'What do you want? Go away; I'm a lone woman.' Chandler immediately darted down the corridor. The gentleman said: "See here, if you don't know the number of the room we'd better go immediately down to the office and get it; we don't want anything more of this kind." Chandler insisted that he would be right the next time, however, and walking still further down the corridor he selected a room about four doors below the first one he had attacked. The response to his knock was immediate and not uncertain. There was no scream in this case, but the inmate shouted in angry tones: 'Get out; I'm a lady. Why do you disturb me at this hour. Go right away, or I will call the servants.' Chandler then remarked: 'I guess I'll have to go down to the office.' Whereupon he darted down-stairs, ascertained the number of Zachariah Chandler's room, which was between those of the two ladies whom he had thus unceremoniously aroused, and he began kicking and knocking at the door, of the right room in this case, and did so for a little time without effect. The gentleman then joined with him in thumping and kicking the door, remarking: 'We'll wake up the whole house and will have the police down on us if we don't look out,' when in a moment came the well-recognized voice from the inside, 'Who's there?' to which William E. Chandler replied: 'It's me, Chandler; open the door, quick.' The door was shortly opened, and Mr. Zachariah Chandler was discovered standing in his nightdress. Mr. William E. Chandler then said, closing the door: "Here is a gentleman who has more news than you have, and he has some suggestions to make.' To which Zach Chandler replied: 'Yes, I know him. What is it?' With this he seated himself on the edge of his bed. William E. Chandler then said: 'The gentleman will tell you the story himself. He understands the case better than I do.'

"The gentleman then went over the details of the election, and added the recommendations he had made to William E. Chandler.

"The chairman of the national committee laid down and said: 'Very well, go ahead and do what you think necessary.' The two visitors left the room and went to the telegraph office in the hotel. It was just five minutes before seven by the hotel clock when they arrived there. The telegraph office was not open, and they were informed that it would not be open until 8, possibly later. The two men stood by the receiver's shelf at the little telegraph inclosure, Chandler with his back to the door opening towards Twenty-third Street entrance. The other gentleman faced Chandler, leaning on the shelf, with his back to the door leading into the great hall of the hotel. The only other persons in the room were a few servants and a clerk in the newsstand. The gentleman said: 'I'll have to take these messages to the main office of the Western Union.' Chandler called a servant and directed him to have a carriage brought to the Twenty-third Street entrance. Then Chandler said: 'Well, what do you want to do?' The gentleman replied: 'We'll first telegraph to Gov. Chamberlain, of South Carolina.' The gentleman dictated the despatch, which appeared in the Sun, and which was as follows:

"'To D. H. Chamberlain, Columbia, S. C.:

"'Hayes is elected if we have carried South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. Can you hold your State? Answer immediately.'

"Mr. Chandler took the despatch in shorthand, as dictated. The gentleman then proposed to send a similar despatch to S. B. Conover, of Florida. Mr. William E. Chandler immediately objected, saying that Conover was as much of a Democrat as he was a Republican, and would probably show the despatch to the Democrats as early as he would to any Republican in town. At any rate, the Democrats would get it first. The gentleman remarked:

"'Have you any other proposition to make, or have you any one in your mind whom it would be safer or better to address?' Mr. William E. Chandler scratched his ear with his pencil, and after a moment's consideration said he had not. The gentleman then said it was imperative that some one should be woke up down there, and if Mr. Chandler could think of no one else it was essential to telegraph to Conover. Mr. Chandler hesitated for an instant, and said: 'Well, I suppose we must; something has to be done.' The gentleman accordingly dictated to Chandler the Conover despatch. Here it is:

"'To S. B. Conover, Tallahassee, Fla.:

"'The Presidential election depends on the vote of Florida, and the Democrats will try and wrest it from us. Watch it and hasten returns. Answer immediately.'

"The gentleman then suggested S. B. Packard as the proper person to address in Louisiana, and the Packard despatch was dictated to, and taken down by, William E. Chandler in shorthand:

"'To S. B. Packard, New Orleans, La.:

"'The Presidential election depends on the vote of Louisiana. The Democrats will try to wrest it from you. Watch it and hasten returns. Answer immediately.'

"The gentleman then asked: 'To whom shall we send in Oregon?' Mr. Chandler said: 'John H. Mitchell.' The Oregon despatch was then dictated:

"'To John H. Mitchell, Portland, Oregon:

"'Without Oregon Hayes defeated. Don't be defrauded. Hasten returns. Answer.'

"The gentleman suggested that George C. Gorham, of San Francisco, was the proper man to receive a telegram. Chandler at once assented. Then the gentleman suggested that probably he might be able to do something with Nevada and Oregon, and a despatch something as follows was prepared:

"'To George C. Gorham, San Francisco, Cal.:

"'The Presidential election depends on our having both Nevada and Oregon, which are reported for Hayes. Telegraph both those States immediately. Watch them and hurry results. Answer immediately.

"'W. E. Chandler,
"'Fifth Avenue Hotel.'

"Chandler says, in his testimony before the Potter committee, that he found the Gorham despatch among some papers. This happened in this way: After the despatch had been written some verbal changes in it were suggested. Mr. Chandler found some trouble in making them on the telegraph blank, and the gentleman who dictated the despatch remarked: 'You'd better write that despatch over again; you'll save time.' Chandler did so, and the original despatch got into his pocket with the rest of his papers.

"William E. Chandler signed with his own name the despatches to Oregon and to Gorham, of San Francisco. To the despatches sent to Conover, Packard, and Chamberlain the narrator's recollection is he signed the name of Zachariah Chandler. William E. Chandler at once took telegraph blanks and wrote from his stenographic notes the five despatches above printed, the gentleman standing by him taking every despatch as he finished it and carefully reading it. When the last despatch was transcribed, Chandler handed it over to the gentleman and said: 'Are they all right?' He was informed that they were. Chandler immediately started to open the door from the reading-room to the Twenty-third Street entrance that the gentleman might make a hasty exit, but Chandler made a bungling job of it; finally the two reached the outer door. The gentleman jumped into the carriage there waiting and told the driver to get to the main office of the Western Union with all possible speed. Probably the quickest time ever made by a carriage from the Fifth Avenue Hotel to the Western Union was made that morning. Arriving at the Western Union office the gentleman went to the receiver's desk and handed in the despatches. The receiver, who knew the gentleman very well, said: 'Good-morning.' The gentleman said: 'Get these despatches off as quickly as possible, and charge the Republican National Committee.' The receiver replied: 'The National Committee has no account here, and we can't do it. Why not charge them to the New York Times account?' The gentleman replied, 'All right,' and the receiver immediately handed them back to him to be countersigned. This was promptly done, the gentleman returned to his carriage and was driven back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. There was still nobody stirring connected with the National Committee.

"And now a few extracts, which the Sun failed to discover in the Potter committee's report, are pertinent. First, in regard to the telegram to George C. Gorham, in San Francisco, Mr. Chandler testified:

"'I found among those papers this copy of a telegram which I sent from the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I think before daylight on the morning of Nov. 8. It bears date of the 7th of November, but it was really written and sent on the morning of the 8th.'

"Immediately after this comes the following sentence, bear in mind, from William E. Chandler's testimony before the Potter committee:

"'The remaining copies are in shorthand, and I will read them.'

"If these messages were not dictated to Mr. William E. Chandler, why should he have written them in shorthand? When time was so precious, is it to be believed that William E. Chandler wrote his own messages first in shorthand and then transcribed them? Further down on the same page (526) of the testimony occurs the following:

"'This paper [handing to the chairman a paper from which he had read] is worn from carrying it in the pocket.'

"The chairman: 'Who made these stenographic marks?'

"The witness: 'Those are my own. I learned to write shorthand many years ago.'

"It is perfectly clear from this (Chandler's own testimony) that these messages were dictated to Chandler by another person. They were so dictated exactly as described in the foregoing narrative. The New York Times has never to this day been reimbursed by the National Committee or William E. Chandler, nor has William E. Chandler or any national committee ever offered to pay the Times for the telegraph tolls or for any of the expenses incurred on that morning.

"Mr. Chandler's efforts in behalf of the grand old Republican party on the morning of Nov. 8, 1876, may therefore be briefly summarized as follows:

"First.—He frightened two lone women nearly out of their wits.

"Second.—He finally discovered the number of Zachariah Chandler's room.

"Third.—He acted as an amanuensis for a gentleman who dictated five despatches. (Work well done.)

"Fourth.—He asked a servant to bring a carriage around to the Twenty-third Street entrance of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. (Result satisfactory.)

"Fifth.—He attempted to open a door to enable the gentleman bearing the despatches the more readily to reach the street. (Made a mess of it.)

"Mr. Zachariah Chandler, chairman of the National Committee, asked the gentleman above alluded to, on the evening of Nov. 8, if it would not be well to send William E. Chandler to Florida. The gentleman thought it would. Mr. William E. Chandler left for Florida on the following day at 6 P.M. Mr. William E. Chandler, therefore, did not initiate the idea of going to Florida. The truth is that Zachariah Chandler wished to send to Florida a gentleman who had been formerly a private secretary to William H. Seward, but the person was not at hand and could not be reached in time. William E. Chandler for this important mission was a second choice.

"The whole scheme of sending what were afterwards called 'visiting statesmen' to the doubtful States originated in the brain of Zachariah Chandler, not William E. Chandler.

"If the New York Sun and Mr. William E. Chandler can find any comfort in the foregoing plain narration of facts they are entirely welcome to it."

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Notwithstanding Mr. Tilden's popular majority, the public needs not now be told that he was counted out by the instrumentality of an extemporized tribunal, not only unknown to the Constitution, but in distinct disregard and violation of the provisions of that instrument for counting the electoral votes for Presidents and Vice-Presidents. A detailed account of the processes by which this great national crime was initiated will be found in the first chapter of the second volume of Bigelow's Life of Tilden. To that record, however, some important testimony has since been disclosed which appears to have escaped the biographer's notice.

At a meeting held at Chickering Hall on the evening of November 12, 1891, to sympathize with Governor Nichols's war on the Louisiana lottery system, the late Abram S. Hewitt was one of the speakers. In the course of his remarks in denunciation of the lottery gambling in Louisiana, Mr. Hewitt said:

"I can't find words strong enough to express my feelings regarding this brazen fraud.

"This scheme of plunder develops a weak spot in the government of the United States, which I would not mention were it not for the importance of the issue. We all know that a single State frequently determines the result of a Presidential election. The State of Louisiana has determined the result of a Presidential election. The vote of that State was offered to me for money, and I declined to buy it. But the vote of that State was sold for money!"

A day or two after this anti-lottery meeting the New York Sun recites this passage of Mr. Hewitt's speech, and accompanies it with the following pertinent and instructive comment:

"We do not remember that this highly important testimony has ever before been elicited from Mr. Hewitt in any public declaration. He says that he has personal knowledge that the vote of Louisiana was sold to Mr. Hayes' managers for money; that the same vote was offered for money to him as Mr. Tilden's representative, and that he declined to buy it—very properly, as all patriotic citizens and all honest men will agree.

"Some time in the summer of 1878, when the great crime was less than two years old and the beneficiaries of that crime were still in the full enjoyment of its fruits, there occurred a spirited, we may even say a bitterly personal, controversy between the Hon. Henry Watterson and Mr. Hewitt as to the extent of the latter's responsibility for the failure of the Democratic party to obtain its rights by the seating of Mr. Tilden in the office to which he had been elected. Col. Watterson acrimoniously, and, as we are glad to believe, unjustly, charged Mr. Hewitt not only with a mismanagement of Democratic interests at the time of the electoral count, but also with suppressing the fact of Mr. Tilden's personal disapproval of the electoral commission bill at a critical time in the deliberations of Mr. Tilden's friends at Washington.

"The merits of the Watterson-Hewitt controversy are not now of living interest. Time doubtless has softened the sentiments of each of the two statesmen with reference to the other's part in the events of 1876 and 1877. We refer to the incident merely to say that even under the strongest provocation to disclose all that he knew about the theft of the Presidency, Mr. Hewitt withheld the statement which he made so distinctly and emphatically at an anti-lottery meeting in Chickering Hall fifteen years after the crime.

"There was also, as it may be remembered, a searching investigation into all of the circumstances surrounding the theft of the vote of Louisiana, conducted by the special committee of the Forty-fifth Congress, known as the Potter committee. The object was not to remedy the irremediable, but to bring out the whole truth, to fix the responsibility where it belonged, and to make a repetition of the crime forever impossible. Those Democrats who possessed special knowledge bearing upon the crime came forward and testified. The report and testimony of the Potter investigation fill about twenty-five hundred printed pages, but on no page is there any piece of evidence more important than that which Mr. Hewitt volunteered on Thursday night before a mass-meeting called for an enterprise of moral and social, rather than political, reform.

"We speak of the Potter investigation merely to say that the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt was not among the witnesses before that committee. He did not appear to testify to the sensational facts which he gave so freely to the anti-lottery meeting in Chickering Hall. In all the twenty-five hundred pages he appears only once, and then indirectly. Major Burke testified that when he went to Mr. Hewitt as the ostensible manager of Mr. Tilden's case in the House, and asked him whether Louisiana was to be abandoned by the Democratic managers, Mr. Hewitt replied, among other things, that 'the Democratic party could not afford to take the responsibility of plunging this country into anarchy and strife, upsetting values and disturbing trade.'

"But Mr. Hewitt's silence on previous occasions, when his testimony would have been so valuable, does not render it less interesting, now that its importance is mainly historical."

In Harper's Magazine for the month of March, 1907, will be found an article from the accomplished pen of Frederick Trevor Hill, entitled "The Hayes-Tilden Contest—A Political Arbitration," in which occurs the following statement of an incident of the nefarious transaction under consideration, which no one has ventured to contest, and which leaves no longer a doubt that Mr. Tilden must have been declared President instead of Mr. Hayes, despite all the other devices by which he is believed to have been counted out, but for the forgery of signatures to the returns from Louisiana which escaped the attention of the perhaps too-eminent counsel in charge of Mr. Tilden's case, a forgery for the concealment of which Senator Ferry seems to be indirectly responsible:

"The proceedings opened as usual with the reception of the conflicting certificates from the Senate chamber—five documents in all—and while these important papers were being perfunctorily examined and initialed by the presiding justice, the journalists in the gallery watched the scene, the lawyers whispered together and prepared for the coming contests; the general public waited, bored and inattentive, and some of the Republican managers sat quaking with fear.

"Judge Clifford finally laid aside his pen, and it was ordered that the various exhibits which he had been marking be printed and copies furnished for the convenience of the counsel and commissioners. Had a single objection to this routine been interposed; had prudence, habit, or even curiosity impelled any of the Democratic counsel to scrutinize the original documents, or had enterprise prompted any journalist to examine and compare them, a sensational exposure would have been inevitable, for one of the Republican certificates was clumsily, even obviously, forged.[12]

"Had this been discovered, it is not improbable that one or more of the Republican commissioners, who were suspected of wavering in their party allegiance, would have voted for a thorough investigation, and an entirely different result might have been effected. Neither suspicion nor inspiration, however, put the Democratic champions on their guard, and the opportunity passed unheeded, never to return."

FRANCIS C. BARLOW[13] TO JOHN BIGELOW

"New York, Nov. 6, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—I believe I have never thanked you for the legislative documents, which I beg now to do.

"I did not overlook the last clause of your letter, in which you express a hope that you may see me on the stump for Tilden. I have been on the stump for Hayes, doing what I can, and I have the strongest confidence that we are going to elect him, and that because I believe there is too much good sense in the American people to turn over this govt. and its credit to those who 10 or 12 years ago were trying to destroy it. I think this will carry us through.

"Neither Mr. Tilden nor any one else can stem the rebel influence if he is elected.

"I have always said that I thought that Tilden, if elected by the Republican party, would make an admirable President, but with the rebels and copperheads and the Democratic party, with all its villainies behind him, he will ruin us.

"On Wednesday you will be as sorry that you did not advocate Hayes, as I shall be (win or lose) glad that I opposed Tilden.

Yours truly,
"Francis C. Barlow."

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In the last paragraph of this letter the general got both his boots on the wrong legs. When John Sherman, as the Warwick of the Hayes dynasty, was sending all of the staff officers of the Republican party into the South to see not if, but that, Hayes was elected, General Barlow was one of the number, and the only one, I regret to say, of that formidable crowd who had the manliness to admit on their return that the ballot had been tampered with, and that Hayes was not honestly entitled to the electoral vote. The general, however, unfortunately both for himself and the country, was too strong a party man to publicly assail the corrupt scheme devised by the conspirators to place in the Presidential chair one who was not the choice of the nation.

I do not think that he was as glad that he had opposed Tilden as I was and am that I did not advocate the election of Mr. Hayes.