ANOTHER VIEW OF “THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST”

A REPLY TO COLONEL WATTERSON IN THE MAY “CENTURY”

BY EX-SENATOR GEORGE F. EDMUNDS

The sole surviving member of the Electoral Commission

THE rather astonishing article of Mr. Henry Watterson in the May number of THE CENTURY opens to me the opportunity and the duty of giving my recollections of such of the inside history, as well as of the outside, as came to my knowledge at the time, in connection with the Hayes-Tilden contest for the Presidency. I believe that the time has come when, among fair-minded and intelligent Americans who will investigate the public and printed documents and papers in existence on the subject, there will be few divergent opinions touching the justice and lawfulness of the election of Mr. Hayes. They will find that he was lawfully elected and instituted to the office by fair and lawful means. I wish that such investigators could have the benefit of the correspondence and other papers to which Mr. Watterson refers, as well as of all other documents and papers touching the subject. All the papers relating to the action of the Senate committee on the Electoral Bill, and of our conferences with the House committee, are in my possession and are open to the examination of the student, the politician, and the historian.

In the year 1876 many of the States which had been engaged in the war for secession were still in a condition of unrest, and their Negro citizens, as well as many whites who had supported the United States and were lawfully in those of the Southern States under consideration (and opprobriously called “carpet-baggers”), were under great apprehension of personal danger. The Negro citizens in many instances had suffered, and they were continually in danger of violence from the efforts of a secret association known as “the Ku-Klux Klan” to prevent their voting as they were entitled to do under the provisions of the Fifteenth Amendment. In this state of things small detachments of the army of the United States were stationed in various places where the greatest danger of intimidation and violence appeared to exist. The civil operations of the Government required the presence of these troops in such places, not only to assist the state authorities in preserving the peace at a national election when there should be one, but also to protect the operations of the United States in carrying on its share of the civil government, such as customs, internal revenues, post-offices, etc. I suppose everybody will agree that the army of the United States must be somewhere, and has a right to be somewhere within the country; and nobody has yet maintained that any State has a right to exclude their presence. I think not a soldier interfered with any right or peaceable conduct, or was present at any polling-place in the late “Confederate States” in the election of 1876. When the elections came on nothing but violence could prevent either whites or Negroes who were lawfully entitled to vote from doing so in peace, as in most instances they did. In the States where Negro citizens were in great majority the Hayes ticket, naturally, should have prevailed. In some of them it did prevail, and the necessary certificates of the result were sent to the president of the Senate, as required by the Constitution. The “grandfather” legislation had not yet been invented.

The election was very close; and immediately agents of the Democratic party were sent to South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana for some purpose. They were at first, apparently, under the direction of Colonel Pelton, a nephew of Mr. Tilden, and by Pelton were authorized, in substance and in effect, to bribe some of the canvassing boards to make false returns of the choice of Tilden electors instead of those electors who had been actually chosen on the Hayes ticket, or to bribe some of the Republican electors. This scheme very early became known to the Republican National Committee, and steps were immediately taken to send Republican gentlemen, well known and of high standing, to those States where, it was feared, efforts at bribery were being, or were to be, attempted, in order to preserve, so far as lawfully could be done, the real results of the election. Among these men so sent were, as stated by Mr. Watterson, John Sherman, Stanley Matthews, James A. Garfield, William M. Evarts, John A. Logan, and some others, one of whom, as I remember, was Senator Howe of Wisconsin, a fine lawyer and a man of absolutely upright private and public life. As everybody knows who reads or remembers the history of those times, none of the gentlemen mentioned would be directly or indirectly a party to intrigue or dishonesty of any kind. They found on investigation that the Hayes electors had been duly chosen and that, unless some one of them, after being elected on the Hayes ticket, should be induced to dishonor himself by Peltonian expedients, all would vote for President Hayes. The corrupt dealers in canvassing boards and votes apparently sought a market only with the Democrats, who, as Mr. Watterson says, declined to buy.

When the Republicans before mentioned returned to Washington I learned from more than one of them, in relating their experiences at New Orleans, that the States had truly gone Republican and that the only danger, if any, was the exertion of evil influences to change the result. The actual experiences related by Mr. Watterson in this connection illustrate and confirm what I have said. The political “book-makers” were undoubtedly on hand, but that they were acting under the authority of any of the Returning Board there was no proof. There are speculators in politics as well as in stocks, and they often act without having a principal behind them or any principle within them. I remember an instance occurring in the Senate at Washington when a bill of much financial importance was under consideration. I learned afterward that a lobbyist whom I did not know had contracted my vote in favor of the bill with one interest, and my vote against the same bill in favor of the opposing interest. He had sold me to both sides, and whichever side lost he would get his lobbyist reward.

Mr. Watterson quotes from a speech of Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, in which Mr. Hewitt is made to say that the vote of Louisiana was offered to him for money and that he declined to buy it. So far Mr. Hewitt of course personally knew the truth of what he was saying; but when he says, “The vote of that State was sold for money,” he could not have stated what he personally knew, though he doubtless believed what he said. He was careful not to say that he personally knew of the sale of the vote of Louisiana, nor did he refer to any evidence of it. He was evidently at New Orleans when, as he says, the vote of that State was offered him for money. Why did he not, then and there, in the presence of the body of the gentlemen of both parties mentioned by Mr. Watterson, make known the guilty person, and so explode and destroy the corruption which was contemplated and begun by Colonel Pelton, nephew of Mr. Tilden, at the Democratic headquarters in New York and which compelled the sending of Republican gentlemen to New Orleans?

I was invited to go there as one of the Republican Committee, but I thought it better to remain in Washington and help to the best of my ability in framing and passing a law in which the Democratic House of Representatives and the Republican Senate could agree, and which would execute the letter and spirit of the Constitution and preserve the people of the whole United States from the apparent great danger of disorder, tumult—and possibly anarchy—likely to arise from the fire of party passion if a clear and exact law of procedure and final determination should not be enacted speedily.

Historically, it is very unfortunate that Mr. Watterson did not include in his enlivening article copies of his telegraphic and other correspondence with Mr. Tilden from New Orleans, and elsewhere, for it would certainly and truly, so far as it went, throw much light on the existing drama being displayed, as well as the plans and work behind the curtain whereby (we may believe) it was hoped to produce the election of Mr. Tilden. We Republicans at Washington were forced to believe that an effort was being made, by every means that could be employed, to overcome the Hayes majority of one. During that whole period, so far as I personally knew or was informed, there never was any scheme or act of the Republicans to bribe any state canvassing board or elector by money or promise in support of Mr. Hayes’s election. We did (if I may borrow an ancient classic simile) fear “the Greeks bearing gifts.” We were morally certain that a large majority of the legal voters in the States of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were earnestly in favor of the election of Mr. Hayes, and we believed that if violence or some other kind of unlawful influence were not brought to bear the electoral votes of those States would be cast for him; but when the secret though bold operations of Colonel Pelton became partly known we were astonished and alarmed, though not disheartened, and we went forward in our efforts to provide by law for the final act in the great drama.

The scene of action was now transferred to Washington. Mr. Watterson in his usual charming style gives a clear description of the next steps taken by the Democratic managers to achieve the wished-for triumph of Mr. Tilden. He was advised by Mr. McLane—referring to the contest over the English Reform Bill of 1832, when he had seen the powerful impression produced by “the direct force of public opinion upon law-making and law-makers”—that an analogous situation now existed in America; that the Republican Senate was like the Tory House of Lords, and that the Democrats must organize a movement such as had been so effectual in England. But there was neither precedent nor analogy except violence and riots, for Parliament was engaged in considering discretionary legislation enlarging and purifying the franchise, in which peaceful persuasion and petition were right, as they would have been for or against the passage of the Electoral Commission Bill. Mr. Watterson tells us it was agreed that he return to Washington and make a speech “with the suggestion that in the National Capital there should assemble” a mass convention of at least one hundred thousand peaceful citizens exercising the freemen’s right of petition. Mr. Watterson tells us that it was a venture in which he had no great faith; but that he prepared the speech, and that, after much reading and revising of it by Mr. Tilden and Mr. McLane, to cover the case and meet the purpose, Mr. Tilden wrote Mr. Randall, Speaker of the House, a letter which was carried by Mr. McLane to Mr. Randall “instructing him what to do in the event that the popular response [which did not come] should prove favorable.” It is a great pity that this letter is lost to the historian, for it would doubtless illuminate the real meaning of the speech of Mr. Watterson prepared in New York and there ratified by Mr. Tilden; for the speech that was delivered at Washington soon after Christmas, 1876, was of such a character that “the Democrats at once set about denying the sinister and violent purpose ascribed to it by Republicans.” Mr. Watterson says,—I have no doubt with absolute frankness,—that no thought of violence had entered his mind. But Mr. Pulitzer, who immediately followed him in the speech-making, said without rebuke that he wanted the one hundred thousand to come “fully armed and ready for business.”

At the time of the delivery of these speeches action in all the States must already have been concluded, and the documents required by law, showing the action of the several States, had already been forwarded to the president of the Senate to be held by him to be opened and acted upon as required by the Constitution. These speeches, then, must have been intended to frighten members of Congress by the threatened presence of at least one hundred thousand men assembling at Washington, under color of the right of petition, to persuade them by some means to win a triumph for Mr. Tilden by procuring the rejection of some vote or votes appearing in the electoral documents to have been cast for Mr. Hayes. It would seem that the framers of the speech of Mr. Watterson had overlooked the provisions in the Constitution of the United States on the subject, which left no discretion or policy to be exercised by any one, and the fact that so-called public opinion or partizan wishes had no place in the procedure of receiving and counting the electoral votes.

This great army of petitioning citizens could as well have been assembled to influence the Supreme Court in the consideration of some great cause, or the House of Representatives or the Senate in an impeachment proceeding. This mode of influencing administrative or judicial procedure, which has been and is supposed to be for the ascertainment of the law and the truth, would be retrogression to Roman times, when the populace sometimes flocked into the Forum to influence by their voices and uproar the trial of causes.

I come now in my recollections (which are verified by the volume of the “Proceedings of the Electoral Commission,” by the official “Journals” of the two Houses, and by the “Congressional Record”) to the details of the proceedings of the two Houses and of the Electoral Commission. On December 14, 1876, the Democratic House of Representatives passed a resolution in the following words:

Whereas there are differences of opinion as to the proper mode of counting the electoral votes for President and Vice-President, and as to the manner of determining questions that may arise as to the legality and validity of returns made of such votes by the several States;

And whereas it is of the utmost importance that all differences of opinion and all doubt and uncertainty upon these questions should be removed, to the end therefore that the votes may be counted and the result declared by a tribunal whose authority none can question and whose decision all will accept as final: Therefore,

Resolved, That a committee of seven members of this House be appointed by the Speaker, to act in conjunction with any similar committee that may 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.

This resolution was sent to the Senate, and in response thereto, on December 18 the Republican Senate passed a resolution in the following words:

Resolved, That the message of the House of Representatives on the subject of the presidential election be referred to a select committee of seven Senators, with power to prepare and report, without unnecessary delay, such a measure either of a legislative or other character, as may, in their judgment, be best calculated to accomplish the lawful counting of the electoral votes, and the best disposition of all questions connected therewith, and the due declaration of the result: and that said committee have power to confer and act with the committee of the House of Representatives named in said message, and to report by bill or otherwise.

On December 21 the Senate appointed, as members of its select committee, Messrs. Edmunds, Morton, Frelinghuysen, Logan, Republicans; Messrs. Thurman, Bayard, and Ransom, Democrats. (Mr. Logan declined the appointment and Mr. Conkling was appointed in his place.) On December 22 the House of Representatives appointed, as the members of its committee, Messrs. Payne, Hunton, Hewitt, Springer, Democrats, and Messrs. McCrary, Hoar, and Willard, Republicans. These two committees proceeded to consider the subject separately; and they held conferences from time to time with a view to agreeing upon one measure to accomplish the great objects named in the resolutions of the two Houses. After much discussion and deliberation, the two committees agreed that there should be reported in the Senate the bill which, without amendment in either House, became the law under which the procedure of the two Houses and the Electoral Commission took place. This bill was reported by me to the Senate January 18, 1877. After much debate and the rejection of sundry amendments it passed the Senate, January 24, by a vote of forty-seven yeas and seventeen nays. The negative votes were nearly all cast by Republicans. The bill was then sent to the House, where, on January 26, it was referred to the House committee on the subject, and on the same day was reported to the House by Mr. Payne without amendment. After debate it passed the House without any amendment, by a vote of one hundred and ninety-one yeas and eighty nays. The negative vote was composed, as in the Senate, very largely of Republicans. In the Senate, before the final vote was taken, it was perfectly understood that the bill would pass by a large majority in the form in which it came from the committee. It was seen, apparently, that some gentlemen who were supposed to have hopeful visions of their political future felt that they could safely vote against the bill, of which, if it were followed by the success of Mr. Hayes, it could be said to be quite unnecessary; and if it were followed by the success of Mr. Tilden it could be said that disaster to the Republican party had been brought about by the foolish conduct of the Republicans who supported it.

Previous to the passage of the bill no law existed providing what should be done, when in pursuance of the Constitution the two Houses should meet and the president of the Senate open and cause to be read the certificates of electoral votes from the various States, if a difference of opinion between the Houses should arise concerning the validity of any electoral vote. Two radical and opposing contentions were being put forward by the more excited of the two parties. One side said that the Constitution gave the president of the Senate the power and duty to decide the result after the state certificates should be opened and read. The other side maintained that the president of the Senate had no power other than to preside, open the sealed packages received by him from the various States, and cause them to be read; and that it was in the power of the two Houses concurrently to decide what votes should or should not be counted. Both these contentions were thought by the Senate committee—and I hope by the House committee also—to be absolutely erroneous. The Constitution had not made the president of the Senate the judge of election returns. His only duty was to receive, preserve, open, and cause to be read and summed up the certificates of the action of each of the States, which he had received as provided by the Constitution. To decide what persons mentioned in the certificates were lawful electors was no part of his duty.

If the concurrent power of the two Houses to judge of the elections existed, no votes on which the two Houses disagreed could be counted. In such a case how long would each House “in the heat of conflict keep the law”? The only things certain to happen in such instances would be reprisals, and then—anarchy and open war.

I think few sane persons of intelligence can believe that the wise and far-seeing builders of the Constitution intended to leave open such an avenue to destruction; and so they did provide, after granting to Congress affirmative powers on enumerated subjects, that Congress should have power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any Department or officer thereof.” On this firm rock the select committees of the two Houses rested the provisions of the Electoral Law which we reported.

In framing this act the two committees carefully and intentionally refrained from changing in any way any law then existing that might affect either way the fundamental merits of the existing controversy; and so, when the bill was under debate in the Senate, and Mr. Morton, a member of the committee, who did not concur in its report or in the passage of the bill, moved to amend the same by providing “That nothing herein contained shall authorize the said commission to go behind the finding and determination of the canvassing or returning officers of a State authorized by the laws of the State to find and determine the result of an election for electors,” I moved to amend the amendment so as to make it declare that the commission should have authority to go behind the returns. The purpose of my motion was to make it impossible that any inference should exist from Mr. Morton’s proposition being rejected that the commission should be granted by the act any authority either way that did not already exist. I, of course, voted against my own amendment and only one senator voted for it. The amendment of Mr. Morton was defeated by a majority of more than two to one. Thus the bill passed without any amendment at all, as before stated.

The act provided that the Electoral Commission be composed of fifteen members consisting of five justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, five senators, and five members of the House of Representatives. The members of the commission were the following: Justices, Clifford from Maine, Miller from Iowa, Field from California, Strong from Pennsylvania, and Bradley from New Jersey; Senators, Edmunds of Vermont, Morton of Indiana, Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, Bayard of Delaware, and Thurman of Ohio; Members of the House, Payne of Ohio, Hunton of Virginia, Abbott of Massachusetts, Hoar of Massachusetts, and Garfield of Ohio.

The law provided that the fifth of the five justices to compose that part of the commission was to be selected by those justices assigned to the First, Third, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, and that the senior in service should be president of the commission. It required that each House, by a viva voce vote of its members, should appoint the five senators and the five representatives provided by the law, which was done. Mr. Watterson says that it was believed by the Democratic members of the House that justice Davis of Illinois would be appointed as the fifth justice composing the commission, and that it was also believed that Justice Davis would be “sure for Tilden.” I had no belief upon the subject other than that founded upon my knowledge of the capacity and character of Justice Davis; and that led me to believe that he, as well as the other justices, would follow what they thought, after hearing the cases, was the law; and I believed that neither the Constitution nor the law authorized the commission to overthrow the regular returns of any State and make what must necessarily be an endless inquiry into what the votes of the people of any State had been in point of numbers, either for or against the Republican or Democratic electors. That right, by the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, was given to the States alone.

After the Electoral Act had been passed Justice Davis was elected senator from Illinois and consequently became ineligible; and the four justices selected Justice Bradley (from New Jersey) as the fifth justice of the commission. Mr. Watterson thinks that if Justice Davis had been a member of the commission he would have voted as Justice Bradley did. I agree with him in that belief.

Although the act made no provision in respect of the political character of the members of either House to be appointed, it was agreed by those representing the two parties in each House that the members selected for the commission should be three Republicans and two Democrats of the Senate and three Democrats and two Republicans of the House. Each side had faith enough in the honor of the other to be sure such would be the case, as it was. Thus the Electoral Commission was formed.

The commission met and organized January 31, 1877, only thirty-four days before the final ceremony of the election of the President must take place.

All its members were present, and the certificates of the appointments of its members, before named, were presented and recorded, showing that the Senate had by a unanimous vote appointed the persons before mentioned to be members of the commission, and that the House had appointed as its members of the commission the gentlemen named above. All the members of the commission took and subscribed the oath of office required by the statute—that they would “impartially examine and consider all questions submitted to the Commission and a true judgment give thereon, agreeably to the Constitution and the Laws.” The commission adopted simple rules of procedure and notified the two Houses that it was ready for business.

On the first day of February the two Houses met in the Hall of the House, and the opening of the electoral certificates was begun, proceeding in alphabetical order, as the act required. The votes of the States of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Delaware were read without objection and recorded as returned. The next State alphabetically was Florida. Three separate packages, which had in due course come to the hands of the president of the Senate from that State, were presented by him, the first one of which, purporting that the electors of the State had voted for Mr. Hayes, was objected to by Democratic members of the House and Senate in the manner authorized by the Electoral Act; and objections to the other certificates were in like manner made by Republican members of both Houses. Whereupon all these papers and objections were transmitted to the commission for consideration and decision. The case was correctly understood to involve substantially the same questions that would arise in respect of Louisiana and South Carolina; and the case was argued on both sides by eminent counsel and patiently heard by the commission until February 9, when, after consultation and discussion, the majority of the commission decided that the certificate showing the election of Hayes and Wheeler was the true and lawful certificate of the State of Florida and should be counted as such, upon the ground stated, as required by the act; “That it is not competent under the Constitution and the law, as it existed at the date of the passage of said act, to go into evidence aliunde the papers opened by the president of the Senate in the presence of the two Houses, to prove that other persons than those regularly certified to by the Governor of the State of Florida, in and according to the determination and declaration of their appointment by the board of state canvassers of said State prior to the time required for the performance of their duties, had been appointed electors, or by counter-proof to show that they had not.”

The members of the commission voting in favor of this decision were (alphabetically stated) Mr. Justice Bradley, Messrs. Edmunds, Frelinghuysen, Garfield, Hoar, Mr. Justice Miller, Mr. Morton, and Mr. Justice Strong. Those who voted in the negative were Messrs. Abbott, Bayard, Mr. Justice Clifford, Mr. Justice Field, and Messrs. Hunton, Payne, and Thurman.

In the course of the discussions in the consultations of the commission on the Florida case, Senator Frelinghuysen, in support of his view that there was no power to go behind the regular returns, called the attention of the commission to the debates in the Senate on January 7, 1873, as reported in the “Congressional Record,” to the opinion expressed by Senator Thurman in the consideration of a resolution authorizing an investigation as to whether the election for President and Vice-President had been conducted in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1872 in accordance with the laws of the United States, in which Mr. Thurman was reported as saying, “There seems to be no way provided by Congress, and no way, I believe, that Congress, as the Constitution stands, can provide to try the title of an elector to his office”; and he proceeded to say, “I take it that the entire control over the manner of appointing the electors is one of the reserved rights of the State.”

Mr. Thurman, on hearing this read by Mr. Frelinghuysen, said: “I have changed my mind.” Mr. Frelinghuysen, also quoting from the “Congressional Record” reporting the proceedings of the Senate on February 25, 1875, in considering the bill then pending to provide for counting the votes for President and Vice-President, read from the speech of Senator Bayard on the subject, in which Mr. Bayard said, “There is no pretext that for any cause whatever Congress has any power, or all the other departments of the Government have any power, to refuse to receive and count the result of the action of the voters of the States in that election, as certified by the electors whom they have chosen.” (See official report of the Proceedings of the Commission compiled and printed by order of Congress, page 847.)

But it is a duty and a pleasure to say that I am sure both Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman voted with perfect honesty and sincerity. Thus it will be seen that the fundamental and controlling question in the three disputed elections before mentioned was not new.

That these decisions of the majority of the commission, recognizing the conclusive authority of the several States in holding elections and determining the result of their choice of Presidential electors, were fully in accordance with the Electoral Act and with the Constitution, is absolutely confirmed by the non-partizan action of Congress itself—at a time when there was no possible party bias or emotion upon the subject—in the passage of the act of February 3, 1887, wherein the very principles controlling the decisions of the majority of the commission were recognized and adopted, and whereby the very substance and almost the very form of the Electoral Act was enacted into law so far as it respected the rights of the States and the proceedings of the two Houses, without the intervention of an Electoral Commission. (See Supplement to the “Revised Statutes of the United States,” 1874–91, page 525.) If the Republican members of the Electoral Commission needed any vindication of their action, I feel sure (though the “Journals” of 1887 are not available in the city where I write) that this act of Congress, passed without party division, gives it completely.

The case of Florida having been thus disposed of, that of Louisiana was sent to the commission on February 12, and was decided upon the same principle governing the Florida case; but it was not finally determined and the vote counted until February 20. From that time until the second day of March, at four o’clock in the afternoon, when the final declaration of the election of Hayes and Wheeler was made, there was a continual and successful effort, growing more and more intense and violent, by the Democratic majority of the House of Representatives to delay final action by the two Houses in counting the whole electoral vote; and in the last case but one the House of Representatives rejected the vote of one of the Vermont electors by a party vote including, I think, that of Mr. Watterson; while the Senate, by a unanimous vote on the yeas and nays, declared that the vote should be counted, which under the law validated the disputed vote. (See “Journal of the House,” and the “Congressional Record.”)

This illustrates the extremities to which the majority of the Democrats in the House went to prevent any final conclusion of the electoral proceedings under the very law that they themselves had almost unanimously voted for. What would have followed had this effort to prevent a regular conclusion of the proceedings been successful it was and is impossible to know. What might have followed was a declaration of a majority of the House that there had been no election at all, after which Mr. Tilden (according to the law in case of failure to elect) could have been elected by the House,—as against the inevitable claim of Mr. Hayes that the returns as made to the president of the Senate in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, showed that he had been elected President of the United States.

In the then state of public feeling I think there can be little, if any, doubt that an armed collision of the supporters of the respective claimants would have taken place.

Mr. Watterson states that when the election by the people in the various States “ ... came to an end, the result showed on the face of the returns 196” votes for Mr. Tilden “in the Electoral College, 11 more than a majority.” The returns he speaks of must have been the newspaper returns, for, of course, on November 8, 1876, the day after the election, there could have been no official returns of any character in existence excepting, possibly, precinct and district returns of the local votes in some sections. He states that on the evening of the eighth of November Senator Barnum, the financial head of the Democratic National Committee, sent a telegram to “The New York Times” asking for the latest news from Oregon, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, and that from that unlucky telegram sprang all the woes of the Democratic party! The next day, after some telegraphic correspondence with Mr. Tilden—of the contents of which the public never has been informed—Mr. Watterson left Louisville for New Orleans, being joined en route by Mr. Lamar of Mississippi; and they were soon followed by the body of Democrats chosen by Mr. Tilden to go to the “seat of war.” President Grant, having been informed of the Pelton enterprise, appointed a body of Republicans to go there also to ascertain the truth and support a lawful and peaceable course. The names of some or all of these Republicans visiting New Orleans are given in Mr. Watterson’s article and have been already mentioned. His recital of what happened I have already referred to, though the object and purpose is not stated. But he does say, “There was corruption in the air,” and “It was my own belief that the Returning Board was playing for the best price it could get from the Republicans, and that the only effect of any offer to buy on our part would be to assist this scheme of blackmail.”

The last scene in this eventful history mentioned by Mr. Watterson was “the Wormley conference,” as the consequence of what he correctly calls the Democratic “bluff” “filibuster” intended merely to induce the Hayes people to make certain concessions touching some of the Southern States; and he says that “It had the desired effect,” and that, satisfactory assurances having been given, the count proceeded to the end.

I have no personal knowledge whatever of the doings of the so-called conference, and had then no information even of its existence, and have therefore no comment to make upon it except that the filibuster was a “bluff” and would have died in time without issue from very shame of its bluffing actors.

I am glad that Mr. Watterson’s article has appeared at this time, before all the gentlemen, who in one form or another were personally connected with public affairs during the years 1876–77, have passed to the future life. Such as survive may now have an opportunity, if they think it worth while to take it, to defend themselves from accusations stated or implied in his article.

Recollections of ancient conversations, hearsays, or traditions are of very little value in showing what the very facts were; while written correspondence or other writings of the time would clarify and illuminate the events supposed to have happened. Mr. Watterson most correctly says that “Once in a while the world is startled by some revelation of the unknown which alters the estimate of the historic event or figure.” It is, therefore, very much to be regretted that he did not print every writing (of which he appears to know many) within his reach relative to the subject. He imputes to the members of the Republican party at that time officially or otherwise connected with public affairs the crime of bribing the State canvassing boards of the disputed States “at least in patronage, to make false returns in favor of the Republican electors.” As one of the few survivors of that stormy time, as the last survivor of the members of the select committees of the two Houses who conducted the passage of the Electoral Bill, and as the last survivor of the members of the Electoral Commission, I feel bound to repel the imputation as wholly groundless. In all our frequent consultations during the whole time there never was a proposal, suggestion, or hint of ours, or on the part of any one of us, resorting to bribery in any form, or of promise of office or other benefit, or influencing or trying to influence any of the canvassing boards or other state officials to depart from their lawful duty.

I, and I believe all the others, thought that the Republican ticket had been truly and lawfully elected; and everything we did was to try by lawful means to save the cause we believed our party had fairly and lawfully won. We had not been educated under, and did not believe in, the standard of political morality Mr. Watterson sympathetically imputes to us; but we feared, as well we might from the Pelton work and other revelations of occurrences in the disputed four Southern States, that unlawful and more practical methods were being resorted to by our adversaries to pervert, if possible, the lawful course and result of the election. I cannot close this condensed statement without expressing my earnest and grateful admiration of the conduct of all the justices of the Supreme Court who were members of the Electoral Commission. They were pure, high-minded, and patriotic, trying earnestly to expedite our work. The venerable Justice Clifford, the president, performed his arduous duties with promptness and perfect impartiality. My memory of him and of his associates is among the most pleasant of my public life.

(For Colonel Watterson’s rejoinder, see [page 285].)

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THE GREAT TEMPLE

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A RIFT IN THE WALLS

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A STORM PASSING OVER THE CAÑON

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IN THE GLOW OF SUNSET

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MISTS IN THE CAÑON

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From a photograph by Hanfstaengl.     Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

RICHARD WAGNER

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