Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

The true history of the struggle for the control of the electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana has never been written and now never can be fully written. The ablest men of both sides attended the contest in those States to battle for or against the action of the returning boards. All three States had voted for Tilden, but the returning boards, which had been created by the carpet-bag rule of the South, set aside the returns on the plea of fraud and certified the electoral vote for Hayes. The strength of the claim of the Democrats was practically admitted after the inauguration of Hayes by the President aiding in the adjustments which gave the Democrats the Governors and the Legislatures of those States, and ousting the Republicans who had given the electoral vote to the President.

The chief factor in the bold and revolutionary action that returned the three States named for the Republican candidate for President was J. Donald Cameron, then Secretary of War under President Grant, and later United States Senator. He is nothing if not heroic when occasion demands it. I remember calling upon him at the Continental Hotel a few days after the election, and inquired of him whether he really meant to force the reversal of the vote in those States and have Hayes returned as elected. He answered with perfect frankness that he had started in to do it, that he meant to do it, and that it was right to do it, as the Republicans had not opportunity to vote in the South, and the only way to meet such frauds was by the strong power of the Government.

But for the assurance that the army and navy would sustain the returning boards of those States in whatever they did under color of law, the reversal of the popular vote never could have been accomplished. The State of Florida was manipulated by Robert W. Mackey, who was the most accomplished politician the Republicans have ever produced in Pennsylvania. He was apparently dying of consumption for ten years, and when it became necessary to send some competent man to handle Florida, he was selected. He started on his mission, and his racking cough and general consumptive features gave plausibility to the statement that he was going South to nurse his health. Two Democratic visiting committeemen were on the same train, and he overheard them mature their plans to hold the State for Tilden. He telegraphed to C. D. Brigham, who had been a prominent editor and Republican politician in Pittsburg, but who then resided in Florida, to meet him at the station, and before the Democrats attempted to carry their plans into execution they were completely blocked by Mackey, who could summon all the Federal officials to his aid.

Governor Curtin and Senator Sherman met face to face at New Orleans in the struggle to win the electoral vote of Louisiana, and at one stage of the battle Tilden could have secured the vote by telegraphing a single word to Curtin; but Tilden seemed to have lost his cunning, and hesitation was exhibited by him at every stage of the conflict when the promptest action was indispensable. I visited him at his home in Gramercy Park when the contest was on at white heat, and was amazed to find his table covered with legal briefs, as though his election depended upon the law that would govern before a competent and impartial judicial tribunal. He permitted himself and his friends to become involved in a compromising way in the Oregon dispute for a single elector, and had the same method been adopted in Louisiana, he would have won. Instead of discussing the situation as it was, he presented to me elaborate arguments to show how it should be, and I could not refrain from reminding him that he was not dealing with judicial tribunals nor with honest men, and that he must either meet them on their own ground and with their own weapons or he must fall in the fight. He seemed to be utterly bewildered, and the man who had organized his nomination and election with consummate skill shrivelled up into pitiable indecision and inaction when he had the power to cast the die for or against himself.

The severe strain upon the popular sentiment of the country that had given Tilden 250,000 majority for President was greatly tempered, especially in the South, by a very shrewd movement planned early in the after-election contest to conciliate the leading people of the South. They received positive assurances from men very close to Hayes, and who gave the assurance of Hayes’s approval of the movement, that if Hayes should be inaugurated President without violence the State governments of Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina would be given to the Democrats. That Hayes approved of the plan is evidenced by the fact that after he became President he stood resolutely by the promise made by his friends to give the Democrats control of the governments of those States.

There was not serious friction in Florida; the Democratic candidate for Governor was allowed to be inaugurated on a returned majority of 195 as given by the Supreme Court. In South Carolina the face of the returns gave Wade Hampton 1134 majority for Governor, with about a like majority for the Democratic Presidential electors, but the Returning Board threw out Democratic counties and returned Chamberlain, Republican, as elected Governor by a majority of 3433, and gave the Republican electors majorities ranging from 600 to 900.

Two Legislatures were organized and two claimants for the Governorship were qualified, but after a long siege, in which the friends of Hampton were with difficulty restrained from taking violent possession of the Capitol, the Republicans gave up the contest, as they discovered that President Hayes would not support them, and Hampton and his associate Democratic candidates and a Democratic Legislature were accepted.

The great battle was made in Louisiana, where the Returning Board gave Hayes the State by a majority of 4807, and declared the Republican electors chosen by about the same majority. The face of the returns gave a majority of 7876 for Tilden and 8101 for Nichols, Democratic candidate for Governor. There, as in South Carolina, two Governors were qualified and two Legislatures organized, and Stephen B. Packard, who had been counted in as the Republican Governor, and had been largely instrumental in giving the electoral vote to Hayes, and thereby electing him, demanded that the President should sustain him, logically insisting that if Hayes was elected Packard was elected, and that if Packard must go out Hayes must go out with him.

The faith of the President and his friends were pledged to the people of property in Louisiana that they should have their own State government, but it was a most difficult obligation to discharge. Finally, the President appointed a committee of eminent Republicans, two of whom were the present Senator Hawley, of Connecticut, and ex-Attorney-General Wayne MacVeagh, of Washington, to go to New Orleans and solve the problem. The first necessity to accomplish that result was to withdraw enough Senators and Representatives from the Packard Legislature to the Nichols Legislature to give Nichols a quorum in both houses of undisputed legislators, as that would leave Packard without a Legislature and clothe Nichols’s government with all the ceremony of law.

Many of the Packard legislators were negroes, and most of them commercial. The change could be effected only by purchase, in which the Hawley and MacVeagh committee had no part. There were enough and to spare of Packard legislators who were willing to sell out, but the Democrats were impoverished and could not raise money to buy them. One of the active men in the movement was Duncan F. Kenner, one of the most prominent men in the State for many years, and among the Senators in the market was one of his former slaves, who demanded a high price. The State had been desolated, business paralyzed, and the people of Louisiana had not recovered from the universal waste of war, and while they were more than willing to buy enough of the Packard men to give Nichols the Legislature, they were absolutely without the means to do it.