Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

In this emergency the Louisiana Lottery Company came forward and proposed to furnish the citizens of New Orleans, who were managing the movement, all the money they needed on condition that when the Democrats came into power and amended the Constitution, they should give the Louisiana Lottery a twenty-five-year charter in the Constitution. It was a hard bargain, but as they could do no better they accepted the proffer, and a very large sum of money was thus furnished and paid to the negroes and carpet-bag legislators, who were very glad to get under cover with cash in their pockets, knowing that the end of carpet-bag rule was near at hand. Packard finally found himself abandoned by a majority of the undisputed Senators and Representatives. His administration thus ended, and the promise of the friends of Hayes, which Hayes manfully sustained, was fully performed, and the property people of the South were given their right to govern their own States as the price of assenting to Hayes as President.

The Nichols government kept faith with the Louisiana Lottery Company, and the people of Louisiana have ever since been unjustly criticised as the only State in the Union that gave the highest possible charter to a lottery company, as they could not explain the inexorable conditions which compelled them to do it. This was the last act of the great political drama of 1876–77 that made Rutherford B. Hayes President.

The action of Tilden defeating Chase in the Democratic convention of 1868 had its sequel with mingled romance and reality in the defeat of Tilden for the Presidency in 1877, when the vote of Louisiana was passed upon by the Senate. Kate Chase Sprague was the most brilliant woman in Washington society during the war period, and in every way one of the most attractive. Her home in Washington was the centre of the most accomplished men in public life, and among them was Roscoe Conkling, the ablest of the Republican Senators. The contest for the Presidency before the Electoral Commission in 1876–77 turned on the vote of Louisiana, and it required the approving vote of the Senate to give the electoral vote of that State to Hayes. Had it been given to Tilden, he would have been the President. Many believed that Hayes had not been elected and should not be declared elected, and among those who shared that conviction was Mr. Conkling, although he did not publicly express it.

The Senate was carefully canvassed, and enough Republican votes were marshalled to throw the vote of the Senate in favor of Tilden on the Louisiana issue if Conkling would lead in support of that policy, and it was understood that he had agreed to do so. When the crucial time came Conkling did not appear at all, and the anti-Hayes Republicans, being without a leader, fell back to their party lines and gave the vote of the State and the Presidential certificate to Hayes. It is an open secret that Conkling resolved his doubts as urged by Mrs. Sprague, who thereby avenged the defeat of her father in the Democratic nomination of 1868, that had been accomplished by Tilden; and thus Tilden lost the Presidency, to which he had been elected by a popular majority of over 250,000.

THE GARFIELD-HANCOCK CONTEST

1880

The greatest battle ever fought in a national convention was witnessed at Chicago where the Republican National Convention met on June 2, 1880. Grant had made his journey around the world, received the homage of the highest rulers of every clime, and returned to be greeted with a degree of popular enthusiasm that had never before been given to any citizen of the Republic. During Grant’s absence his friends had made tireless efforts to organize his forces in all the States, and the friends of Blaine, who fought this battle royal with the friends of Grant, had been equally earnest and ceaseless to give Blaine the victory. It was indeed a battle of giants, and the auditorium in which the convention was held was the most impressive picture I have ever witnessed. There were not less than ten thousand spectators in addition to the full delegations and alternates from the States. Neither of the opposing chieftains ever had a majority in the body, but for a week they stood up face to face with unbroken lines and belligerent leaders in hand-to-hand conflict.

Among the delegates were Conkling, Garfield, Harrison, Logan, and many other conspicuous and able leaders of the opposing factions. Blaine’s people, with the aid of the field, weakened Grant’s lines by preventing the unit rule in any delegation, whereby Grant lost a considerable number of votes in New York, Pennsylvania, and other States. That was a test of the distinctive Grant strength in the body. Conkling opened the nominations by presenting the name of Grant, and he did it in imperial grandeur and with a degree of eloquence that was most impressive. Next to the speech of Ingersoll, who nominated Blaine in 1876, Conkling’s appeal for the nomination of Grant will stand as the ablest of all the many able deliverances in the history of American politics. I sat quite close to him on the platform when he delivered it, and he was a most interesting study. Had he been as discreet as he was eloquent, it would have been a perfect exhibition of impressive oratory; but Conkling was inspired not only by his love of Grant, but more influenced than he confessed to himself by an intense hatred of Blaine, that he cherished until his death.

JAMES A. GARFIELD