| STATES. | President. | Vice-President. | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ulysses S. Grant, Ill. | Thomas A. Hendricks, Ind. | B. Gratz Brown, Mo. | Horace Greeley, N. Y. | Charles J. Jenkins, Ga. | David Davis, Ill. | Henry Wilson, Mass. | B. Gratz Brown, Mo. | George W. Julian, Ind. | Alfred H. Colquitt, Ga. | John M. Palmer, Ill. | Thomas E. Bramlette, Ky. | Nathaniel P. Banks, Mass. | William S. Groesbeck, O. | Willis B. Machen, Ky. | |
| Maine | 7 | — | — | — | — | — | 7 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| New Hampshire | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Vermont | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Massachusetts | 13 | — | — | — | — | — | 13 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Rhode Island | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Connecticut | 6 | — | — | — | — | — | 6 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| New York | 35 | — | — | — | — | — | 35 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| New Jersey | 9 | — | — | — | — | — | 9 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Pennsylvania | 29 | — | — | — | — | — | 29 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Delaware | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Maryland | — | 8 | — | — | — | — | — | 8 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Virginia | 11 | — | — | — | — | — | 11 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| West Virginia | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| North Carolina | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| South Carolina | 7 | — | — | — | — | — | 7 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Georgia | — | — | 6 | 3[24] | 2 | — | — | 5 | — | 5 | — | — | 1 | — | — |
| Florida | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | 4 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Alabama | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Mississippi | 8 | — | — | — | — | — | 8 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Louisiana | 8[24] | — | — | — | — | — | 8[24] | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Louisiana | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 8[24] | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Texas | — | 8 | — | — | — | — | — | 8 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Arkansas | 6[24] | — | — | — | — | — | — | 6[24] | — | — | — | — | — | 1 | — |
| Missouri | — | 6 | 8 | — | — | 1 | — | 6 | 5 | — | 3 | — | — | — | — |
| Tennessee | — | 12 | — | — | — | — | — | 12 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Kentucky | — | 8 | 4 | — | — | — | — | 8 | — | — | — | 3 | — | — | 1 |
| Ohio | 22 | — | — | — | — | — | 22 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Michigan | 11 | — | — | — | — | — | 11 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Indiana | 15 | — | — | — | — | — | 15 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Illinois | 21 | — | — | — | — | — | 21 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Wisconsin | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Minnesota | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Iowa | 11 | — | — | — | — | — | 11 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Nebraska | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Kansas | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Nevada | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| California | 6 | — | — | — | — | — | 6 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Oregon | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | 3 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Total (as declared) | 286 | 42 | 18 | — | 2 | 1 | 286 | 47 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
From the time that Greeley was nominated in May, until probably a month after the meeting of the Democratic convention in July, everything pointed to his triumphant election. Leading men of the party were daily announcing themselves as his supporters, and a tidal wave that would sweep Greeley into the Presidency seemed certain. But in August the great business interests of the country, then rocked in the tempest of inflation created by the war, became appalled at the prospect of the election of Greeley, whose financial and business policy would be but an experiment. All knew that the business of the country was dangerously inflated, and that disaster must come sooner or later, but they felt that it would be delayed by the re-election of Grant, and in the brief period of one month the Greeley tide began its ebb, which doomed him to a most humiliating defeat. Had David Davis been the candidate there would have been no such apprehension in business and monetary circles, and I have never doubted that he would have been elected as the logical successor of Abraham Lincoln.
Although I had opposed the nomination of Greeley, he well understood that it was solely because I felt that I was thus a better friend to him than he was to himself, and I devoted my time to tireless effort to give him success. Outside his editorial duties, in which he was a master of masters, he was as guileless and unsophisticated as a child, and even his closest friends trembled when they regarded his election to the Presidency as more than probable. About the 1st of August, before the revulsion had become visible, I was sent for by Waldo Hutchings to meet the friends of Greeley in conference at the Astor House. Among those present were Mr. Hutchings, Whitelaw Reid, ex-Congressman Cochran, and several others, and they informed me that I had been sent for to call upon Greeley and earnestly admonish him against making any pledges or promises whatever, before the election, as to his Cabinet appointments. They said that if elected President his safety would be in having about him an able, faithful and discreet Cabinet, and they feared that in the kindness of his heart he would become complicated with those who sought to importune him for preferment. In order to keep him from visitors he was then hidden away in a private upstairs room in Brooklyn, where I was directed to call on my mission.
I never saw a happier face than that of Greeley when I met him, as he was then entirely confident of success, and in a very kind and facetious way he reminded me that I had underestimated his strength with the people. When opportunity came in the conversation I suggested to him that a man who was elected President by a combination of opposing political interests would have very grave and complicated duties to perform, and that he should especially avoid any Cabinet complications. With the simplicity and confidence of a child his answer was: “Don’t misunderstand me; you ought to know that I would appoint no Cabinet officer from your section without your approval.” He was surprised to find that I was not there to obtain promises, but to warn him against the peril of saying to others just what he had said to me, and after reviewing the conditions he agreed that his only safety was in avoiding all obligations relating to appointments until the duty confronted him.
He asked me to go to North Carolina and give a week to the campaign in that State, and to that I agreed, although I was in charge of the Pennsylvania battle. That was the last time that I saw Horace Greeley. After the disastrous elections of October, which clearly foreshadowed his defeat, he made New England and Western tours, and delivered speeches which well compare with the grandest utterances of our best statesmanship. But the tide against him was resistless, and while nursing a dying wife and worn out by his ceaseless offices of affection, the blow came that clouded one of the noblest, purest, and ablest of the great men of the land.
On the last day that he put pen to paper he wrote me a brief letter saying that he was “a man of many sorrows,” but that he “could not forget the gallant though luckless struggle” I had made in his behalf. Broken in health, bereaved in his affections, and disappointed in his greatest ambition, his reason toppled from its throne and he died an inmate of an asylum. The two chieftains of the political contest of 1872 were brought together soon after the victor and vanquished were declared, as President Grant stood at the tomb of Horace Greeley to pay the last tribute of himself and the nation to the fallen philanthropist.
THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST
1876
The Presidential contest of 1876 brought into the national political arena the strongest personality developed by the Republican party, with the single exception of Abraham Lincoln. James G. Blaine was admittedly the Henry Clay of the Republican party, and both were equally idolized and equally fated. The Republican party had men of profounder intellect than Blaine, but no one who so completed the circle of all the qualities of a popular leader, including masterly ability as a disputant. Like Clay, he was idolized by his friends and most bitterly defamed by his foes, and both were twice defeated by their party for Presidential nominations when the party was successful, and both nominated only to suffer defeat.
With an intimate knowledge of the public men of the last half century, I regard Blaine as the most magnetic man I have ever met. His greeting to friend and stranger was always generous without gush, and at once brought all who had any communication with him into apparently the closest relations. He remembered names of the humblest and most distant of his acquaintances; always knew something of their communities and their interests. It was not the art of a demagogue, but the natural impulse of a big-hearted, big-brained enthusiast, and Blaine was an enthusiast in everything that enlisted his interest. When, in addition to these charming personal qualities, he possessed every attribute of a great popular orator, it is not difficult to understand why Blaine became the favorite of the people. Like all who have reached any measure of distinction in that line, he had bitter and malignant foes, and he could well have said of himself, as Clay once did when overcome by an exhibition of the generosity of his friends, who had paid a note that greatly embarrassed him: “Never had man such friends and such enemies as Henry Clay.” The chief difference between Clay and Blaine was in the fact that the masses did not know Clay from personal contact, while the masses well knew Blaine, and saw him as he was in his every-day life as well as in his great achievements in politics and statesmanship. In another respect Blaine differed widely from Clay. Blaine was a fatalist, and from 1876, when he was first defeated for the Republican nomination for President in Cincinnati, until his name was last presented to the Republican National Convention in 1892, he was oppressed, profoundly oppressed, with the belief that he never could be President; while Clay hoped to realize the great dream of his life, and confidently expected his election to the Presidency until his final defeat in the Philadelphia convention of 1848.