[792] "In all his political official life the most important vote which he [Conkling] has been or can be called upon to give—that upon the Louisiana electoral question—he evaded."—Harper's Weekly, February 8, 1879.
[793] "He [Conkling] was at the time most suspected by the Republicans, who feared that his admitted dislike to Hayes would cause him to favour a bill which would secure the return of Tilden."—Thomas V. Cooper and Hector T. Fenton, American Politics, p. 230; see also, Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 7, p. 263.
[794] Bigelow, Life of Tilden, Vol. 2, p. 84.
"Mr. Conkling felt that neither Mr. Tilden nor Mr. Hayes should be inaugurated."—Conkling, Life of Conkling, p. 528.
[795] Letter of Stanley Matthews and Charles Foster, dated February 17, 1877.—Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1877, p. 459.
[796] This commission consisted of Charles B. Lawrence, Joseph B. Hawley, John M. Harlan, John C. Brown, and Wayne McVeigh.—Ibid., p. 465.
[797] Ibid., pp. 456-465. Packard became consul to Liverpool.
[798] The commission reported the Packard government's insistence that the Legislature of 1870 had the power to create a Returning Board with all the authority with which the Act clothed it, and that the Supreme Court of the State had affirmed its constitutionality. On the other hand, the Nichols government admitted the Legislature's right to confide to a Returning Board the appointment of electors for President and Vice-President, but denied its power to modify the constitutional provision for counting the vote for governor without first amending the State Constitution, declaring the Supreme Court's decision to the contrary not to be authoritative.—Appleton's Cyclopædia, 1877, pp. 403-404.
[799] Durrell, a United States Circuit judge, sustained Kellogg in his contest with McEnery.
[800] "The President directs me to say that he does not believe public opinion will longer support the maintenance of the State government in Louisiana by the use of the military, and he must concur in this manifest feeling." Grant's telegram to Packard, dated Mar. 1, 1877.