Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

CHAPTER XIII THE FEDERAL ELECTIONS BILL

In December, 1889, the Republican Party succeeded to the legislative power in the country for the first time in sixteen years. Since 1873 there had been a Democratic President for four years, and a Democratic House or Senate or both for the rest of the time. There was a general belief on the part of the Republicans, that the House of Representatives, as constituted for fourteen years of that time, and that the Presidency itself when occupied by Mr. Cleveland, represented nothing but usurpation, by which, in large districts of the country, the will of the people had been defeated. There were some faint denials at the time when these claims were made in either House of Congress as to elections in the Southern States. But nobody seems to deny now, that the charges were true. Mr. Senator Tillman of South Carolina stated in my hearing in the Senate:

"We took the Government away. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it. The Senator from Wisconsin would have done the same thing. I see it in his eye right now. He would have done it. With that system—force, tissue ballots, etc.—we got tired ourselves. So we called a Constitutional Convention, and we eliminated, as I said, all of the colored people whom we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.

"I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans; to remind you, gentlemen of the North, that your slogans of the past—brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God—have gone glimmering down the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer, because you shoot negroes in Illinois, when they come in competition with your labor, and we shoot them in South Carolina, when they come in competition with us in the matter of elections. You do not love them any better than we do. You used to pretend that you did; but you no longer pretend it, except to get their votes.

"You deal with the Filipinos just as you deal with the negroes, only you treat them a heap worse."

No Democrat rose to deny his statement, and, so far as I know, no Democratic paper contradicted it. The Republicans, who had elected President Harrison and a Republican House in 1888, were agreed, with very few exceptions, as to the duty of providing a remedy for this great wrong. Their Presidential Convention, held at Chicago in 1888, passed a resolution demanding, "effective legislation to secure integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority," and charged that the "present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Constitution and the laws of the United States."

In the Senate at the winter session of 1888 and at the beginning of the December session of 1889, a good many Bills were introduced for the security of National elections. Similar Bills were introduced in the House. A special Committee was appointed there to deal with that subject. I had, myself, no doubt of the Constitutional authority of Congress, and of its duty, if it were able, to pass an effective law for that purpose.

I was the Chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, and it was my duty to give special attention to that subject. I had carefully prepared a Bill in the vacation, based on one introduced by Mr. Sherman, providing for holding, under National authority, separate registrations and elections for Members of Congress. But when I got to Washington, I found, on consultation with every Republican Senator except one, that a large majority were averse to an arrangement which would double the cost of elections throughout the country, and which, in States where personal registration every year is required, would demand from every citizen his presence at the place of polling or registration four times every alternate year. That is, in the years when there were Congressmen to be elected he must go twice to be registered—once for the State election, and once for the Congressional—and twice to vote. So I drew another Bill. I say I drew it. But I had the great advantage of consultation with Senator Spooner of Wisconsin, a very able lawyer who had lately come to the Senate, and I can hardly say that the Bill, as it was finally drafted, was more mine or his. This Bill provided, in substance, that there should be National officers of both parties who should be present at the registration and election of Members of Congress, and at the count of the vote, and who should know and report everything which should happen, so that all facts affecting the honesty of the election and the return might be before the House of Representatives. To this were added some section providing for the punishment of bribery, fraud and misconduct of election officers.

In the meantime the House of Representatives had appointed a special Committee charged with a similar duty. Members of that Committee saw me, and insisted, with a good deal of reason, that a measure which concerned the election of members of the House of Representatives, should originate in that body. Accordingly the Senate Committee held back its Bill, and awaited the action of the House, which sent a Bill to the Senate, July 15, 1890. The House Bill dealt not only with the matter of elections, but also with the selection of juries, and some other important kindred subjects. Our Committee struck out from it everything that did not bear directly on elections; mitigated the severity of the penalties, and reduced the bulk of the Bill very considerably. The measure was reported in a new draft by way of substitute. It remained before the Senate until the beginning of the next Session, when it was taken up for action. It was a very simple measure.

It only extended the law which, with the approbation of both parties, had been in force in cities of more than twenty thousand inhabitants, to Congressional districts, when there should be an application to the Court, setting forth the necessity for its protection. That law had received the commendation of many leading Democrats, including S. S. Cox, Secretary Whitney, the four Democratic Congressmen who represented Brooklyn, and General Slocum, then Representative at large from the State of New York. It had been put in force on the application of Democrats quite as often as on that of Republicans. We added to our Bill a provision that in case of a dispute concerning an election certificate, the Circuit Court of the United States in which the district was situated should hear the case and should award a certificate entitling the member to be placed on the Clerk's roll, and to hold his seat until the House itself should act on the case. That provision was copied from the English law of 1868 which has given absolute public satisfaction there. This was the famous Force Bill, and the whole of it—a provision that, if a sufficient petition were made to the court for that purpose, officers, appointed by the court, belonging to both parties should be present and watch the election; that the Judge of the Circuit Court should determine, in case of dispute, what name should be put on the roll of the House of Representatives, in the beginning, subject to the Constitutional power of the House to correct it, and that a moderate punishment for bribery, intimidation and fraud, on indictment and conviction by a jury of the vicinage, should be imposed. That was the whole of it.