The result was undoubtedly a great disappointment to Mr. Tilden, and even greater to his immediate friends and supporters. They at once raised the cry that they had been defrauded, that Mr. Hayes had received title to his office against the law and against the evidence, that he was to occupy a place which the people had voted to confer upon Mr. Tilden. In every form of insinuation and accusation, by almost every Democratic paper in the country, it was affirmed that Mr. Hayes was a fraudulent President. This cry was repeated until the mass of the party believed that they had been made the victims of a conspiracy, and had been entrapped by an Electoral Commission. Yet the first authoritative movement for the committee that reported the Electoral Bill was from a Southern Democrat in the House, and the Electoral Bill itself was supported by an overwhelming number of Democrats in both branches; whereas the joint vote of the Republicans was, by a large majority, against the bill.
The vote of the Democrats in favor of the Electoral bill, as compared with the Democrats who voted against it in both branches, was in the proportion of more than ten to one; whereas but two-fifths of the Republicans in the two Houses voted for the bill, and three-fifths against it. Only a single Democrat in the Senate, Mr. Eaton of Connecticut, cast a negative vote; and he acknowledged in doing it that the State Senate of Connecticut, controlled by the Democrats, had requested him to support the bill. All the leading Democrats of the Senate—Mr. Thurman, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Pinkney Whyte—made earnest speeches in favor of it. Mr. McDonald of Indiana declared that the popular sentiment of his State was overwhelmingly in favor of it, and he reproached Mr. Morton for opposing it. Other prominent Republicans in the Senate—Mr. Sherman, Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania, Mr. Hamlin, Mr. Blaine—earnestly united with Mr. Morton in his opposition to the measure.
The division was the same in the House. Mr. Henry B. Payne of Ohio, Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, Mr. Clarkson N. Potter, Mr. Samuel S. Cox, and nearly all the influential men on the Democratic side, united in supporting the bill; while General Garfield, Mr. Frye, Mr. Kasson, Mr. Hale, Mr. Martin I. Townsend, and the leading Republicans of the House, opposed it. The House was stimulated to action by a memorial presented by Mr. Randall L. Gibson from New Orleans, demanding the passage of the bill; while Governor Vance of North Carolina, afterwards elected senator, telegraphed that the North-Carolina Legislature had almost unanimously passed resolutions in favor of it. The Democrats, therefore, had in a remarkable degree concentrated their influence and their votes in support of the measure.(4) It was fashioned precisely as they desired it. They agreed to every line and every letter. They agreed that a majority of the Commission, constituted as they ordained it should be, might decide these questions, and when the final decision was made they cried out in anger because it was not in Mr. Tilden's favor. One of the ablest judges of the Supreme Court, Joseph P. Bradley, has been made subject of unmerited censure because he decided the points of law according to his own convictions (sustained by the convictions of Justices Miller and Strong), and not according to the convictions of Justices Clifford and Field.
The Democratic dissatisfaction was instinctive and inevitable. In the very nature of things it is impossible after an election to constitute a Commission whose decisions will be accepted by both political organizations as impartial. It is, or it certainly should be, practicable to establish by law, before the election to which it may first apply, a permanent mode of adjudicating disputed points in the return of Presidential votes. Yet with the serious admonition of 1876, Congress has neglected the duty which may well be regarded as the most important and most imperative that can devolve upon it. The government of a Republic is left to all the chances of anarchy so long as there is no mode established by law for determining the election of its Chief Executive officer.
The disappointment of the Democratic masses continued after the inauguration of President Hayes, and it took the form of a demand for an investigation. It was not expected, of course, that any thing could be done to affect the decision of the Electoral Commission, but the friends of Mr. Tilden clamored for an exposure of Republican practices in the Presidential campaign. The Democrats in Congress were less eager for this course than the Democrats outside of Congress. It was understood that personal and urgent requests—one coming from Mr. Tilden himself—were necessary to induce Mr. Clarkson N. Potter to take the lead by offering on the 13th of May, 1878, a resolution for the appointment of a select committee of eleven "to inquire into the alleged false and fraudulent canvass and return of votes by State, county, parish, and precinct officers in the States of Louisiana and Florida, and into all the facts which in the judgment of said committee are connected with or are pertinent thereto." The resolution was adopted, and a committee was appointed, with power to sit during the recess of Congress.(5)
Congress adjourned on the 20th of June, and after a short vacation Mr. Potter's committee entered upon its extensive inquiries. Perhaps with the view of stimulating the Democratic members of the committee to zeal in the performance of their duty, Mr. Manton Marble early in August published a carefully prepared letter on the electoral counting of 1876. Mr. Marble was unsparing in his denunciation of the Republicans for having, as he alleged, obtained the election of Hayes and Wheeler by corruption in the Southern States. He dealt with unction upon the fact that the absolute trust of Mr. Tilden and his adherents in the Presidential contest had been in moral forces. As the accusations put forth were attributed to Mr. Tilden, and only the remarkable rhetoric of the letter to Mr. Marble, the public interest was fully aroused, and the threatened exposures impatiently awaited.
The majority of the committee reported, though perhaps with greater elaboration, substantially the same facts and assumptions that had been brought against the Republicans in the Southern States directly after the election, nearly two years before. If any thing new was produced, it was in detail rather than in substance, and undoubtedly showed some of the loose practices to which the character of Southern elections has given rise. Between the violence of the rebel organizers, and the shifts and evasions to which their opponents, both white and colored, have been subjected, the elections in many of those States have undoubtedly been irregular; but the Committee did not establish any fraudulent voting on the part of Republicans. Freely analyzed, indeed, the accusations against the colored voters were in another sense still graver accusations against the white voters. Duplicity is a weapon often employed against tyranny by its victims, and there is always danger that a popular election where law is unfairly administered and violence constantly impending, will bring into play on both sides the worst elements of society.
But all interest in the investigation as it was originally designed, was suddenly diverted by incidents which were wholly unlooked for when Mr. Potter moved his resolution and when Mr. Marble wrote his letter—giving an unexpected conclusion to the grand inquest so impressively heralded.
It happened that during an inquiry into the Oregon case by a Senate Committee, some thirty thousand political telegrams (mainly in cipher) had been brought into the custody of the committee by subpoenas to the Western Union Telegraph Company. The great mass of these telegrams were returned to the Company without translation. About seven hundred, however, had been retained by an employé of the committee. The re-opening of the Presidential controversy by the Democrats, and especially the offensive letter of Mr. Marble, led to a renewed effort to decipher the reserved telegrams. The translation was accomplished by an able and ingenious gentleman on the editorial staff of the New-York Tribune (Mr. William M. Grosvenor), and the result disclosed astonishing attempts at bribery on the part of Democratic agents in South Carolina, Florida, and Oregon. What may have been done of the same character in Louisiana can only be inferred, for no dispatches from that State were found.
The gentlemen who went to Florida in Mr. Tilden's interests were Mr. Manton Marble, Mr. C. W. Woolley, and Mr. John F. Coyle. Mr. Marble's sobriquet in the cipher dispatches was Moses. Mr. Woolley took the suggestive pseudonym of Fox, while Mr. Coyle was known as Max. Their joint mission was to secure the Electoral vote of the State, by purchase if need be, not quite as openly, but as directly as if they were negotiating for a cargo of cotton or offering money for an orange-grove. Mr. Marble was alarmed soon after his arrival by finding that the Democratic electors had "only about one hundred majority on certified copies, while the Republicans claimed the same on returns." Growing anxious, he telegraphed on November 22 to Mr. William T. Pelton (a nephew of Mr. Tilden): "Woolley asked me to say let forces be got together immediately for contingencies either here or in Louisiana." A few days later Mr. Marble telegraphed: "Have just received a proposition to hand over at any time required, Tilden decision of Board and certificate of Governor, for $200,000." Mr. Pelton thought the "proposition too high," and thereupon Mr. Marble and Mr. Woolley each found that an Elector could be secured for $50,000, and so telegraphed Mr. Pelton. Mr. Pelton, with commendable economy, warned them that he did not wish to pay twice for the same article, and with true commercial caution advised the Florida agents that "they could not draw until the vote of the Elector was received." According to Mr. Woolley the power was received too late, and on the 5th of December Mr. Marble closed the interesting correspondence with these words to Mr. Pelton: "Proposition failed. Finished responsibility as Moses. Last night Woolley found me and said he had nothing, which I knew already. Tell Tilden to saddle Blackstone."