Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

Under these circumstances it was not altogether re-assuring to the ardent loyalists of the country, that the city of New York, whose prosperity depended in so great a degree upon the preservation of the Union, should now give Mr. Seymour a majority of more than sixty thousand over General Grant, and that the Empire State, which would cease to be Imperial if the Union ceased to exist, should in a popular contest defeat General Grant by fully ten thousand votes. New Jersey made an equally discouraging record by giving Mr. Seymour a majority of three thousand. The Pacific coast, whose progress and prosperity depended so largely upon the maintenance of the Union, presented an astonishing result,—California giving General Grant a majority of only 514, while Oregon utterly repudiated the great leader and gave her electoral vote for Mr. Seymour. Indiana, in the test vote of the October election for governor, was carried for the Republicans by only 961; Ohio gave a smaller majority in the hour of National victory than she had given during any year of the civil struggle, while Pennsylvania at the same election gave the party but ten thousand majority. In the city and county of Philadelphia the Democrats actually had a majority of nearly two hundred votes. The Republican majorities in these three States were considerably increased in the November election by the natural falling off of the Democratic vote, but the critical and decisive battle had been fought in each State in October. It was a very startling fact that if Mr. Seymour had received the electoral vote of the solid South (which afterwards came to be regarded either as the rightful inheritance or the fraudulent prerogative of the Democratic part), he would, in connection with the vote he received in the North, have had a majority over General Grant in the Electoral College. Considering the time of the election, considering the record and the achievements of the rival candidates, the Presidential election of 1868 must be regarded as the most remarkable and the most unaccountable in our political annals.

The result was not comforting to the thoughtful men who interpreted its true significance and comprehended the possibilities to which it pointed. Of the reconstructed States (eight in number) General Grant received the electoral votes of six,—North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida. A full vote was secured in each, and the lawfulness and fairness of the result under the system of Reconstruction were not questioned. The vote of Georgia was disputed on account of some alleged irregularity in her compliance with the Acts of Reconstruction, and the suspicion that the Presidential election was not fairly conducted. But in Louisiana there was no moral doubt that violence and disorder had done their evil work. The result in that State was declared to be in favor of Mr. Seymour. The subject was brought before Congress, and the counting of the votes of these States was challenged; but as the alleged irregularity in Georgia and the alleged fraud in Louisiana had not been legally investigated, Congress (Republican at that time by a large majority in both branches) declined to exclude them from the electoral count.

There was great dissatisfaction on the part of a considerable number of Republicans in Congress with the determination to admit the vote of Louisiana without some qualifying record or explanation. In the House General Schenck offered a resolution, declaring that "the vote of the State was counted because no proof was formally submitted to sustain the objections thereto." General Shanks of Indiana offered a much more decisive resolution, declaring that "in the opinion of the House the acceptance of the electoral vote of Louisiana will encourage the criminal practice of enforcing elections in the States lately in rebellion, and involves the murder of thousands of loyal people." The rule of the House required unanimous consent to admit these resolutions, and they were strenuously objected to by Fernando Wood, Charles A. Eldridge, and other leading Democrats of the House.

In the Senate Mr. Morton of Indiana submitted a resolution, declaring that "while there is reason to believe from common report and information that the late Presidential election in Louisiana was carried by force and fraud, still there being no legal evidence before the Senate on that subject the electoral vote of Louisiana ought to be counted." No debate being allowed under the rule regulating the proceedings of the Senate in regard to the count of the electoral vote, the resolution was defeated. It received however the support of twenty-four Republican senators, some of them among the most prominent members of the body. Mr. Sumner, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Conkling, Mr. Cameron, Mr. Morton, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Morrill of Vermont were among those who thought some record should be made of the Senate's knowledge of the frauds in Louisiana, even if they were unable on strictly legal grounds to reject her electoral vote. Other Republican senators evidently thought, as they were unable legally to reject the vote, it was not wise to make any record on the question.

Subsequent investigation abundantly established the fact (of which at the time Congress did not possess legal knowledge) that the State of Louisiana had been carried for Mr. Seymour by shameless fraud, by cruel intimidation, by shocking violence. As incidental and unmistakable proof of fraud, it was afterwards shown from the records that in the spring election of 1868, in the parish of Orleans 29,910 votes had been cast, and that the Republicans had a majority of 13,973; whereas in the ensuing autumn, at the Presidential election, the returns for the same parish gave General Grant but 1,178 votes, while Mr. Seymour was declared to have received 24,668. In the parish of Caddo, where in the spring election the Republicans had shown a decided majority, General Grant received but one vote. In the parish of Saint Landry, where the Republicans had prevailed in the spring election by a majority of 678, not a single vote was counted for General Grant, the returns giving to Mr. Seymour the entire registered vote—4,787. In other parishes the results, if less aggravated and less startling, were of like character, and the State, which the Republicans had carried, at an entirely peaceful election in the spring, by a majority of more than 12,000, was now declared to have given Mr. Seymour a majority of 47,000.

There was no pretense that there had been a revolution of public opinion in the State to justify these returns. It was not indeed denied that General Grant was personally far stronger before the people of Louisiana than any Republican candidate at previous State or Parish elections. The change was simply the result of fraud, and the fraud was based on violence. Various investigations ordered by Congress establish this view. "From these investigations," as was stated in a subsequent report, "it appears that over two thousand persons were killed, wounded, and otherwise injured in that State within a few weeks of the Presidential election of 1868; that half the State was overrun by violence, midnight raids, secret murders, and open riots, which kept the people in constant terror, until the Republicans surrendered all claims, and then the election was carried by the Democracy."

The same report states that in the parish of Orleans "riots prevailed for weeks, filling New Orleans with scenes of blood, and Ku-Klux notices were scattered throughout the city warning the colored men not to vote." In the parish of Caddo, where as already stated only one vote was counted for General Grant, "there occurred one of the bloodiest riots on record, in which the Ku-Klux killed and wounded over two hundred Republicans, hunting and chasing them for two days and nights through fields and swamps. Thirteen captives were taken from the jail and shot, and a pile of twenty-five dead bodies were found buried in the woods." These atrocious crimes immediately preceded the election, and "having thus conquered the Republicans and killed and driven off their white leaders, the masses of the negroes were captured by the Ku-Klux, marked with badges of red flannel, enrolled in clubs, led to the polls and compelled to vote the Democratic ticket, after which they were given certificates of that fact."

One of the most alarming features connected with this series of outrages was the promptness with which Louisiana resorted to violence after her re-admission to the right of representation in Congress. Her senators and representatives had taken their seats in their respective Houses only the preceding summer, and her right to participate in the Presidential election was established at the same time. Within less than five months after her formal reconstruction, outrages which would be exceptional in the governments of Algiers or Egypt were committed in utter defiance of law, and without any attempt at punishment by the authorities of the State. Not to punish was in effect to approve.

As a mere question of figures, it is impossible that Mr. Seymour could have received the 80,225 votes with which he was credited. Indeed, his alleged majority of 47,000 over General Grant was greater than the total vote which the Democratic party could honestly cast in Louisiana. In the Presidential election of 1860, when circumstances tended to call every Democrat in the South to the polls, the united vote of Breckinridge and Douglas in Louisiana was but 30,306, while the total vote, including that given for John Bell, was but 50,510. In 1867 the entire registered white vote of Louisiana was but 45,199. The white voting population of the State, therefore, was certainly no larger in 1868 than in 1860—if as large. It was not denied that since the close of the war a considerable number of white men had joined the Republican party; white it was not even claimed that a single negro voted the Democratic ticket in 1868, except as he was led to the polls under the cover of Ku-Klux weapons, terrorized by the violence of that association of lawless men.

It amounts therefore to a mathematical demonstration, that nearly one-half of Mr. Seymour's vote was fraudulent; and of that fact concealment is no longer attempted from any respectable source. It has been matter of surprise to the cotemporaries of Mr. Seymour, that sensitive as he has shown himself on many occasions in regard to the record of his political life, he would consent, after investigation and exposure of the atrocities had been made, to remain in history without protest as the beneficiary of a vote that was demonstrably fraudulent in its character,—a vote that was tainted with crime and stained with the blood of innocent men. It is assuredly not to be presumed that violent acts and murderous deeds are less repulsive to Mr. Seymour than to any other refined Christian gentleman. But his silence in respect to the wicked transactions of his supporters in Louisiana, when he was a candidate for the Presidency, has persuaded many honest-minded Democrats that the whole narrative of crime was a slander, concocted in the interest of the Republican party. It has served also a far more deplorable purpose, for it has in large measure aided in screening from public reprobation, and possibly from exemplary punishment, the guilty principals and the scarcely less guilty accomplices in the maiming and murder of American citizens, who were only seeking to exercise their Constitutional right of suffrage.