Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 2

by Samuel J. Tilden

"But in my judgment he had another and a better reason. He knew that whenever, if ever, it should become necessary for the people of the United States to pass judgment upon his conduct during and subsequent to the canvass of 1876 they could not fail to acquit him of any responsibility for its final result.

"The logic of nations is far more rigorous than that of the individuals composing it, and it would be doing the understanding of the American people great injustice to suppose they cannot see that there was no time when Mr. Tilden could have taken any step towards seizing the Presidency with any color of right or with any prospect of success. There were just two contingencies, and only two, in which it would have been lawful and obligatory on Mr. Tilden to take the oath as President of the United States.

"The first one would have been presented if Congress had performed its constitutional duty: had counted the electoral votes, and declared Mr. Tilden the chosen of the electoral colleges. The duty of verifying the electoral votes is given by the Constitution to the two Houses of Congress and to them only; it has always been exercised by them at the choice of every previous President from the foundation of the government. It was known to all who came in contact with Mr. Tilden—for he was unreserved in the expression of his opinion upon that subject—that in his view this power and duty of Congress was lodged nowhere else.

"The two Houses of Congress, however, did not see fit to exercise that power nor to discharge that duty, and as a consequence this contingency in which it would have been proper for Mr. Tilden to take the official oath never presented itself. Before the time fixed by law for counting the electoral votes, Congress passed the electoral bill by which they practically abdicated in favor of a tribunal unknown to and, in my judgment, unknowable by the Constitution, and enacted that the electoral commission should in the first instance make the count, and that its count should stand unless overruled by the concurrent action of the two Houses. This electoral tribunal counted Mr. Tilden out, and counted in a man who was not elected. Congress did not overrule their count, in consequence of which the false count stood as law under the act of Congress.

"The only other contingency in which it would have been obligatory, or even lawful, for Mr. Tilden to have taken the oath of office was in case of a failure in the choice of President by the electoral colleges, the House of Representatives had itself proceeded to make the election, voting by States in the manner prescribed by the Constitution and pursued in the election of John Q. Adams.

"This contingency, like the first, never presented itself, and, both failing, any attempt on the part of Mr. Tilden to seize the Presidency by violence would have been not statesmanship, but simply brigandage.

"Courage is too common a virtue among Americans for any one to make a boast of it, and the lack of courage too rare to explain the conduct of any body of representative men. At the same time, there is no doubt that if there was any place where a special display of heroism could have prevented the defeat of the popular choice and installed the elect of the people in the Presidential chair, that place was the floor of Congress. I suppose I say nothing which any Democratic member of that Congress will be disposed to dispute when I state that it was the fear that the Senate would lead a resistance to the rightful judgment of the House, and that President Grant would sustain this revolutionary policy with the army and navy, and with the militia of the great States in which the Republicans had possession of the State governments, that deterred the House of Representatives from the assertion of its rights, and induced its vote for and acquiescence in the electoral commission.

"But without speculating upon the causes or motives for such vote and acquiescence the facts are beyond dispute. The House of Representatives did not elect Mr. Tilden in the manner prescribed by the Constitution or in any other. On the other hand, it did concur with the Senate in anticipating and preventing the contingency in which it might have had to act, and in providing beforehand an expedient which incapacitated it for supplying a failure of an election by the colleges. It adopted the electoral law, and went through all the forms of the electoral scheme. True, it afterwards rebuked itself by passing a declaratory resolution condemning the electoral commission, and asserting that Mr. Tilden had been the choice of the people. But the Constitution had not provided that a man should or could take office as President on a declaratory resolution of the House of Representatives. If that resolution could have had full effect to abrogate the electoral law which the House had assisted to enact, it would still have furnished Mr. Tilden with no warrant of authority for taking the oath of office. Had Mr. Tilden been declared President-elect by either of the constitutional methods, no one who knows him can doubt that he would have taken the oath and the office or sealed the people's choice with his blood, as he was in duty bound to do.

"I do not weary you with the recapitulation of these facts, because I suppose any of them new to you. On the contrary, they are all now matters of history. It is because they are of public notoriety, and because they point so directly to the one and inevitable conclusion that Mr. Tilden's responsibility in the late canvass terminated at the ballot-box, that I recall them here to justify in your eyes his silence upon the subject referred to in your letter, and his perfect faith in the good sense and justice of his countrymen.