The above named States completed the ratification of the 15th amendment, and the powers of reconstruction were plainly used to that end. Some of the Northern States had held back, and for a time its ratification by the necessary three-fourths was a matter of grave doubt. Congress next passed a bill to enforce it, May 30th, 1870. This made penal any interference, by force or fraud, with the right of free and full manhood suffrage, and authorized the President to use the army to prevent violations. The measure was generally supported by the Republicans, and opposed by all of the Democrats.
The Republicans through other guards about the ballot by passing an act to amend the naturalization laws, which made it penal to use false naturalization papers, authorized the appointment of Federal supervisors of elections in cities of over 20,000 inhabitants; gave to these power of arrest for any offense committed in their view, and gave alien Africans the right to naturalize. The Democrats in their opposition laid particular stress upon the extraordinary powers given to Federal supervisors, while the Republicans charged that Seymour had carried New York by gigantic naturalization frauds in New York city, and sought to sustain these charges by the unprecedented vote polled. A popular quotation of the time was from Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, who showed that under the manipulations of the Tweed ring, more votes had been cast for Seymour in one of the warehouse wards of the city, “than there were men, women, children, and cats and dogs in it.”
The Legal Tender Decision.
The Act of Congress of 1862 had made “greenback” notes a legal tender, and they passed as such until 1869 against the protests of the Democrats in Congress, who had questioned the right of Congress to issue paper money. It was on this issue that Thaddeus Stevens admitted the Republicans were travelling “outside of the constitution” with a view to preserve the government, and this soon became one of his favorite ways of meeting partisan objections to war measures. At the December term of the Supreme Court, in 1869, a decision was rendered that the action of Congress was unconstitutional, the Court then being accidentally Democratic in its composition. The Republicans, believing they could not afford to have their favorite, and it must be admitted most useful financial measure questioned, secured an increase of two in the number of Supreme Justices—one under a law creating an additional Justiceship, the other in place of a Justice who had resigned—and in March, 1870, after the complexion of the Court had been changed through Republican appointments made by President Grant, the constitutionality of the legal tender act was again raised, and, with Chief Justice Chase (who had been Secretary of the Treasury in 1862 presiding) the previous decision was reversed. This was clearly a partisan struggle before the Court, and on the part of the Republicans an abandonment of old landmarks impressed on the country by the Jackson Democrats, but it is plain that without the greenbacks the war could not have been pressed with half the vigor, if at all. Neither party was consistent in this struggle, for Southern Democrats who sided with their Northern colleagues in the plea of unconstitutionality, had when “out of the Union,” witnessed and advocated the issue of the same class of money by the Confederate Congress. The difference was only in the ability to redeem, and this ability depended upon success in arms—the very thing the issue was designed to promote. The last decision, despite its partisan surroundings and opposition, soon won popularity, and this popularity was subsequently taken as the groundwork for the establishment of
The Greenback Party.
This party, with a view to ease the rigors of the monetary panic of 1873, advocated an unlimited issue of greenbacks, or an “issue based upon the resources of the country.” So vigorously did discontented leaders of both parties press this idea, that they soon succeeded in demoralizing the Democratic minority—which was by this time such a plain minority, and so greatly in need of new issues to make the people forget the war, that it is not surprising they yielded, at least partially, to new theories and alliances. The present one took them away from the principles of Jackson, from the hard-money theories of the early days, and would land them they knew not where, nor did many of them care, if they could once more get upon their feet. Some resisted, and comparatively few of the Democrats in the Middle States yielded, but in part of New England, the great West, and nearly all of the South, it was for several years quite difficult to draw a line between Greenbackers and Democrats. Some Republicans, too, who had tired of the “old war issues,” or discontented with the management and leadership of their party, aided in the construction of the Greenback bridge, and kept upon it as long as it was safe to do so. In State elections up to as late as 1880 this Greenback element was a most important factor. Ohio was carried by an alliance of Greenbackers and Democrats, Allen being elected Governor, only to be supplanted by Hayes (afterwards President) after a most remarkable contest, the alliance favoring the Greenback, the Republicans not quite the hard-money, but a redeemable-in-gold theory. Indiana, always doubtful, passed over to the Democratic column, while in the Southern States the Democratic leaders made open alliances until the Greenbackers became over-confident and sought to win Congressional and State elections on their own merits. They fancied that the desire to repudiate ante-war debts would greatly aid them, and they openly advocated the idea of repudiation there, but they had experienced and wise leaders to cope with. They were not allowed to monopolize this issue by the Democrats, and their arrogance, if such it may be called, was punished by a more complete assertion of Democratic power in the South than was ever known before. The theory in the South was welcomed where it would suit the Democracy, crushed where it would not, as shown in the Presidential election of 1880, when Garfield, Hancock and Weaver (Greenbacker) were the candidates. The latter, in his stumping tour of the South, proclaimed that he and his friends were as much maltreated in Alabama and other States, as the Republicans, and for some cause thereafter (the Democrats alleged “a bargain and sale”) he practically threw his aid to the Republicans—this when it became apparent that the Greenbackers, in the event of the election going to the House, could have no chance even there.
Gen’l Weaver went from the South to Maine, the scene of what was regarded at that moment as a pivotal struggle for the Presidency. Blaine had twice been the most prominent candidate for the Presidency—1876 and 1880—and had both times been defeated by compromise candidates. He was still, as he had been for many years, Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Maine, and now as ever before swallowed the mortification of defeat with true political grace. The Greenbackers had the year before formed a close alliance with the Democrats, and in the State election made the result so close that for many weeks it remained a matter of doubt who was elected Governor, the Democratic Greenbacker or the Republican. A struggle followed in the Legislature and before the Returning Board composed of State officers, who were Democrats, (headed by Gov. Garcelon) and sought to throw out returns on slight technicalities. Finally the Republicans won, but not without a struggle which excited attention all over the Union and commanded the presence of the State militia. Following Garfield’s nomination another struggle, as we have stated, was inaugurated, with Davis as the Republican nominee for Governor, Plaisted the Democratic-Greenback, (the latter a former Republican). All eyes now turned to Maine, which voted in September. Gen’l Weaver was on the stump then, as the Greenback candidate for President, and all of his efforts were bent to breaking the alliance between the Greenbackers and Democrats.
He advocated a straight-out policy for his Greenback friends, described his treatment in the South, and denounced the Democracy with such plainness that it displayed his purpose and defeated his object. Plaisted was elected by a close vote, and the Republicans yielded after some threats to invoke the “Garcelon precedents.” This was the second Democratic-Greenback victory in Maine, the first occurring two years before, when through an alliance in the Legislature (no candidate having received a majority of all the popular vote) Garland was returned.
The victory of Plaisted alarmed the Republicans and enthused the Democrats, who now denounced Weaver, but still sought alliance with his followers. General B. F. Butler, long a brilliant Republican member of Congress from Massachusetts, for several years advocated Greenback ideas without breaking from his Republican Congressional colleagues. Because of this fact he lost whatever of chance he had for a Republican nomination for Governor, “his only remaining political ambition,” and thereupon headed the Greenbackers in Massachusetts, and in spite of the protests of the hard-money Democrats in that State, captured the Democratic organization, and after these tactics twice ran for Governor, and was defeated both times by the Republicans, though he succeeded, upon State and “anti-blue blood” theories, in greatly reducing their majority. In the winter of 1882 he still held control of the Democratic State Committee, after the Greenback organization had passed from view, and “what will he do next?” is one of the political questions of the hour.
The Greenback labor party ceased all Congressional alliance with the Democrats after their quarrel with General Weaver, and as late as the 47th session—1881–82—refused all alliance, and abstained from exercising what some still believe a “balance of power” in the House, though nearly half of their number were elected more as Republicans than Greenbackers.