COLONEL WATTERSON’S REJOINDER TO EX-SENATOR EDMUNDS
COMMENTS ON “ANOTHER VIEW OF ‘THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST’” ([SEE PAGE 193])
To the Editor of THE CENTURY:
Sir: If I may say so without departing from the respect and regard in which I hold Senator Edmunds, he has made rather a case at law than a contribution to history. With the trained skill of an expert, he emphasizes all that may be pleaded on his own side, whilst either ignoring or belittling the strength of the other side. The ultimate verdict in the matter of Tilden versus Hayes will turn on issues which the Electoral Commission refused, by a party vote of eight to seven, to consider; on evidence in equity which was not allowed to become a part of the record; upon rulings of the majority which the minority claimed, and justly claimed I think, to have been sometimes erroneous and sometimes inconsistent, but in every instance obedient to the party exigency.
I have neither the mind nor the heart to recall the wrangles and passions of the controversy. To me they mean nothing more than the half-forgotten dreams of a very dark night of the long ago. One may dismiss the exciting incidents: the conflicting testimony in Florida and Louisiana; the contested elector in Oregon; the tergiversation in opinions of some of the members of the court; the playing State law against National law, and vice versa, in a shuttlecock process all on one side, the unescapable inference being that from the first the majority was bent upon denying Tilden the one vote needed to make him President and securing to Hayes the twelve votes needed to make him President.
One may likewise dismiss the long list of questionable persons appointed to office under the Hayes administration, apparently from no other consideration than their service as members of returning boards and officers of election, most of them charged with corrupt practices.
At the election of the seventh of November, 1876, the popular vote was as follows:
| For Tilden | 4,300,316 |
| For Hayes | 4,036,016 |
| Tilden’s majority | ,264,300 |