The election was very close; and immediately agents of the Democratic party were sent to South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana for some purpose. They were at first, apparently, under the direction of Colonel Pelton, a nephew of Mr. Tilden, and by Pelton were authorized, in substance and in effect, to bribe some of the canvassing boards to make false returns of the choice of Tilden electors instead of those electors who had been actually chosen on the Hayes ticket, or to bribe some of the Republican electors. This scheme very early became known to the Republican National Committee, and steps were immediately taken to send Republican gentlemen, well known and of high standing, to those States where, it was feared, efforts at bribery were being, or were to be, attempted, in order to preserve, so far as lawfully could be done, the real results of the election. Among these men so sent were, as stated by Mr. Watterson, John Sherman, Stanley Matthews, James A. Garfield, William M. Evarts, John A. Logan, and some others, one of whom, as I remember, was Senator Howe of Wisconsin, a fine lawyer and a man of absolutely upright private and public life. As everybody knows who reads or remembers the history of those times, none of the gentlemen mentioned would be directly or indirectly a party to intrigue or dishonesty of any kind. They found on investigation that the Hayes electors had been duly chosen and that, unless some one of them, after being elected on the Hayes ticket, should be induced to dishonor himself by Peltonian expedients, all would vote for President Hayes. The corrupt dealers in canvassing boards and votes apparently sought a market only with the Democrats, who, as Mr. Watterson says, declined to buy.
When the Republicans before mentioned returned to Washington I learned from more than one of them, in relating their experiences at New Orleans, that the States had truly gone Republican and that the only danger, if any, was the exertion of evil influences to change the result. The actual experiences related by Mr. Watterson in this connection illustrate and confirm what I have said. The political “book-makers” were undoubtedly on hand, but that they were acting under the authority of any of the Returning Board there was no proof. There are speculators in politics as well as in stocks, and they often act without having a principal behind them or any principle within them. I remember an instance occurring in the Senate at Washington when a bill of much financial importance was under consideration. I learned afterward that a lobbyist whom I did not know had contracted my vote in favor of the bill with one interest, and my vote against the same bill in favor of the opposing interest. He had sold me to both sides, and whichever side lost he would get his lobbyist reward.
Mr. Watterson quotes from a speech of Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, in which Mr. Hewitt is made to say that the vote of Louisiana was offered to him for money and that he declined to buy it. So far Mr. Hewitt of course personally knew the truth of what he was saying; but when he says, “The vote of that State was sold for money,” he could not have stated what he personally knew, though he doubtless believed what he said. He was careful not to say that he personally knew of the sale of the vote of Louisiana, nor did he refer to any evidence of it. He was evidently at New Orleans when, as he says, the vote of that State was offered him for money. Why did he not, then and there, in the presence of the body of the gentlemen of both parties mentioned by Mr. Watterson, make known the guilty person, and so explode and destroy the corruption which was contemplated and begun by Colonel Pelton, nephew of Mr. Tilden, at the Democratic headquarters in New York and which compelled the sending of Republican gentlemen to New Orleans?
I was invited to go there as one of the Republican Committee, but I thought it better to remain in Washington and help to the best of my ability in framing and passing a law in which the Democratic House of Representatives and the Republican Senate could agree, and which would execute the letter and spirit of the Constitution and preserve the people of the whole United States from the apparent great danger of disorder, tumult—and possibly anarchy—likely to arise from the fire of party passion if a clear and exact law of procedure and final determination should not be enacted speedily.
Historically, it is very unfortunate that Mr. Watterson did not include in his enlivening article copies of his telegraphic and other correspondence with Mr. Tilden from New Orleans, and elsewhere, for it would certainly and truly, so far as it went, throw much light on the existing drama being displayed, as well as the plans and work behind the curtain whereby (we may believe) it was hoped to produce the election of Mr. Tilden. We Republicans at Washington were forced to believe that an effort was being made, by every means that could be employed, to overcome the Hayes majority of one. During that whole period, so far as I personally knew or was informed, there never was any scheme or act of the Republicans to bribe any state canvassing board or elector by money or promise in support of Mr. Hayes’s election. We did (if I may borrow an ancient classic simile) fear “the Greeks bearing gifts.” We were morally certain that a large majority of the legal voters in the States of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were earnestly in favor of the election of Mr. Hayes, and we believed that if violence or some other kind of unlawful influence were not brought to bear the electoral votes of those States would be cast for him; but when the secret though bold operations of Colonel Pelton became partly known we were astonished and alarmed, though not disheartened, and we went forward in our efforts to provide by law for the final act in the great drama.
The scene of action was now transferred to Washington. Mr. Watterson in his usual charming style gives a clear description of the next steps taken by the Democratic managers to achieve the wished-for triumph of Mr. Tilden. He was advised by Mr. McLane—referring to the contest over the English Reform Bill of 1832, when he had seen the powerful impression produced by “the direct force of public opinion upon law-making and law-makers”—that an analogous situation now existed in America; that the Republican Senate was like the Tory House of Lords, and that the Democrats must organize a movement such as had been so effectual in England. But there was neither precedent nor analogy except violence and riots, for Parliament was engaged in considering discretionary legislation enlarging and purifying the franchise, in which peaceful persuasion and petition were right, as they would have been for or against the passage of the Electoral Commission Bill. Mr. Watterson tells us it was agreed that he return to Washington and make a speech “with the suggestion that in the National Capital there should assemble” a mass convention of at least one hundred thousand peaceful citizens exercising the freemen’s right of petition. Mr. Watterson tells us that it was a venture in which he had no great faith; but that he prepared the speech, and that, after much reading and revising of it by Mr. Tilden and Mr. McLane, to cover the case and meet the purpose, Mr. Tilden wrote Mr. Randall, Speaker of the House, a letter which was carried by Mr. McLane to Mr. Randall “instructing him what to do in the event that the popular response [which did not come] should prove favorable.” It is a great pity that this letter is lost to the historian, for it would doubtless illuminate the real meaning of the speech of Mr. Watterson prepared in New York and there ratified by Mr. Tilden; for the speech that was delivered at Washington soon after Christmas, 1876, was of such a character that “the Democrats at once set about denying the sinister and violent purpose ascribed to it by Republicans.” Mr. Watterson says,—I have no doubt with absolute frankness,—that no thought of violence had entered his mind. But Mr. Pulitzer, who immediately followed him in the speech-making, said without rebuke that he wanted the one hundred thousand to come “fully armed and ready for business.”
At the time of the delivery of these speeches action in all the States must already have been concluded, and the documents required by law, showing the action of the several States, had already been forwarded to the president of the Senate to be held by him to be opened and acted upon as required by the Constitution. These speeches, then, must have been intended to frighten members of Congress by the threatened presence of at least one hundred thousand men assembling at Washington, under color of the right of petition, to persuade them by some means to win a triumph for Mr. Tilden by procuring the rejection of some vote or votes appearing in the electoral documents to have been cast for Mr. Hayes. It would seem that the framers of the speech of Mr. Watterson had overlooked the provisions in the Constitution of the United States on the subject, which left no discretion or policy to be exercised by any one, and the fact that so-called public opinion or partizan wishes had no place in the procedure of receiving and counting the electoral votes.
This great army of petitioning citizens could as well have been assembled to influence the Supreme Court in the consideration of some great cause, or the House of Representatives or the Senate in an impeachment proceeding. This mode of influencing administrative or judicial procedure, which has been and is supposed to be for the ascertainment of the law and the truth, would be retrogression to Roman times, when the populace sometimes flocked into the Forum to influence by their voices and uproar the trial of causes.
I come now in my recollections (which are verified by the volume of the “Proceedings of the Electoral Commission,” by the official “Journals” of the two Houses, and by the “Congressional Record”) to the details of the proceedings of the two Houses and of the Electoral Commission. On December 14, 1876, the Democratic House of Representatives passed a resolution in the following words: