At the present time when there is such uncertainty in the election of President and reference is made to that one of 1876, many are repeating the contention that a partisan vote of the Electoral Commission unconstitutionally made Hayes President. The author very clearly points out that no president was more entitled to his office on constitutional grounds than Rutherford B. Hayes. Contrary to the assertion that eight Republican members of the Electoral Commission voted on partisan grounds, Professor Burgess says that it was they who stood squarely on the constitution and the seven Democratic members of that commission voted purely on party lines. The Democrats had neither "a leg nor a peg to stand upon in any one of the cases" of Oregon, Louisiana, Florida or South Carolina. The Electoral Commission in each case went back of the returns and accepted those certified by the officials of the State, who had been in conformity with the Constitution of the United States duly qualified to make them.
These lectures review the important problems of Hayes's administration. Among these problems growing out of the Civil War was the increasing aggression of the legislative branch of the federal government. Beginning with the Reconstruction Period the government was more and more becoming a parliamentary one. Hayes was determined to reestablish it on its constitutional foundations. When he came into power the lower house was in control of the Democrats and it was they who were determined to usurp executive power. Riders were placed on appropriation bills and efforts were made to force the President to assent to laws which would eliminate the Federal Government from all interference with the affairs of the Southern States. Notwithstanding the fact that they forced an extra session of Congress when both branches were Democratic, Hayes stood firm and in a long fight curbed the aggression of the legislative branch. Among other great achievements of his administration the author points out the reform of the currency, improvements in civil service, and the adoption of a wise policy in the treatment of the Indians.
The withdrawal of the troops from the defence of the Republican governments in the South, President Hayes thought was necessary that strife might cease and that those best fitted to rule should take charge of their home affairs. The author considers this to be one of the greatest acts of statesmanship that any president ever performed. The old charge that this was a result of a deal between Southern Democrats who were peacefully to permit Hayes to become President in return for relieving them of military rule, he terms an invention of the politicians and radical friends of the Negro. He maintains that before Hayes ever became a candidate for the presidency it was well known that he held such views favorable to the South.
The reader should bear in mind here that this theory of Mr. Burgess is in keeping with his radical position that the Negro being inferior and unfit for citizenship he should have been left at the mercy of the white man who wanted to enslave him. Here as in all of Mr. Burgess's Reconstruction discussions he sees only one side of the question. The white man should be supreme and the Negro should merely have freedom of body with no guarantee that even this would not be of doubtful tenure. Reconstruction studies will always be valueless as long as they are prosecuted by men of biased minds.
Orville Holliday.
American Patriots and Statesmen from Washington to Lincoln. By Albert Bushnell Hart. P. F. Collier & Son, New York, 1916. Five Volumes.
The editor deserves great credit for bringing together so much original material reflecting the thought of the men who made the nation. Every phase of American life and politics has been considered, giving both the scholar and the layman a ready reference and guide for a more intensive study of public opinion in this country than can be obtained from the ordinary treatises on history and government. The manner of selecting and arranging the materials exhibits evidence of breadth of view on the part of the compiler and places his long experience as a professor in the leading university of this country at the disposal of persons who have not labored in this field so long.
Here we have the thoughts of almost every distinguished man who materially influenced the history of this country from the time of the discovery of America to the outbreak of the Civil War. The writer has drawn on the works of all classes, statesmen, sages, men of affairs, State officials, congressmen, senators, presidents, judges; ministers, doctors, lawyers, educators, novelists, essayists and travellers; poets and orators. Every section of the country, too, is represented in this collection and a few foreigners who have manifested peculiar interest in Americans have also been included. Some of these important subjects treated in these documents are such questions as "Expectations from the New World," "The First Immigrants," "Principles of Personal Liberty," "Extension of Colonial Freedom," "The American Revolution," "Independence of the United States," "Liberty in a Federal Constitution," "National Democracy," "The Frontier," "States Rights," "Slavery," "Nullification," and "The Popularization of Government." Important treatises having a special bearing on the Negro have not been omitted. Among these are Hinton Rowan Helpers' Appeal to the Non-slaveholding Whites, Benjamin Wade's Defiance of Secession, John Brown's Last Speech of a Convicted Abolitionist, William H. Seward's Irrepressible Conflict, Abraham Lincoln's A House Divided against itself cannot Stand, his Meaning of the Declaration of Independence, his Philosophy of Slavery, the Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation.
The collection as a whole makes a valuable reference work for the modern teacher who is trying to explain the past in terms of present achievements. These materials are so arranged as to show that what we now call new problems in American life are issues of old, that the questions now arising as to how to manage the army and navy, how to deal with our colonies, how to maintain our position as a world power, and how to promote national preparedness, have all been discussed pro and con by leading statesmen in the past. Libraries in need of source material lying in this field would make no mistake in purchasing this valuable collection.