Page images
PDF
EPUB

Returning Board,' was rewarded with the mission to Russia.

It required the disfranchisement of a less number of the citizens of Louisiana to count in Packard as governor than to count in the Hayes electors; but then a governor has less patronage than a president to bestow, and it became necessary to abandon Packard to secure a sufficient number of Southern Democratic votes in the House of Representatives, to ensure the ratification of the decision of the Electoral Commission, of which I shall have to speak presently. Packard was reconciled to his fate by receiving the consulate at Liverpool, a place which, whether it was worth fifteen or thirty thousand dollars a year, depended mainly upon the character of the man who held it.

Kellogg was rewarded for his services with a seat in the United States Senate,- by what means may be inferred from the fact that of the members of the Legislature who voted for him, eight senators, three officers of the Senate, thirtytwo members of the House, and four officers of the House, making forty-seven in all, received lucrative appointments from the federal government, and, curiously enough, all of these patriots received their appointments from the department of which John Sherman was the chief.

Of the persons connected with the canvass, election, and negotiations in Louisiana, sixty-nine were appointed to offices, and all but sixteen of these were treasury appointments.

Wells, the president of the Returning Board, had one son appointed deputy surveyor at New Orleans; another son and a son-in-law, to clerkships in the same institution, on salaries ranging from $1,400 to $1,600 per annum.

Anderson, Wells' white colleague on the Returning Board, was made deputy collector of the port of New Orleans; his son, C. B. Anderson, was made a clerk in the custom

This is known as the Sherman report, because his is the first name signed.

house, on a salary of $1,400; his son's father-in-law, auditor, on a salary of $2,500; and his son's brother-in-law, clerk, on a salary of $1,200.

Kenner, one of the negroes on the Returning Board, was appointed deputy naval officer of the same port; one of his brothers was appointed to a $1,600 clerkship, and another brother, a laborer, at a salary of $600.

Cassanave, the other colored member of the board, had a brother who was an undertaker appointed to a place in the custom-house. His own expenses, incurred in defending himself and colleagues in New Orleans against criminal charges, were defrayed in part by President Hayes and Secretary Sherman.

Woodward, clerk of the Returning Board, who assisted in falsifying the election returns, was appointed to a $1,400 clerkship, and was subsequently promoted to an assistant deputy surveyorship, at a salary of $1,600.

Abell, the secretary of the Returning Board, was appointed to a $1,600 clerkship in the custom-house.

Judge G. B. Davis, a clerk of the Returning Board, and another man of equally easy virtue with any of his associates, also found an asylum in the custom-house.

Green, a colored minute clerk of the board, in due time reached the same port, and afterwards was appointed an inspector, at $3 per day.

Charles Hill, another clerk of the Returning Board, and therefore possessed of perilous secrets, was appointed storekeeper, at a salary of $1,460.

It is a fact not without significance that none of President Hayes' cabinet ministers, save his Secretary of the Treasury, availed themselves of the privilege of rewarding any of the members of the Returning Board or of their zealous subordinates.

Whether these dignities and emoluments were worth what they cost; whether the honors for which they were beholden to the frauds and forgeries of the four pied and

speckled knaves who constituted the Louisiana Returning Board in 1876 are such as their offspring and friends will take pride in; and whether their names will be cherished by their countrymen for their active and passive parts in placing a man in the presidential chair who was not elected to that office by the people, are questions which may be safely left to the final arbitrament of history. "How far," said the Hon. Clarkson N. Potter,1 in his admirable and temperate report, the more admirable because so temperate," the controlling visiting statesmen like Mr. Sherman really believed there was any justification for the rejection of Democratic votes by the Returning Board, men will never agree. We are apt to believe in the right of what we earnestly desire. Men who thought the welfare of the country depended upon the continuation in power of the Republican party would naturally have been disposed to consider almost anything justified to retain it there. To us it seems impossible that the flagrant and atrocious conduct of the Returning Board was not realized above all by the men of most political experience, or that the most dangerous and outrageous political fraud of the age was not assisted and advised by those who next proceeded to take possession of its best fruits."

'Chairman of the select committee appointed by the House of Representatives" to inquire into the alleged fraudulent canvass and return of votes at the last presidential election in the States of Louisiana and Florida."

CHAPTER III

-

The electoral count of 1877-Senator Morton's scheme - Tilden's history of the presidential counts President Grant concedes Tilden's election · Electoral commission created Disapproved of by Tilden - Refuses to raffle for the presidency Horatio Seymour's speech before the New York electors - Dr. Franklin's advice to his son The Florida case- The Louisiana case - The Oregon case- - Conflicting decisions

[ocr errors]

of the commission - The commission for sale - The forged certificates from Louisiana - Decision of the commission condemned by the House of Representatives - Letter of Charles Francis Adams - The Fraud Blazon - Tilden's reply Protest of the Democratic minority of the electoral commission — Thurman and Bayard —James Russell Lowell.

AT the meeting of Congress in December the absorbing question was the counting of the electoral vote. It had been usual for Congress to define in advance the manner in which this duty should be discharged. In the session of 1864-5 Congress provided that no electoral vote objected to by either House of Congress should be counted except by the concurrent votes of both Houses. This became notorious as "the 22d rule." It was re-adopted at the three successive electoral counts of 1865, 1869, and 1873. This rule, after having been in force for three successive elections, was abandoned by a resolution of the Senate in December, 1875, on motion of Senator Edmunds, at whose instance the Senate adopted "the rules of that body and the joint rules of the two Houses except the 22d joint rule heretofore in use." The House of Representatives was at this time largely Democratic, and, had the 22d joint rule continued in force, any electoral votes which it refused to count would have been rejected. The rule, which was of doubtful constitutionality, had been originally adopted, and subsequently renewed, for partisan ends; for partisan ends it was now dispensed with by the Senate,

thus leaving the two Houses without any rule to govern them for counting the electoral votes in February, 1877.

-

Prior to 1865, and before the adoption of the 22d joint rule above referred to, it had been the practice of the two Houses of Congress, a little in advance of the day fixed by the Act of 1792 for counting the votes, the second Wednesday of February, — to agree upon the place of meeting for the discharge of this duty and the order of procedure. Various efforts had been made from time to time, by one House or the other, previous to the adoption of the 22d rule, to appropriate to itself the power to determine the validity of electoral votes; but all had, for one reason 'or another, proved abortive. The 22d joint rule, adopted by the Republicans in 1865, assumed for the first time the right to reject electoral votes, as the prerogative of either House.

When the certificates of the electors of the several States came to be opened at Washington in 1877, it appeared that the certificates of thirty-four States were uncontested, but that the remaining four were to be contested. These were the certificates from the States of South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon. The electoral vote of the uncontested States was so distributed that the fate of the presidential candidates depended upon the electoral vote of the four contested States.

Congress having failed to make any provision beforehand, the mode of procedure in counting the electoral vote was the first question to be dealt with.

The Republicans had the control of the Senate, the Democrats, of the House. The Constitution provided that "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." Senator Morton took the ground that the President of the Senate should be invested with plenary authority "to determine all disputes relative to certificates of the electoral votes; to

« PreviousContinue »