Embarrassments of President Hayes. Republican Hostility to Hayes. Greenback Contraction Stopped. The Bland-Allison Act. Specie Pay ments Resumed. Edmunds. McKinley and Reed had just entered Congress, and had not New In 1877, for the first time since 1849, there was a break in the partisan correspondence between the President and House of Representa tives chosen at the same time. The Republicans had the presidency and Senate, while the Democrats had the House. The partisan divergence between the two branches of Congress and the Democratic belief that their party was cheated out of the presidency produced several deadlocks and incited many assaults on the President by the House. On the latter account, and because of the social disturbances in the North due to the panic of 1873-8 and the railroad strikes of 1877, and the political disturbances in South Carolina and Louisiana, due to the contest between two sets of State officers and Legislatures in each State, the position of the Administration was seriously embarrassing. The Administration, too, was hampered by the hostility of one element of its party, which feeling was extended and intensified by the contest in which Arthur, then Collector of the Port at New York, was involved. Hayes' conciliatory policy toward the South, his endeavors, partially successful, to settle the controversies between the rival State officers in South Carolina and Louisiana, and his withdrawal of the troops from those States practically ended the Southern difficulties in their more serious aspect. The action of the Democrats, however, in failing to make the necessary appropriations to meet the expenditures of the Government forced him to call Congress in extra session twice, once on October 15, 1877, in the first year of his term, and again on March 18, 1879. The important business of the Hayes Administration, aside from the settlement of the reconstruction question, dealt with the finances. A bill was signed by the President May 31, 1878, stopping the contraction of the greenbacks, then under way, and leaving the amount nominally outstanding $346,681,016, a figure at which they have remained to this day. Three months earlier than this, or on February 28, 1878, the President vetoed the Bland-Allison bill requiring the coinage of $2,000,000 of silver bullion each month into standard silver dollars, and permitting the coinage of $4,000,000 a month. The bill, however, was passed over the veto the same day by the constitutional two-thirds, and the law remained in operation until superseded by the act of July 14, 1890, popularly called the Sherman law. Ten months after the enactment of the Bland-Allison silver coinage law, and seven months after the contraction of the greenbacks was suspended, or on January 1, 1879, the specie resumption law signed by President Grant January 14, 1875, went into force. This act brought all the country's currency up to the gold level, below which it had dropped on January 1, 1862, when the Government suspended specie payments. Gold was at a premium in currency from the beginning of 1862 to the beginning of 1879. The premium reached its highest point in the darkest days of the war. This was touched on July 11, 1864, when it took $2.85 in greenbacks to buy $1 in gold. These questions receive more extended treatment in a subsequent chapter. The embarrassments which President Hayes encountered from a hostile House of Representatives in the first half of his term, or in 1877-79, were increased in the succeeding two years. In the canvass of 1878 the Democrats held on to the House and captured the Senate. This was the first time since the opening days of 1861, when Southern members withdrew to follow their States into the Confederacy, that the Democrats had a majority in the Senate. The attacks from both branches of Congress, to which the President was now exposed, sent the lukewarm and hostile Republicans to the rescue, and closed the breach in the party. However, the Republican breach was destined to be opened in another place in the early days of Mr. Hayes' successor, and with disastrous consequences to the party. In the Democratic House of the Congress of 1877-79 "riders' were attached to appropriation bills in the latter part of the term, to which the Republican Senate objected. These riders" were alien to the legitimate purpose of the measures and were designed to defeat or repeal the laws, then many years on the statute book, for the employment of troops at the polls and for supervisors of election and special deputy marshals at elections of members of Congress. In the deadlock between the two branches Congress expired without providing the necessary money for the support of the Government, and the new Congress was summoned by the President to meet on March 18, 1879, in extra session, to furnish the required funds. In this Congress, in which the Democrats had both houses, and were thus better able to hamper the President, the tactics of the preceding one were repeated. Hayes promptly vetoed the bills containing the objectionable provisions, repeatedly calling the attention of Congress to the impropriety of tacking general legislation on appropriation measures. Eventually Congress receded and passed all the bills without the obnoxious features, except one measure, which the veto killed for the session. Hayes was not an aspirant for re-election, but a member of the Administration, the Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, sought the nomination. He had more powerful rivals in ex-President Grant and Senator James G. Blaine. It was foreseen long before the National Convention met in Chicago, on June 2, 1880, that Grant would lead on the first ballot. The anti-third term sentiment was strong in the Republican party, as was shown before Grant's second term ended, when See Chapter VIII. The Democrats Have House and Senate. See Chapter VI. Contest Be tween Hayes and Congress. The Convention of 1880. tack on Third termism. the cry of "Caesarism," or the danger that Grant would hold on to the presidency for life, was ringing through the Democratic press. The Pennsylvania Republican State Convention, on May 26, 1875, Republican At adopted this resolution: "That we declare a firm, unqualified adherence to the unwritten law of the republic, which wisely, and under the sanction of the most venerable examples, limits the presidential service of any citizen to two terms; and we, the Republicans of Pennsylvania, in recognition of this law, are unalterably opposed to the election to the presidency of any person for a third term.”’ This called out a letter from Grant, on May 29, to the presiding officer of the Convention, in which he said, among other things: "Now for the third term, I do not * * want it any more than I did the first. * I would not accept a nomination if it were tendered, unless it should come under such circumstances as would make it an imperative duty-circumstances not likely to arise." Grant as a Third Term Aspirant. As a third term aspirant, Grant was far more formidable in 1880 than he could have been in 1876. He had been three and a quarter years in retirement in the interval, and in his travel around the world in that time he had received honors never accorded to any other American. Grant's forces were skillfully led by Roscoe Conkling, who presented Grant's name to the convention in one of the three historically great Historical Con- Speeches made on such occasions, Ingersoll's "plumed knight" speech for Blaine, in the convention of 1876, being one of the other two, and Garfield's for Sherman, in the convention of 1880, being the other. By the breaking of the "unit rule," however, each delegate thus being allowed to declare his individual preference, Grant's strength was lessened. He lost nineteen votes out of the seventy of the New York delegation on that account, most of which went to Blaine, and many votes from other delegations drifted away from him. vention Speeches. Garfield Nominated. On the first ballot Grant got 304 votes, Blaine 284, Sherman 93 and Senator George F. Edmunds 33, while a few others received smaller numbers. This order was maintained, except as regards Edmunds, who dropped lower immediately, until the last ballot except one, or the thirty-fifth. Garfield, who received two votes on the second ballot, and seventeen on the thirty-fourth, got fifty on the thirty-fifth. Then almost all the delegates, except the Grant men, went to Garfield, and he was nominated on the thirty-sixth ballot, receiving 399 votes as compared with Conkling's old guard of 306 for Grant. To placate the Conkling element, the vice-presidential candidacy was given to Chester A. Arthur. In its platform of 1880 the Republican party reaffirmed its belief that duties levied for revenue should discriminate in favor of American labor; The Platform declared that "slavery having perished in the States, its twin barbarity polygamy must die in the Territories"; pronounced in favor of granting to all citizens the rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution, said that "the solid South must be divided by the peaceful agencies of the ballot," and demanded the restriction of Chinese immigration. of 1880. |