Louisiana. The decision having been communicated to the two Houses, the count was resumed on the 19th. Objection was made to the decision of the commission, and the two Houses separated again to act upon them. The Senate voted, by 41 to 28, that the decision of the commission should stand. The House voted that the electoral votes cast by the Hayes electors for Louisiana ought not to be counted, 173 to 99. In each case this was a party vote except that two Republicans in the House voted with the Democrats.

The Houses then met again on the 20th, and resumed the count, which proceeded without dispute as far as the State of Michigan, when objection was made from the Democratic side to one vote from that State, on the ground that one of the persons chosen by the people held a Federal office at the time of his appointment, and that the act of the other electors in filling the alleged vacancy caused by his failure to act was not justified. This not being a case of double returns, the two Houses separated to decide it for themselves. The objection was

overruled by each House. A somewhat similar case of an elector for Nevada was the next stumbling-block in the count, and it too was decided in favor of the elector objected to. Oregon was reached in the count on the 21st. An outline sketch of the extremely complicated situation of affairs in Oregon has been given already. There were objections from both sides to the votes, and the papers were referred to the Electoral Commission, by whom further argument was heard. The commission unanimously rejected the made-up vote of the Tilden board of electors, but decided, eight to seven, that the full board of Hayes electors were the legal electors for the State. The decision was objected to, when communicated to the two Houses. Once more they separated, and each decided, substantially by a party vote, as before, the Senate for accepting the decision, and the House of Representatives for rejecting it. They then met again, and resumed the count. In the vote of Pennsylvania another case was encountered of an elector alleged to have been ineligible by reason of his having been a centennial commissioner. The other electors treated the place as vacant, and chose another person to act in it. The Senate agreed, without a division, to a resolution that the vote be counted. The House rejected it, 135 to 119, the affirmative consisting entirely of Democrats, and the negative containing only 15 of that party. The full vote of Pennsylvania was

accordingly counted under the law, the two Houses not having agreed to reject. Rhode Island furnished a case not very different, but the two Houses this time concurred unanimously in deciding that the disputed vote should be counted.

To the Hayes votes in South Carolina the Democrats next objected that there was no legal election in the State, that there was not, in South Carolina, during the year 1876, a republican form of government, and that the army and the United States deputy marshals stationed at and near the polls prevented the free exercise of the right of suffrage. The Republicans asserted that the Tilden board was not duly appointed, and that the certificates were wholly defective in form and lacking the necessary official certification. The papers

having been referred to the Electoral Commission, that body met again on the 26th. Senator Thurman was obliged to retire from service upon the commission, on account of illness, and Senator Francis Kernan took his place. After a day devoted to arguments, the commission voted unanimously that, the Tilden electors were not the true electors of South Carolina, and, by the old majority of eight to seven, that the Hayes electors were the constitutional electors duly appointed. The two Houses separated upon renewed objections to the decision of the commission, and as before the Senate sustained the finding; the House voted to reject it.

There were two further objections, the first to a vote cast by an elector for Vermont, substituted for an ineligible person who had been chosen by the people, on which the result was he same as in the other similar cases; the other was a case of the same kind in Wisconsin, which was decided in like manner. The Vermont case was complicated by the presentation, by Mr. Hewitt, of New York, of a packet purporting to contain a return of electoral votes given in Vermont. The President of the Senate having received no such vote, nor any vote different from that of the regularly chosen Hayes electors, refused to receive it.

The count had begun on the first day of February, and the final vote upon Wisconsin was not reached until the early morning of March 2. As question after question was decided uniformly in favor of the Republicans, it became evident to the Democrats that their case was lost. They charged gross partisanship upon the Republican members of the Electoral Commission, in determining every point involved in the dual

returns for their own party, though as a matter of fact there does not seem to have been much room for choice between the two parties on the score of partisanship. Each member of the commission favored by his vote that view which would result in adding to the electoral vote of his own party. But as the result of the count became more and more certainly a Republican triumph, the anger of the Democrats rose. Some of them were for discontinuing the count; and the symptoms of a disposition to filibuster so that there should be no declaration of the result gave reason for public disquietude. But the conservative members of the party were too patriotic to allow the failure of a law which they had been instrumental in passing to lead to anarchy or revolution, and they sternly discountenanced all attempts to defeat the conclusion of the count. The summing up of the votes was read by Mr. Allison, of Towa, one of the tellers on the part of the Senate, at a little after four o'clock, on the morning of the 2d of March, amid great excitement. That result, as declared, was as follows:

Mr. Ferry thereupon declared Rutherford B. Hayes elected President, and William A. Wheeler Vice-President, of the United States. The decision was acquiesced in peaceably by the whole country, and by men of every party. But the Democrats have never ceased to denounce the whole affair as a fraud, and some newspapers have steadily refused to speak of Mr. Hayes as having ever been rightfully in possession of the presidential office. Their anger at the time was very great, and it was excusable, since they honestly believed that Mr. Tilden was fairly elected. It is to be hoped that the patriotism of the American people and their love of peace may never again be put to so severe a test as was that to which they were subjected in 1876 and 1877.

XXVI

A REPUBLICAN REVIVAL

THE circumstances that attended the election of 1876 led to the introduction in Congress of many propositions intended to render impossible a recurrence of the danger which was then met and overcome, and to forestall other evils which have often been apprehended, but have never happened. Certain difficulties that arose in consequence of the silence of the Constitution might be obviated by law; others must be cured by amendment of the Constitution itself. Although the warning was a serious one, and although many members brought forward measures to meet the case, not one of the bills and resolutions introduced was acted upon finally. Nevertheless, it may be well to notice the suggestions which were made during Mr. Hayes's administration, - during the special session of Congress, October 15, 1877, and the regular session, which followed without an interval.

Mr. Cravens, of Arkansas, offered a resolution of amendment to the Constitution, providing that the people should vote directly for President and Vice-President. Each State was to have a number of presidential votes equal to its electoral votes under the present system, which votes were to be apportioned in each State among the several candidates, in the proportion of the votes given to each; the legislature of each State was to direct the manner in which the presidential vote of that State was to be ascertained; on a day to be fixed by Congress, or, in case of disagreement between the two Houses, on a day to be named by the President, not less than fifteen nor more than thirty days before the 4th of March, a joint meeting of the two Houses was to be held, the President of the Senate was to open the presidential votes certified to by the governor of the State, and one list from each State was then to be counted under the direction of the two Houses; a majority of all the presidential votes was requisite to a choice. In case