LETTERS
AND
LITERARY MEMORIALS
OF
SAMUEL J. TILDEN

EDITED BY
JOHN BIGELOW, LL.D.

VOL. 2

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1908

Copyright, 1908, by Harper & Brothers.
——
All rights reserved.
Published February, 1908.

LETTERS AND LITERARY MEMORIALS
OF SAMUEL J. TILDEN

DAVID A. WELLS TO TILDEN

"Norwich, Conn, Jan'y 6th, 1876.

"My dear Governor,—I do not know as I can testify of my admiration of your message better than by saying that I want you to send me an early copy in pamphlet form for more careful reading and preservation.

"When the novel which Mr. Sherman and I have been writing (now in press) comes out, in a week or two, please see how curiously prices worked on our imaginary island, where the people used something for currency which had no value as a commodity.

"Very truly yours,
"David A. Wells."

Answered January 10, 1876, by the Governor, that he desired to submit some of the messages to Mr. Wells, but it was a race against time. The tables were not completed until the discussion was in the proof-reading. "Even I was surprised at the surplus of currency which they evince."

CHARLES O'CONOR TO TILDEN

"Fort Washington, Jan'y 12, 1876.

"My dear Governor Tilden,—In this form I will say nothing of the proceedings, surprising to me, as they must have been to you, which have marked the movements toward trying the Tweed civil cases. I have neither seen nor heard from the present chief of the 'bureau of municipal correction' since the newspapers began to regale us with its recent fortunes.

"My object in addressing you is to submit certain suggestions for consideration.

"When the present leading counsel for Tweed fell into a line of practice which, steadily pursued for years as it has been, might well have led to his being dubbed Attorney-General for Rascals, it was my lot to be much in professional antagonism to him. I found him to be neither wise, learned, nor, properly speaking, able, but essentially a trickster. He seems capable of being very troublesome, and to a negligent or unskilful adversary he may be regarded as dangerous.

"In dealing with his class, one will generally find a central device around which all their series of tricks revolve, and from which all their force and effectiveness are drawn. This man's course and career furnish an admirable illustration of this fact.

"Our multitude of judges, with equal powers, were perceived by him to furnish a hopeful quarry. One wicked, weak, or manageable could be found somewhere. The next item in his scheme for making judicial proceedings do the work which a bolder thief might seek to accomplish by piracy, highway robbery, or counterfeiting was to engage himself in quarrels where an unlimited number of separate suits by separate plaintiffs might be brought before different judges—all aimed at the same substantial object. This enabled him to make almost at random all sorts of harassing movements against the same parties. Slap-dash, hit or miss, he poured his shot upon the selected victims, the loss of a suit or failure of a movement troubling him not, the number of strings to his bow making this of no more consequence to him than the loss of a single soldier to the general of an army.

"You are aware that any single stockholder in a private or trading corporation may file a bill in equity against the corporation itself, its managing officers, and any one else suggesting malversation, and, of course, such a suit has all the usual incidents of receivership, injunctions, etc., etc. With a desperate Wall Street swindler for plaintiff, an utterly unscrupulous legal practitioner to direct it, and an unprincipled or manageable judge, the blackmailing capabilities of such a suit are not slight. And when you consider that the stock is always in the market, and that five shares, or, indeed, a single share, may be sufficient to qualify a plaintiff, you see the readiness with which a lot of these suits, like a swarm of insects in summer, may harass. It was with this single scrap of technical knowledge that the Attorney-General for Scoundrels qualified himself for his office. In a very large degree he has lived upon it ever since.

"It was in analogy to this right of the stockholder of a private corporation that some well-intentioned persons devised the scheme of judicially restraining municipal and other public officers from improper action. I believe the history of the rise and fall of this idea may be found in a long argument of mine reported in 'Wetmore v. Story,' 22 or 23 Barbour. You have read it and spoken of it to me. There is no analogy between the cases, and no basis in our common-law or customary jurisprudence for the pretended right of a taxpayer thus to intervene. The inconveniences of such a practice would be enormous. It should not be permitted.

"Using a noted and life-long corruptionist, Charles Devlin, one of Tweed's bail, the Scoundrel's Attorney-General has brought a suit of this kind intended to perplex the Ring prosecutions and aid in misleading the thoughtless readers of their partisan journals.

"I have said that such a suit is wholly without warrant in the common law, and the claim to sustain it thereby has been by the highest authority, in every form, judicially exploded; but in two statutes it may find some color at least of support, and I write in the hope that these may be at once repealed.

"The first of these is S. 3 of the city tax levy of 1864, ch. 405, p. 945. It was obtained by Nathaniel Sands, the then leader of reform, as actuary or general agent of Peter Cooper's Citizens' Association. His subsequent history is known to you. The other is ch. 161 of the laws of 1872, p. 467. You were then in the Legislature, and may have favored its passage; it is not impossible that I may have failed to condemn it when spoken to, but I never believed in the utility of such a remedy. A reluctance to throw cold water on the efforts of our friends sometimes dictates a prudent silence. But whatever might be said at that time, the law of 1875, establishing the right of the State, has superseded the use of any such private taxpayer's action, and this inexpressibly impudent suit of Devlin shows that the privilege tends to mischief. I hope you will get some real and earnest reformer belonging to the Republican party to bring in and push through a bill for the repeal of both these enactments.

"Another subject may seem to demand attention, and that speedily. In Polly Bodine's case, some years ago, it was found that the public journals had so thoroughly imbued the minds of the people with information or reports and ideas concerning the facts of the case that under the existing common law touching challenges to the favor it was hardly possible to get a jury. This must be so in Tweed's cases. The Legislature then altered the law, but I am told that the change is confined in its terms to criminal cases. It ought, by supplemental legislation, to be extended to all cases.

Yours faithfully,
"Ch. O'Conor."

BONAMY PRICE TO TILDEN

"2 Norham Gardens, Oxford, Jan'y 31, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—I hope that the great kindness which you showed me at New York will be allowed to plead my excuse with you for trespassing on your time with a few lines.

"I am anxious to tell you of the deep sympathy and interest with which I have closely watched your public career since I had the honor of becoming acquainted with you in America, as well as the strong admiration which it excited in me.

"Never did a man deserve better of his country; and I fervently hope that the new year will bring the amplest recognition of this fact from your fellow-countrymen.

"Yours truly,
"Bonamy Price."

THOMAS COTTMAN TO TILDEN

"New York, Feb'y 6th, 1876.

"Dear Sir,—I see by the papers this morning that Senator Francis Kernan had taken steps to reconcile the discordant elements of the Democratic party of this city. I am convinced of the unpracticability of the effort without your active interposition. Success with Tammany as at present organized is entirely out of the question. John Kelly, as chief, with Ned Gale, Tom Boize, Frank Spinola, Billy Boyd, and the like as chief counsel, will inevitably bring disaster upon the party and turn the State over to the Republicans in the fall. I would in no wise depreciate Mr. Kelly, whom I regard as a very estimable gentleman. But he has been most unfortunate in selecting his 'entourage.' There is no lack of efficient material in this city for constructing a capital to the Democratic edifice and insure harmony in all its proportions. As at present constituted, it is an incongruous mass, ready to disintegrate and form other affinities. Without some decided action on your part, there will most certainly be two delegations from this city to the convention, and the bad blood thus generated will outcrop in the fall election to the detriment of the party. I shall leave home to-morrow night for Washington, where I expect to remain a short time to confer with my Democratic friends from the different sections of the country. There being quite a number of my acquaintances representing different constituencies in Congress, the dissensions of the New York Democracy are certain to form the leading topic of conversation and the topic upon which the least satisfaction can be vouchsafed—and the entire responsibility laid at your door. Your personal friendship for Andrew H. Green might have been so evinced as not to have provoked antagonism to yourself, and might have availed by its influence to have kept him from exciting the wrath of a majority of the voting community. Wickham is weaker than Green in the popular estimation. Wickham is looked upon as milk and water, whilst Green is regarded as gall and wormwood, whilst Kelly is so encumbered with barnacles as to be impervious to the popular demand for a more democratic form of government than that now run exclusively for the benefit of favorites.

Very respectfully yours,
"Thomas Cottman."

A. E. SILLIMAN TO TILDEN

"Please do not trouble yourself to read until at entire leisure.

"56 Clinton St., Brooklyn, Feb. 14, '76.

"My dear Sir,—I am indebted to some kind friend for a copy of your Message for 1876 (secluded among my books, I do not know whom); but recollecting your conversations with Mr. Bennett and myself some years since at Delmonico's, I am fain to believe that I am one of a number to whom you may have directed it to be sent; but in the uncertainty deem it more decorous to address you personally in my recognition of the favor. I read the Message at the time of its appearance with much interest, and was particularly struck with the strong clearness and distinctness of that portion of it pertaining to financial affairs, which perhaps is the 'part of the schooner' I am (or rather ought to be) more particularly conversant with. We are much indebted to Mr. Chase for the present state of things—his refusal to recognize the banks as government depositors, and have a clearing-house for the daily settlement of its debt, with enormous resulting economy of its physical features (for instance, the issue of legal-tender notes under such circumstances need not have exceeded one hundred million)—but mainly for setting loose under his national bank system a thousand new inflating-machines, called banks, practically unmuzzling the old banks which he cowed in under its flag. Admitting other causes, in my opinion it is mainly[1] the bank inflation which has caused the state of things culminating in 1873; and which crisis, opening the eyes of the community to its truths on the one side, shows them the terrors of contraction on the other, and the natural apprehension of a sudden contraction to a specie basis produces thus, of course, almost paralysis in all business movement beyond the immediate present. I do not think that the plan for arbitrary resumption in 1879 will be attended with happy effect. 'There is no royal road to learning,' and assuredly none to specie resumption. We have slid down the hill with intense velocity; we have got slowly to trudge up the hill again through the snow if we would have another slide. I think that if ten years ago we had commenced destroying the legal tender at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum we would have avoided 1873, and have been paying specie now; and I think if we commence[2] now in that ratio we shall in ten years arrive at the desired result, relieving the business community from the bugbear of rapid contraction. The destruction of 20 million legal-tender would carry with it 80 million bank credit—say, an annual contraction of 100 million. This, if the country is let alone, with a decent attention to the economy you suggest, it could have from the increasing receipts of its industry. In 1873, as a matter of curiosity, I examined into the statistics of finance for the periods stated, and it is from them I draw my conclusions above expressed. I annex a copy, as perhaps your experienced eye will take in at a glance the gravity of the record. Now, my dear sir, I hope you will excuse my troubling you with this long note, and not trouble yourself to answer it. With hopes that you may be blessed in health, and remain long as the head of your State, I am

"Very truly your friend and servant,
"A. E. Silliman.

CAUSE OF FINANCIAL CRISIS IN 1873

"Showing

"Money means in the hands of the community in excess of that of 1862, $1117 mills. And this $2,159,000,000 is the hub of the wheel from which radiates the individual debt of the community, until it reaches the apple-woman at the corner.

"Perhaps the above may vary, more or less, 20 or 30 mills.

"In considering the position, the banks are recognized as part of the public in their representations of their stockholders, and it is not intended to dissect out of their liabilities their individual status."

CHARLES O'CONOR TO TILDEN

"Fort Washington, March 16th, 1876.

"My dear Governor,—I had the honor of addressing you some time ago concerning the expediency of repealing a section of 1864 and an act of 1867, both of which most absurdly recognized a right of action in tax-payers for maladministration by public corporations.

"My reason for urging the step at this time is an action by one Charles Devlin, Tweed's bail, against the Attorney-General and others, seeking the appointment of a receiver and the transfer of the Ring suits to the control of the Tweed faction. Tweed's attorneys are attorneys for the plaintiff in this action, and for their motions they select as judge Charles Donohue, who, by the order for a bill of particulars, showed his fidelity to Tweed principles.

"It is ridiculous that such a suit should be permitted to harass us and bring our movements under the control of Donohue.

"I have supposed that a real reformer of the Republican party should be enlisted to push this repeal through, and if you select such an one I am willing, if put in communication with him, to aid him in any way that I can, and, if need be, I will go to Albany to co-operate with him.

"The relations of D. D. Field and Judge Peabody are such that the latter, though a very correct and honorable man, ought not to be drawn into this affair. Of course, his son, the member of Assembly, is subject to the same remark. And as young Mr. Fish and he are very intimate, and reside together in private joint lodgings, I would advise that Mr. Fish be not included in any movement on this subject.

"Yours truly,
"Ch. O'Conor."

WHEELER H. PECKHAM TO S. J. TILDEN

"New York, April 15th, 1876.

"Dear Sir,—I enclose draft of a bill appropriating twenty-five thousand dollars for expenses prosecuting the ring suits.

"The last appropriation was in 1874, ch. 359, laws of that year—$25,000.

"Of the sum then appropriated but about $8000 are left. The expenses of the last civil trial of Tweed will more than exhaust this. The disbursements of that trial are about $3000, and Mr. Carter's very moderate bill is $5000. That exhausts the appropriation without any bill for my own services.

"The trial was protracted and expensive beyond expectation. It consumed the two months of January and February and part of March. The deft. Tweed is making a case and will appeal, and consequently further expense must be incurred. The case vs. Sweeney is also ready for trial, and we expect to try it in May. Active proceedings are pending against others, which must result in the collection of very considerable sums of money. Over half a million of dollars has already been realized and paid over to the city treasury. Under the circumstances, it seems to me that there should be no hesitation on the part of the Legislature in passing the bill.

"Of course, the force of my opinion must be weighed in the light of my own interest. On that account it is proper to add that I have submitted this proposed law to your consideration at the request of Mr. O'Conor.

"Yours truly,
"Wheeler H. Peckham."

"Mr. O'Conor's name is left out of the act by his special request.—W. H. P."

CHARLES O'CONOR TO GOVERNOR TILDEN

"New York, May 1st, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—I write to remind you that great trouble and inconvenience are likely to result if the repealing acts sent up and handed to Senator Robertson are not pressed.

"Yours truly,
"Ch. O'Conor."

D. A. WELLS TO TILDEN

"Norwich, Conn., May 5th, 1876.

"My dear Governor,—I have canvassed the political situation in this State since I last saw you, and think there is no doubt of your receiving the unanimous support of Connecticut at St. Louis. Indeed, there is no diversity of sentiment, so far as I can hear, Loomis, of New London, being the only one of the delegates whom I should regard as doubtful. Dick Hubbard, of Hartford, who heads the delegation; Waller, of New London, the Speaker of the House (who will probably go as a substitute); and Hunter, of Willimantic, are all to be relied on as warm supporters, and they will control the delegation if it should need controlling. Barr, of Hartford, is a tricky fellow, and if you could bring some influence to bear on him it may be as well, though I am advised that it is not necessary.

"There is one element of the future that I do not like, and that is the probable election of Barnum to the Senate from this State in place of English. Barnum is so unfit, so much of the Tweed order of men, and a pig-iron protectionist into the bargain, that the effect of his election will be bad, not only in the State, but throughout the country. It will be cited everywhere as a proof that the professions of the party do not amount to anything; I do not, however, know what you can do about it, or whether it would be advisable to exert an influence if you could; but it is an event that is likely to disgust the free-trade element intensely, and also those who have a deep conviction of the necessity of political reform. Eaton is probably more responsible for this movement than any other man, except Barnum.

"Do you think I had better go to the 18th of May conference? I see nothing antagonistic in it to your interest; neither do I think it will amount to much. I know the Republican managers have a most profound contempt for the whole movement, and haven't an idea of allowing to Bristow to be nominated.

"Command me for any service I can render.

"Truly yours,
"David A. Wells."

"Hon. S. J. Tilden."

Shortly after the inauguration of Mr. Tilden as Governor, in January, 1875, he sent to the Legislature a special message setting forth his convictions of the corrupt management of the canals of the State. This message abounded with specific details of fraud of so infamous a character that even friends of the implicated contractors in the Legislature felt constrained to grant the request of the Governor, and by a concurrent resolution, adopted on the 31st day of March, 1875, authorized him to appoint a committee of four "to investigate the affairs of the canals of the State, and especially the matters embraced in the special message of the Governor, communicated to Legislature on the 19th of March, 1875."

In compliance with this authority, the Governor appointed four gentlemen, whose names are signed to the following report, two theretofore having acted with the Republican party and two with the Democratic. The Governor's commissioners organized at Albany on the 12th of April following; but before they began to take testimony the friends of the canal jobbers in the Assembly managed to pass a resolution appointing a commission of that body also to make a similar investigation, but naming in the resolution commissioners satisfactory to those who constituted what was known as the "Canal Ring."

This commission met two or three times, and then offered to the Governor's commission, under pretext of saving time and expense, to join them, so that the two commissions should constitute but one body. Of course this proffer was promptly declined, and the legislative commission took no more testimony, and was never heard of again.

The interval between the organization of the Governor's commission, in April, and the time for the introduction of water into the canals, near the end of May, was devoted exclusively to an examination of the most important works in progress or recently completed in the prism of the canals.

Between the 31st day of July of that year, when the commission submitted its first report, and the 14th of February, when it submitted its final report, it issued twelve reports. That which follows gives a summary of the facts developed by the investigation which confirm in every detail the charges made in the Governor's message, besides adding very much to the total amount of confirming testimony. The reason for this confirmation being so complete was that the Governor, almost immediately after his election, employed privately, and at his own expense, an engineer in whose professional training and experience he could place entire confidence, the late Mr. Elkanah Sweet, to make an investigation of the recent canal work, gave him authority to take down any portion of the work to ascertain how far and in what way it was not in conformity with the contract, and gave him also authority to inspect all the canal contracts in the archives of the Canal Board and compare them with his observations. Upon his report the facts presented in the Governor's canal message were based. Mr. Sweet, therefore, was naturally employed by the Governor's commission to make the yet more thorough and elaborate investigation required of them.

The Governor's canal message, with this incontestable confirmation of all its allegations, gave him a national fame, and contributed more than anything he had previously done to make his nomination to the Presidency a political necessity for the Democratic party.

Several previous efforts to investigate frauds in the operation of the State canals had been made by the Legislature, but all had theretofore proved abortive. One reason which contributed largely to prevent the investigation of the Governor's commission sharing the same fate was the exclusion of reporters from the meetings of the board during the examination of witnesses. By this means nothing of its work was given to the public until the testimony was digested into an intelligible report of what had been proved. The testimony was necessarily so largely technical that if given to the press day by day, as received, the public would have soon tired of the subject, and, what was worse, the witnesses would have been tempted to shape their testimony rather to its effects upon the newspaper public than upon the commissioners. The consequence was that when the reports appeared they were read, and their impact upon the public was proportionately prompt, instructive, and penetrating.

CANAL INVESTIGATING COMMISSION

FIRST REPORT TO THE GOVERNOR[3]

"To his Excellency the Governor, and to the Honorable the Legislature of the State of New York:

"The undersigned commissioners, appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate, under a concurrent resolution of the Legislature adopted on the 31st day of March last, 'to investigate the affairs of the canals of the States, and especially the matters embraced in the special message of the Governor, communicated to the Legislature on the 19th day of March, 1875,' have the honor to submit the following report of the progress of their investigations:

"Your commissioners, assembled at the capitol, qualified and organized on the 12th day of April, 1875. The interval between that time and the opening of the canals, a period of about six weeks, was devoted exclusively to an examination of the most important works in progress, or recently completed in the prism of the canals. When this examination was interrupted by the introduction of water, near the end of May, your commission returned to the capitol and proceeded to supplement and enlarge the area of their information by the examination of witnesses.

"In this work they were unexpectedly embarrassed by a decision of one of the judges of this district, at Special Term, denying to them a power, which they supposed to have been conferred upon them by the legislative authorities, to require the production before them of the books and papers of witnesses. They directed an appeal to be taken from this decision, and it was finally reversed at the General Term, but not until late in the month of November, till when your commission was obliged to contend with all the inconveniences resulting from the privation of such a necessary and indispensable prerogative. The opinion of Justice Learned at the Special Term, and that of Justice James at the General Term, are annexed to this report.

"On the 31st of July the commission submitted their first annual report to the Governor. It relates to a contract for substituting slope and vertical for bench wall between Port Schuyler and the lower Mohawk aqueduct. This report was followed at intervals by eleven others, entitled, respectively, as follows:

"Second report.—H. D. Denison's contract east of the city of Utica.

"Third report.—Hulser's bridge contract.

"Fourth report.—Willard Johnson's lower side cut lock contract at West Troy.

"Fifth report.—Buffalo contracts and legislative awards.

"Sixth report.—Champlain enlargement; Bullard's bend contract.

"Seventh report.—Buffalo contracts and State officers.

"Eighth report.—The Baxter award.

"Ninth report.—Contract of E. W. Williams for building vertical wall at Rome.

"Tenth report.—Flagler & Reilley's pending contract at Fort Plain.

"Eleventh report.—Jordan level contracts.

"Twelfth report.—The auditor's traffic in canal certificates.

"A copy of these several reports, together with the testimony taken before the commission, covering together 2927 pages, are submitted with this report.

"Several other reports are in course of preparation. One on the Glen's Fall feeder, a second on the Canal Appraiser's ice awards at Rochester in 187 , and a third on the W. C. Stevens contract assigned to Denison, Belden & Co., for dredging the Albany basin, dated December 31, 1866, will be submitted at an early day.

"Though we have given this investigation our most unremitting and exclusive attention, we not only have not exhausted the subject, but there are many matters falling within the range of our inquiry which we have only been able to touch incidentally. Among these we regret that the subjects of 'ordinary repairs,' the lateral canals, and the present system of appraising canal damages are included.

"As we have been able to examine only a limited portion of the work done on the canals since 1868, of course we have found it impossible to extend our inquiries beyond that year, though we have abundant evidence that the mismanagement of the canals dates from a much earlier period. But the results of our investigation—incomplete as any investigation made in so short a time must necessarily have been—will, we think, suffice to indicate with tolerable distinctness what have been the more mischievous errors in the management of our canals, and some of their more obvious correctives.

"We propose to-day to submit to you such of the conclusions as we have reached, with all the testimony we have taken, reserving for a later day some further recommendations which are under consideration.

"Introductory to such conclusions as we are now prepared to submit to you, it is proper that we first invite your attention to the character of our canal property as an investment, and show precisely how it stands upon the books of the State.

"This sum of $28,000,000 and upwards represents the premium which the people of this State have paid in taxes during the last fifty-odd years to secure and encourage the use of these waterways for purposes of transportation, the equivalent of an annual subsidy of over $560,000.

"If to this be added the interest on the canal debt, the cost of collection, and the difference between miscellaneous expenses and receipts, as set forth in detail in Exhibit B, the loss to the State from the canals during the last fiscal year will be found to amount to the enormous sum of $1,412,470.79.

"The cost of repairs and maintenance is so obviously out of all proportion with the necessities of a system of completed structures like our canals, which have little that is complicated or perishable about them, that we are forced to seek the explanation of it in their administration.

"Our investigation was not long in revealing the fact that the canals have not been managed upon the principles which would govern any man in the administration of his private estate. The interests of the public have been systematically disregarded. The precautions with which the Legislature has attempted to defend this property from peculation and fraud, and secure for it faithful and efficient service, have been deliberately and persistently disregarded; while the responsibility of its agents has been so divided and distributed as to leave the State comparatively remediless and at the mercy of the predatory classes, who have been, if they do not continue to be, a formidable political power.

"The more conspicuous evidences of mismanagement which our investigation has disclosed may be divided into three categories:

"First, as to the modes of letting contracts.

"Second, as to the modes of measuring and estimating work to the contractors.

"Third, as to the facilities for procuring legislative relief.

"First, as to the mode of letting the contracts:

"It seems to have been the practice for years to let contracts upon conditions which exclude honest contractors and confine this business, at least as to what are termed 'extraordinary repairs,' almost exclusively to large capitalists. The large deposits required from contractors discouraged bidders with small means, while the encouragement offered to unbalanced bidding, by a neglect to enforce the faithful performance of the provisions of the contract, have a tendency to exclude all who bid fair prices, with the honest intention of giving the State fair work for them. Till since the commencement of this investigation we do not know of a single instance in which any forfeiture of his deposit had been enforced against any contractor; while we believe we do no one any injustice in saying that no contract has been let since 1868 the provisions of which have been properly complied with.

"There has been a corresponding disregard of all the provisions of law regulating the letting of the contracts. The law wisely required a preliminary survey, with maps, specifications, and estimates to be made by the division engineer, approved by the State Engineer and by the Canal Board, before a contract could be let. The purpose of these precautions was to ascertain the amount and probable cost of the work as a means of determining the relative merits of the respective bids, and to serve as a protection against false or erroneous estimates of engineers. These precautions have been almost universally neglected. The result has been that the amount of work and materials required in the actual construction varied so widely from the quantities let that in nearly every instance the person receiving the contract proved in the end to have been the highest instead of the lowest bidder;[4] and we cannot resist the conclusion that these precautions in many instances were neglected with the intent to afford greater facilities for defrauding the State. These evils have been greatly aggravated by the frequent changes of the engineers on the canals and the loss of knowledge as to work done, which the removed engineers carried away with them.

"Second, as to the mode of measuring and estimating work to the contractors:

"This responsible duty, involving, as it should, a perfect familiarity with the terms of the contract and with the character of the work in progress, has been devolved, not by law, but in practice, entirely upon assistants who are not sworn; who, but in few instances, have been found to possess a competent knowledge of engineering; and who, in most cases, appear to owe their positions, and therefore to have been in a greater or less degree dependent upon the political favor and influence of the contracting class. It will be hardly a matter of surprise, therefore, that in not more than a single instance that has come under our scrutiny have we found the work faithfully measured, or a single contract closed, under which the contractor has not received more than he was entitled to.

"Under these influences, operating in favor of the contractor and to the prejudice of the State, a system of fraudulent estimates and measurements has become so established that though in direct and flagrant violation of the very language of the contract, it is deliberately defended by those who profit by it, on the ground that it has been sanctioned by long usage. For example: it has been a practice of the engineers to allow the contractor for excavating behind vertical wall, on a slope of one to one, without regard to the necessity for such excavation, and whether the excavation was made or not.

"As nearly all vertical wall is constructed in the winter or early spring, and when the banks are frozen, the cut is usually vertical or nearly so, and any charge for such excavation is a fraud upon the State. The contracts also uniformly provide that the contractor shall be allowed nothing for the filling in of the place supposed to be excavated behind the walls, if such filling is from earth already paid for as excavation, unless he is obliged to draw his material more than 200 feet on the line of the canal. This provision has also come to be treated as obsolete, and the State seems to have been uniformly charged not only for excavation which had not been made, but for filling up the assumed excavation which, had it been made, the State was not bound to pay for. The profits derived in this indirect way through the fraudulent connivance of the agents of the State, has led to an enormous expenditure for works wholly unnecessary, and which to keep in repair must continue to subject the State to a very considerable yearly expense.

"One of the principal expenditures upon the canals since 1868 for extraordinary repairs has been made in the construction of vertical and slope walls which have been, as we think, very unwisely substituted for the old walls, the capacity of the canals before their removal having been ample for all their business.

"Between the 1st of January, 1868, and the 1st of July, 1875, there have been built forty-three and one-third miles, linear measure, of vertical wall, at a total cost, including the removal of bench walls which they displaced, of $1,589,885, the cost per linear foot averaging $6.95.

"These walls, besides costing four or five times as much as the slope walls, are less durable, much more expensive to keep in repair, and possess no substantial advantage except in large towns, the commerce of which requires special facilities for docking. But of the forty-three and one-third miles built since 1868, it cannot be pretended that so many as three were needed to meet such exigencies.

"Without stopping at present to inquire if the business of the canal justified the removal of the old bench walls at all, it is very certain that a good slope wall would have been preferable throughout nine-tenths, at least, of the entire extent upon which vertical wall has been constructed; and, at the rate paid for slope wall during this period, would have resulted in an economy to the State of not less than $1,300,000, or nearly $200,000 a year.

"An important item in the cost of this vertical wall was made up of the fictitious estimates to which we have already alluded. Assuming that the State was uniformly charged with fictitious excavation and embankment along the entire length of this vertical wall—and we have no satisfactory proof that a single rod of it was entitled to be excepted—the loss to the State from this source alone cannot be estimated at less than $230,000.

"We have found all the other more important provisions of these contracts as uniformly disregarded. We have torn down and carefully examined the work under more than forty contracts; and we cannot name one in which the work comes up, even approximately, to the specifications. The contracts define with great precision the size and character of the stone to be used, the mode of their disposition, the thickness and other dimensions of the wall, the character of the cement and sand, the quality of lining, and what else is needed to insure durability and a capacity to resist the shocks from loaded boats to which the walls of canals are constantly subjected. In no one of the forty-odd contracts that we examined did we find the stone either in size or disposition; the dimensions of the wall; the quality of the sand, lime, cement, and gravel, to correspond with the specifications. The consequences to the State are not only that it has been called upon to pay for a higher class of work than it has received, but that it is exposed to a large annual expenditure to keep these ill-constructed and for the most part worthless walls in repair. It has been a not uncommon circumstance for the superintendent to be called upon to repair the earlier work under a vertical wall contract while other portions of the structure were still in progress. To keep this class of walls in repair promises to be one of the principal sources of expense for the future maintenance of our canals.[5]

"Nor is this system of fictitious estimates confined to vertical wall. Since 1868 fifty-three and two-thirds miles of slope wall have been built. By the terms of the contracts these walls should have had an average thickness of at least fifteen inches, measured perpendicularly to the slope. None of the stone composing it should have been less than twelve inches in length at right angles to the face, and the rear of the wall was to rest on a base of clean, hard gravel nine inches thick. The engineers have uniformly estimated these walls at the specified thickness of fifteen inches, while in point of fact we have not found on any of our canals a single stretch of slope wall, constructed since 1868, that would average over ten inches. Of course, the stones are usually smaller than the minimum size required by the specifications, and we did not find a single specimen of the clean, hard gravel lining required by the contract; so that the State has been made to pay, throughout the whole forty-three and two-thirds miles of slope wall, for one-third more of constructed wall than it has received—full prices for a very inferior quality of stone—and for lining the whole work, though not a single yard of the required quality appears to have been ever furnished.

"To confirm our own judgments, and to be sure that we were not applying an erroneous standard to the work done in the prism of the canals, we invited Professors Peter S. Michie and J. B. Wheeler, of the United States Military Academy at West Point, to go over a large proportion of what we had already visited and to give us the benefit of their judgment about it. Their report is annexed, and will be found to accord in all substantial particulars with the opinions we have felt it our duty to express in our previous report to his Excellency the Governor, and in this communication, in reference to all the contract work on the canals that has fallen under our observation.

"Third, as to the facilities afforded by the Legislature to contractors for procuring legislative relief:

"These facilities appear to have been grossly and corruptly abused under the discretionary power conferred upon the Canal Board by the Legislature. Numbers of contracts have been cancelled when such portions of the work as were let on terms profitable to the contractor had been executed, while those portions of the work that were let upon terms more advantageous to the State were left unexecuted. In such cases it not unfrequently happened that this remaining work was let to the same parties, under a new contract, at much higher rates. When the Canal Board was found to turn a deaf ear to such appeals, these applications for relief would be addressed directly to the Legislature, where the fear of doing injustice, and the want of the time and familiarity with the subject necessary for investigating its details, often permitted the allowance of awards conceived in fraud and without a single legal or equitable merit.

"An illustration of this class of abuses will be found in the fifth and seventh reports of this commission to the Governor. For one of them—the case of the award for the relief of John Hand—George D. Lord, a member of the Assembly which made the award, is now under indictment, it appearing that the claim made in his behalf was altogether fraudulent and the alleged proofs fictitious. Another award was also made to George D. Lord of $119,000 for alleged losses under contracts with the State for work in Buffalo harbor. This was, to all appearances, as much greater an abuse of legislative credulity, as the amount exceeded that which was realized under the award to John Hand. The limited technical knowledge of canal administration possessed by a large majority of State legislators, and the claims of other important business upon their attention, make it impossible for them to properly scrutinize appeals of this character, which are usually pressed by designing men, perfectly familiar with all the resources for deception which our complicated canal system afforded, prior to the constitutional amendment of 1874.

"In view of the systematic infidelity of the agents of the State which this investigation has disclosed, is it surprising that the expenditures for extraordinary repairs alone on our canals have amounted, since 1867, to $8,444,827.24, or to nearly as much as the whole of our canal debt, less the sinking fund, which on the 30th of September, 1875, was $8,638,314.49? Of these expenditures for extraordinary repairs it is our belief that fully seventy per cent. have been inconsiderate, unwise, and unprofitable to the State.[6]

"The facts which have been brought to light in the course of this investigation have constrained us already to recommend rigorous proceedings to be taken against the following parties:

"First.—Against Denison, Belden & Co. for the recovery of large sums of money which they appear to have received unlawfully under their contracts for work between Port Schuyler and the lower Mohawk aqueduct, and for work east of the city of Utica, both on the Erie Canal. The claims of the State against these parties are fully set forth in the first and second reports of this commission to the Governor, and suits are in progress.

"Second.—George D. Lord has been indicted by a grand jury of Erie County, upon the facts disclosed by this commission, for bribery in procuring an act of the Legislature for the relief of one John Hand. The history of this case will be found in the fifth report of this commission to the Governor.

"Third.—Thaddeus C. Davis, late member of the Board of Canal Appraisers, has also been indicted for a conspiracy to cheat the State. The circumstances which made him amenable to the criminal courts are set forth in the fifth, seventh, and eighth reports of this commission to the Governor.

"A civil suit has also been instituted against Davis to recover moneys fraudulently obtained from the State by himself in conjunction with George D. Lord.

"Fourth.—Indictments have also been found upon the testimony furnished by the commission against the following other high officials: Alexander Barkley, ex-canal commissioner; John Kelly, late superintendent of section No. 12 of the Erie Canal; J. Frederick Behn, division engineer of the western section; and D. Clinton Welch, ex-superintendent of section No. 12.

"Fifth.—Upon testimony furnished by this commission, the commissioners of the canal fund made a requisition upon the Governor for the removal of Francis S. Thayer, late Auditor of the Canal Department, and on the twenty-eighth day of December last Mr. Thayer was suspended upon charges of unlawfully trafficking in canal certificates and violating his duty as auditor 'in respect to the public moneys in his charge and subject to his draft.' The charges preferred by the commission upon which the commissioners of the canal fund and the Governor acted, together with their proceedings thereon, respectively, are hereunto annexed.[7] The testimony by which these charges were established will be found in volume three of the accompanying testimony, at pages 1140, 2070, 2156, 2162, 2180, 2215, 2226, 2239, 2256, 2305, 2347, 2379, 2381, 2382, 2383, 2385, 2389, 2407, 2414, 2417, 2420, 2422, 2426, 2445, 2460, 2461, 2534, 2560, 2585, 2587.

"The following sums in cash, or evidences of indebtedness, obtained from the State through fraud, have already been reclaimed by and restored through the commission to the treasury:

Canal Commissioner's certificates of indebtedness, issued on account of the second John Hand award:

"The following sums are shown by the reports of this commission to the Executive to have been estimated to the contractors for work that was never performed, or was improperly paid for through erroneous classification, and for which the receivers should be required to make restitution:

"Large as these sums appear, we are fully impressed with the belief that they form but a fraction of the amount that is due to the State from similar sources.

"For the purpose of ascertaining more precisely the extent of this class of liabilities, and to protect the State in future from the irregularities and improvidence out of which they have arisen, we recommend that the Canal Board be clothed with ample powers and authority for taking testimony.

"A perusal of the testimony and the reports to the Executive herewith submitted clearly establish the fact that our canals are a burden to the States less, perhaps, through the imperfection of our laws, than the mode in which they have been administered.

"Every appropriation for new work and extraordinary repairs on the canals for the six years from 1867 to 1873 contained a provision that no part or portion of the money therein appropriated 'for new work or work on change of plan' should be expended or paid, nor any contract involving such expenditure and payment be made on behalf of the States, until the maps, plans, and estimates of such new work had been submitted to and approved by the Canal Board.

"There has been a law on the statute-books since 1850, yet more stringent, which provides that 'before any work shall be contracted for on any canals of the State the division engineer shall cause to be ascertained, with all practical accuracy, the quantity of embankment, excavation, and masonry, and the quality and quantity of all materials to be used, and all other items of work to be placed under contract, a statement of which, together with maps, plans, and specifications corresponding with those adopted by the Canal Board, and on file in the office of the State Engineer and Surveyor, shall be publicly exhibited to persons proposing for work to be let.'

"These most explicit provisions of law have been very rarely observed. Contracts have not only been let without the preliminary surveys, maps, plans, and estimates, but one of the most familiar abuses on the canals of late years has been to change the plan of work after the contract is signed, by which the contractor gets relieved from the unprofitable portions of his work, and is furnished a pretext for establishing a new scale of prices, in connivance with the auditing officers. Illustrations of this method of defrauding the State may be found in several of the reports submitted to the Executive. The most costly one to the State is described in our first report. The contract for substituting slope and vertical wall for the bench wall between the Port Schuyler and the lower Mohawk aqueduct provided originally for 14,000 cubic yards of slope wall and only 9000 of vertical wall. As if distrustful of the influence of the contractor over its own agents, the Legislature, within six months after the time this work could have begun, in appropriating money to carry it on, absolutely prohibited the expenditure of more than five per cent. of the appropriation for vertical wall. Regardless, however, of this restriction, and regardless of the terms of the contract which provided for twice as much slope as vertical wall, nearly ninety-five per cent. of the cost of the work on that contract was incurred upon vertical wall and work incident to such construction, while not a single yard of slope wall was built; and as a consequence, an improvement which could have been readily and well done for the original appropriation of $84,645 has already cost the State about half a million for wretched work, and is still far from completion. No attention was ever paid to the provision of the act requiring the change of plan from slope to vertical wall, with the maps, plans, and estimates for such new work to be submitted to and approved by the Canal Board, and advertised and let to the lowest bidder.

"Nor does the infidelity of the State's agents appear to have stopped here. While the records of the canal commissioners and of the Canal Board certify that the preliminary surveys, maps, plans, specifications, estimates, etc., required by law were actually produced before them and approved by them and by the State Engineer; in point of fact, no such precautions for the protection of the State, so far as we have been able to ascertain, were actually taken.[8]

"It is obvious that the abuses to which we have invited your attention cannot be remedied except:

"First, by concentrating responsibility for the administration of the canals in fewer hands;

"Second, by lodging somewhere a more efficient power for the suspension or removal of offenders;

"Third, by providing more specific, complete, and efficient laws for preventing and punishing abuses when disclosed; and,

"Fourth, by providing for the vigorous prosecution and punishment of unfaithful servants.

"Under the present organization the responsibility for a non-compliance with the provisions of the laws for the repair and maintenance of the canals is so distributed between nine State officers, composing the Canal Board, and the auditor, the superintendents, the division, resident and assistant Engineers, that it is nearly impossible to bring any one of them to justice, unless all, or at least a large majority, are of accord in that purpose. Could one person be held responsible for the acts of all of his subordinates, the remedy would be simple and probably adequate. Should the people ratify the proposed amendment of the Constitution, which is designed to clothe a new officer, to be called Superintendent of Public Works, with the powers now vested in the canal commissioners, together with other powers necessary to his functions, this evil of divided responsibility will be greatly diminished. At present the powers of removal and suspension of unfaithful officers are altogether inadequate.

"We recommend, in addition, that the division and resident engineers, and such others engineers as it may be necessary, in the opinion of the State Engineer and Surveyor, to employ temporarily upon any particular work, should be appointed by the State Engineer and Surveyor, with the approval of the Canal Board, subject to removal by the State Engineer and Surveyor alone. In case of every such temporary employment, we would recommend that the rate of compensation be fixed by the Canal Board before such person employed enters upon duty; that he be required to file the usual oath of office, and that he be only paid by the auditor of the Canal Department upon his oath to the correctness of the items charged for expenses and time, and a certificate of the approval of the State Engineer and Surveyor attached.

"No modification of the Constitution or of the law, however, will ever work any substantial reform unless adequate provision is made in some way for a more vigorous prosecution of unfaithful servants. The law is no protection unless its penalties are enforced against those who violate it; the justice that sleeps might as well be dead. Had the laws been enforced promptly when they had been notoriously violated, our canals would not only now be out of debt, but a fruitful source of revenue to the State. It is our conviction that the Legislature will do well to see if this arm of the government ought not to be strengthened. The evidence here submitted will show that very large sums of money have been taken annually from the State by the fraudulent connivance of the State agents with contractors, which should be reclaimed and restored to the treasury and an example made of all the parties participating in the robberies. The preparation of the testimony in these prosecutions, covering, as it must in most cases, a series of years, the actions of a large number of public officers, and servants, and involving a scientific examination of great varieties of work and a familiarity with the principles of engineering and the field work of the engineers, and with the accounts preserved in our public archives, will involve an amount of labor and expense for which at present there is no adequate provision.

"The commission was occupied in the taking of testimony until after the present session of the Legislature had commenced. The testimony could not be written out by the stenographer and put into the hands of the printer until the latter part of the month of January. This will explain any apparent delay in the transmission of this report, there being obvious inconveniences in sending part in print and part in manuscript. There has been no delay in its preparation, except what was the natural and inevitable result of efforts of the commission to render its contents readily accessible to your Excellency and to the legislative bodies.

"For the expenses of the commission the sum of $30,000 was appropriated by the last Legislature. The expenses will exceed this sum about $5000, for which we respectfully ask an appropriation. For greater convenience in presenting the testimony taken, we had it printed at a cost of over $4000. This, together with the legal expenses growing out of the proceedings to establish the authority of the commission to compel the production of books and papers and the witnesses to testify, occasioned this deficiency.

"John Bigelow,
"D. Magone, Jr.,
"A. E. Orr,
"John D. Van Buren, Jr.

"Albany, February 14, 1876."

"EXHIBIT D.

"The commission to investigate the affairs of the canals of the State present to the honorable commissioners of the canal fund:

"That Hon. Francis S. Thayer, Auditor of the Canal Department, has violated his duty as such auditor 'in respect to the public moneys in his charge and subject to his draft':

"First.—In that, on the 21st day of July, 1874, he procured the passage of a resolution by the commissioners of the canal fund whereby $200,000 of the sinking fund was directed to be invested in the taxes to be levied pursuant to chapter 462 of the laws of 1874; and after procuring the passage of such resolution did set apart said sum in violation of the Constitution. That the auditor's motive was to benefit George D. Lord. That in carrying out such intent the auditor paid $120,497.02 of said sum of $200,000, so set apart, within two days thereafter to Thad. C. Davis, as the agent of George D. Lord. That this was a violation of the Constitution, see article seven, sections two and thirteen. That the auditor is responsible for this misapplication of money, see his testimony, pages 2544, 2546.

"Second.—In that, on or about the 1st day of December, 1874, there being money subject to the warrant of the auditor for that purpose, the said auditor refused payment to S. R. Wells, administrator, of an award in his favor for $5207.50 on the false pretence that he had no funds, and immediately after such refusal negotiated the purchase, and did purchase, the said award at about $200 less than it called for of principal and interest, and on the 9th day of February, 1875, audited the said claim at the sum of $5454.92, and drew his warrant therefor in favor of George A. Stone, as assignee.

"George A. Stone had no interest in the transaction, and the auditor testifies that it was purchased for his brother-in-law, E. J. McKie. As to the evidence of this charge, see testimony of S. R. Wells, page 37 (folio 513 to folio 517); testimony of D. Willers, Jr., page 42 (folios 571 and 572); testimony of the auditor, pages 2507-2511; that the profit went to the benefit of the auditor, see pages 2595.

"Third.—In that, on the 11th day of March, 1875, there being money subject to the warrant of the auditor for that purpose, the said auditor refused payment to George M. Case of an award in his favor for $9768.71, on the false pretence that he had no funds, and, immediately after such refusal, negotiated the purchase, and did purchase, the said award, including accrued interest, at $10,510.73, and did on the twentieth day of May thereafter audit said claim for the full amount thereof, including interest, to wit, $10,730.60, and drew his warrant therefor in favor of George A. Stone, assignee.

"George A. Stone had no interest in the purchase, as appeared by his testimony, pages 2160-2229, and the auditor testified that he made the purchase for his brother-in-law, E. J. McKie.

"As to the evidence, see testimony of Auditor Thayer, pages 2507, 2586, 2595.

"Fourth.—In that, on the 15th day of March, 1875, the auditor purchased a certificate in favor of E. H. French for $1184.26 at a discount of $24.64. It was paid May twentieth thereafter at its full face. As to evidence of this transaction, see testimony of Auditor Thayer, same pages and folios referred to above as to George M. Case's certificate.

"Fifth.—In that, on the 12th day of April, 1875, the auditor purchased sixteen canal commissioners' certificates, amounting in the aggregate to $29,962, from Nehemiah L. Osborne at a discount of seven per cent. per annum from the face thereof, but for what length of time the discount was made we are unable to ascertain, further than that the time was in excess of the time between the purchase and payment by the auditor.

"These certificates were paid May 20, 1875, to George A. Stone. That the auditor derived a personal advantage from this transaction, see testimony of George A. Stone and of Auditor Thayer, pages 2229, 2595.

"Sixth.—In that, on the 28th day of April, 1875, the auditor purchased from H. D. Denison five canal commissioners' certificates, of the aggregate amount of $49,610, at a discount of seven per cent. per annum, but for what time he discounted them we have not been able to ascertain, further than that it was in excess of the time between the purchase and payment. On the twentieth day of May thereafter the auditor audited said certificates and drew his warrant for the payment thereof in favor of George A. Stone, assignee, at $50,542.06, and the amount gained went to the personal advantage of the auditor. As to evidence of this transaction, see testimony of George A. Stone, page 2229; Francis S. Thayer, page 2476.

"Seventh.—In that, on the 29th day of April, 1875, the auditor purchased from H. D. Denison six canal commissioners' certificates, of the aggregate amount of $30,687, at a discount of seven per cent. per annum, but for what length of time he discounted them we have not been able to ascertain, further than that it was greater than the time between the purchase and payment; that on the twentieth day of May thereafter the auditor audited these certificates and drew his warrant therefor in favor of George A. Stone at $31,153.03. That the personal gain from this transaction went to the personal advantage of Francis S. Thayer, see his testimony, page 2595.

"Eighth.—That the auditor drew his warrant in payment for a canal commissioners' certificate, in favor of John D. Hamilton, for $38,000, on the 28th day of June, 1875, in violation of law in this: that he paid it without the sworn certificate of an engineer, as required by statute.

"Ninth.—In this, that the auditor, in June, 1875, purchased a canal commissioners' certificate, subject to his own audit, from James P. Buck, for $6496.28, at a discount of ten per cent. For the evidence of specification, see testimony of James P. Buck, page 2216.

"The auditor claims he made this purchase for his brother-in-law, E. J. McKie.

"Tenth.-In this, that on the 2d day of July, 1875, the auditor purchased canal commissioners' certificates, subject to his own audit, to the amount of $49,953.91, at a discount of eight per cent. and accrued interest, in favor of the purchaser. For evidence of this purchase, see testimony of Willard Johnson, page 2386; testimony of F. S. Thayer, page 2514.

"Eleventh.—In that, in addition to those above enumerated, the auditor purchased, between the 9th day of March and the 14th day of July, 1875, canal commissioners' drafts and certificates, subject to his own audit, to the amount of $64,959.81, all of which he afterward audited and drew his warrants in payment thereof. As to the evidence of these several transactions, see testimony of George A. Stone, page 2241; that the auditor derived a direct personal advantage from these transactions, see testimony of Francis S. Thayer, page 2595.

"John Bigelow,
"A. E. Orr,
"John D. Van Buren, Jr.,
"D. Magone, Jr.,

"Commissioners."

"EXHIBIT E
"COPY OF THE REQUISITION OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF THE CANAL FUND

"The undersigned hereby certify that, at a meeting of the commissioners of the canal fund, held at the Canal Department, in the city of Albany, on the 28th day of December, 1875, at 10 o'clock A. M.,

"Present—William Dorsheimer, Lieutenant-Governor; Diedrich Willers, Jr., Secretary of State; Nelson K. Hopkins, Comptroller; Thomas Raines, Treasurer; Daniel Pratt, Attorney-General,

"The following proceedings were had:

"On motion of the Attorney-General, it was

"Resolved, That a requisition is made upon his Excellency the Governor to suspend Francis S. Thayer, the auditor of the Canal Department, and to appoint a suitable person to perform his duties, if it shall be made to appear to him that the said auditor has violated his duty in respect to the public moneys in his charge and subject to his draft, the particulars of which alleged violations of duty appear in the report of the commission to investigate the affairs of the canals of the State, which has been submitted to this board, and which is herewith transmitted.

"The members of the board who voted in favor of the adoption of said resolution were as follows: The Lieutenant-Governor, Attorney-General, and Secretary of State. The Comptroller voted in the negative. The Treasurer was not present when the vote was taken, by reason of illness.

"William Dorsheimer,
"Lieutenant-Governor.
"Daniel Pratt,
"Attorney-General.
"Diedrich Willers, Jr.,
"Secretary of State."

"EXHIBIT F
"EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR THE SUSPENSION OF AUDITOR THAYER

"State of New York: Executive Chamber,
"Albany, December, 1875.

"Whereas, The commissioners of the canal fund, by their requisition hereto annexed, have required or recommended the suspension from office of Francis S. Thayer, the auditor of the Canal Department; and, whereas, it has been made to appear to me that the said Francis S. Thayer, as such auditor, has violated his duty in respect to the public moneys in his charge and subject to his draft;

"Now, therefore, in pursuance of the provisions of section 2, of chapter 783 of the laws of 1857, I do hereby suspend the said Francis S. Thayer from his office as auditor of the Canal Department.

"In witness whereof, I hereunto set my name and cause to be affixed the privy seal of the State this 28th day of December, 1875.

{ State of New York. }
{ Excelsior. } "Samuel J. Tilden."
{Executive Privy Seal.}
"By the Governor,
"Chas. Stebbins,
"Private Secretary.

"Indorsed: Order by Samuel J. Tilden, Governor, suspending Francis S. Thayer, auditor of the Canal Department.

"Filed December 28, 1875, at four and a half o'clock P.M.

"Diedrich Willers, Jr.,
"Secretary of State."

A. E. ORR TO TILDEN

"New York, May 19, '76.

"Governor Tilden,—We ended our work on the commission last Tuesday.

"I regret that I could not see you and say farewell, and wish you God-speed in the work with which you are so prominently identified.

"I leave in the faith that fearless honesty will place its heel on fraud and corruption, and that you will be the standard-bearer selected at St. Louis and surely prove victorious in November next.

"The best men of each party are beginning to see the necessity for just such action, and you are daily receiving numerous recruits.

"Don't give way an inch.

"Very respectfully, your friend,
"A. E. Orr."

"MR. TILDEN AND THE DEMOCRATS

[From the New York "Tribune" (Republican) of May 27, 1876.]

"Mr. Tilden is by no means the only Democrat at the East whom good citizens might rejoice to see nominated for the Presidency. His name would undoubtedly do honor to the ticket to be made at St. Louis; but it is not essential to the credit of the party, and if some of his own political brethren are bitterly opposed to him, that is, in one sense, a family affair, over which the outside world need not greatly vex itself. As an indication of the tendencies of the Democratic party, however, the causes of the hostility to Tilden becomes a matter of national concern. The first serious manifestation of enmity came from Tammany Hall, and it finds expression in the columns of the Express, where it is alleged that Gov. Tilden has made use of his position to organize a personal party. But this is such a strange complaint to come from the Tammany Hall autocracy that there must be something more behind it. The World, whose change of proprietorship is generally interpreted as a blow at Mr. Tilden's pretensions, has not a word to say against the Governor; it only insists, with good sense and good temper, that there are other eminent Democrats whose merits and whose chances are entitled to consideration. But on Wednesday a conference of leading Democratic politicians was held at Albany to consider how Mr. Tilden could be most conveniently thrown overboard, and from them it would seem that we ought to obtain some light upon the interesting question which neither the World, nor the Express, nor Tammany has seen fit to answer. There were present at this conference Chief-Justice Church and Justice Allen, ex-Lieut.-Gov. Beach, ex-Gov. Hoffman, ex-Speaker Littlejohn, and other well-known men, and the judgment of the meeting is understood to have been unanimous that Mr. Tilden, having alienated a large faction of the Democracy, is not the man for St. Louis.

"We mean no reflection upon the integrity of any of these estimable gentlemen, but it is a significant fact that pretty nearly all the most reputable Democrats whose names have been, either rightly or wrongly, connected with the Tweed and Canal Rings, were found on Wednesday in their company. It was probably not the fault of Judge Church and Judge Allen that the Canal Ring and what was left of the old Tammany Ring united in 1874 to run them both against Tilden, first one and then the other, in the canvass for the nomination; but it was certainly their misfortune. That fight of the Rings against Tilden was a matter of notoriety, and the nomination of our present Governor, instead of Judge Church or his cousin, Judge Allen, was generally recognized throughout the State as a triumph of the better elements of the Democracy over the thieves and corruptionists. It seems to be the same fight that is renewed now. Judge Allen is known as the author of the much-criticised decision of the Court of Appeals which released Tweed from Blackwell's Island. Mr. Beach is remembered as the gentleman who made such a strange exhibition of himself last Summer by publishing a card in which he intemperately denounced a report of the canal investigating commission as "unfounded in every particular," and who then, being subpœnaed by the commission, swallowed his card and convicted himself of official neglect out of his own mouth. The history and affiliations of ex-Gov. Hoffman are well enough known.

"Altogether, it may be said that the Albany conference only brought to the front the men who have always been recognized as Governor Tilden's enemies and rivals, and who, from their peculiar positions, could not be his friends, not because they are not personally good men, but because a reform movement cannot be carried on in New York without hurting their allies and adherents. And if we go outside the State we find the anti-Tilden sentiment confined to the Western inflationists and communists, who hate every man that believes in a dollar, and are perfectly frank in the declaration of their sentiments. Now, as we have said before, the Democratic party is not so poor that it can name no one for the Presidency whose fitness is not so marked as Mr. Tilden's; but if he is to be thrown overboard the country has a right to insist that the reasons for his rejection shall be made quite clear; otherwise it is sure to draw unpleasant conclusions. The Democratic candidate, whoever he may be, must be a man whom repudiators, canal thieves, and the relics of the old Tammany cannot support."

THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL CONFERENCE OF 1876

[From the "Sun," April 7, 1900.]

"A man with half a memory writes a long letter to the Evening Post of this city recalling the circumstances of the once-famous Fifth Avenue Hotel Conference of May, 1876. He thinks the political situation is ripe for another such demonstration on the part of eminent citizens who do not want to vote for McKinley again, yet view with apprehension the probability that Bryan will be the alternative choice. There is as much time now before the two great nominating conventions, he points out, as there was when Carl Schurz and others met in the Fifth Avenue Hotel to save the country. A quarter of a century has considerably idealized his mental picture of that conference and its results. This is his description of it now:

"'It was a gathering of the foremost patriots in the nation, regardless of party affiliations, to discuss the political situation and suggest to the country a programme for the Presidential canvass which was soon to begin. There were philosophers and scholars of the first rank, eminent lawyers, and brilliant editors, and men who had won renown in many a fierce campaign as "practical" politicians and popular leaders. The call which brought them together distinctly disavowed the idea of nominating a candidate or framing a platform, except, possibly, in the barest outlines. The whole purpose of the conference was to end at one stroke some of the false conditions against which the conscience and intelligence of the country were in revolt, but not to pull down anything for which it was not prepared to offer something better as a substitute.'

"This conference to which the writer in the Evening Post refers in terms of reverence, amounting almost to awe, met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on May 16, 1876, in response to a call signed by Mr. Schurz and a few others. There were present about two hundred gentlemen, mostly of the type which afterward came to be known as the Mugwump; that is to say, the type addicted to proclaiming its superior intelligence and conscience in political affairs. As might be expected, the Hon. Carl Schurz, the Flying Dutchman of American politics, was the most conspicuous figure. He made the principal speech, and he was chairman of the committee which prepared and reported a pretentious 'address to the country.' This address to the country constituted the sole fruit of the conference's deliberations.

"Let us supplement the half-memory of the man who wants another such demonstration of the foremost patriots, philosophers, and scholars, under the leadership once more, as we assume from the tone of his letter, of the Hon. Carl Schurz. At the time the conference met there was nothing murky in the political situation. On the Republican side the nomination of Governor Hayes, of Ohio, was clearly indicated. The Sun had predicted it long before the patriots and philosophers assembled. Mr. Blaine was an aggressive candidate, and there was some third-term talk about Gen. Grant; but the Conkling-Blaine feud and the Bristow disaffection already rendered practically certain the nomination of a compromise candidate not identified with either faction, and the logic of the situation pointed directly to Governor Hayes. On the other side everything was shaping towards the event which occurred at St. Louis six weeks later, the nomination on the second ballot, by far more than the required two-thirds majority, of Samuel J. Tilden, a statesman and reformer representing with singular closeness the ideal which was declared to be in the minds of Mr. Carl Schurz and his associates.

"That celebrated address which Mr. Schurz drafted, with the assistance of the intelligence and conscience of the country, could scarcely have called more pointedly for Tilden and barred out Hayes as the President desired by the foremost patriots, philosophers, and scholars, had it mentioned their names. We quote from Mr. Carl Schurz's address to the country:

"'We shall support no candidate who, however favorably judged by his nearest friends, is not publicly known to possess those qualities of mind and character which the stern task of genuine reform requires, for the American people cannot now afford to risk the future of the republic in experiments on merely supposed virtue or rumored ability to be trusted on the strength of private recommendations.

"'The man to be intrusted with the Presidency this year must have deserved not only the confidence of honest men, but also the fear and hatred of the thieves.

"'The country must now have a President whose name is already a watchword of reform, whose capacity and courage for the work are matters of record rather than promise.'

"There was much more of the same sort in the address which Mr. Schurz signed and the Fifth Avenue Hotel conference issued. Within a few weeks the Republican party nominated the man whose capacity and courage for the work of reform were matters of promise only, and the Democracy put up the statesman already publicly known to possess those qualities of mind and character which the stern task of genuine reform required.

"What was the sequel? A few weeks later the Hon. Carl Schurz, the author of all the high-sounding professions in the address to the country, was hard at work persuading citizens of the Mugwump type to cast their votes for Hayes and against Tilden; and a few months later, after Mr. Hayes had failed to secure a majority of the electoral vote, but had been counted into the office to which Mr. Tilden was elected, the Hon. Carl Schurz, reformer and leader of the Fifth Avenue Hotel conference, got his pay for partisan activity; it came in the shape of a Cabinet appointment, which he promptly accepted.

"Such is the true story of the May conference of 1876."

JOHN T. MORGAN TO MONTGOMERY BLAIR

"Confidential.

"Selma, Ala., June 3d, 1876.

"Hon. Montgomery Blair.

"Dear Sir,—I have had two valued favors from you—the last of 25th May. I was chosen as a State elector, and also as a State delegate to St. Louis by our recent convention. It was very large, fully representative, unusually able, and harmonious. The delegation to St. Louis is very able, comprising many of our best men. No instructions were given. I did not even hear much discussion of candidates. The great leading thought is success, and to gain this every man will sacrifice all his preferences for any particular candidate. I think I may state safely (but I do it in personal confidence) that not more than two of our twenty delegates favor now the nomination of any other person but Mr. Tilden. One of these stated to the convention that he was under no pledges to any man. This state of opinion is the result of close scrutiny of the drift of sentiment in the Northern States, and especially in New York. The recent movement of Church and Kelly and others has deceived no one here.

"I am satisfied that Alabama will be very reluctant to take such a lead as would have the appearance of dictating the candidate to the Northern States. The North ought to settle its differences about the minor and purely political question of currency laws and allow us to unite with them in demanding a pure government which will give them a chance for life. If they force us to choose, however, we will certainly be directed solely by the consideration of 'success.' We can't afford to risk anything to gratify a predilection. If you could, Bayard would get the State. I was at Montgomery at the time you refer to as a member of the convention of 1861. I do not remember that Mr. Bayard was there. I feel satisfied he was not there.

"As his friend I would prefer to see him wait a time and mature more thoroughly his great powers in the school of experience. Still, he would now be a most acceptable President to all the people of the Southern States.

"My conviction remains unshaken that Mr. Tilden is the strongest man in N. Y.; that he is an honest Democrat from principle; that he acts squarely on his convictions in everything; that his record is one to inspire confidence in the people; that he will attack fraud and corruption wherever he meets them, without fear or hesitancy; and that his good sense, and the best interests of his own State, will lead him to give to the country with which the great commercial cities are so intimately associated in the means of prosperity, peace and protection, while it is working out with honest toil its redemption from poverty and distress. This is all we need. We do not wish the power that springs merely from the weight of numbers in the electoral colleges. We wish no offices, or, rather, we need none, and our wisest men will be glad if we get but few. Let us alone, and we will soon become richer than we have ever been.

"Genl. E. W. Peters, who is Col. Denison's law partner, is in our delegation, and will probably be our chairman. He is a hard-money Democrat, and is much impressed with the necessity of Mr. Tilden's nomination as a matter of success.

"Very truly yours,
"Jno. T. Morgan."

On the 28th of June the Democratic National Convention at St. Louis nominated Mr. Tilden for President.

The whole vote on the second ballot was 738; necessary to a choice, 492. Tilden had 535; Hendricks, of Indiana, 66; Allen, of Ohio, 54; Parker, of New Jersey, 18; Hancock, of Pennsylvania, 59; Bayard, of Delaware, 11; Thurman, of Ohio, 2. Indiana seconded Pennsylvania's motion to make Mr. Tilden's nomination unanimous, and it was adopted.

In the month of June, 1876, Governor Tilden received a note from a citizen of Minnesota complaining that he could get no evidence of any success achieved by the Governor in his war upon the Canal Ring, and that it was thrown in the face of the people out there that nothing had been accomplished. His letter concludes as follows: "Now, if ever I have seen any disposition of these cases of corruption it has escaped my memory, and to be prepared to answer our assailants on their only one point, with an earnest desire to convert them to Tilden and reform, is solely the object of my writing."

To this letter Tilden wrote the following reply, dated June 15, 1876: "Your letter of June 12th has been handed to me. In reply, I would like to state that it takes time to obtain the evidence and prepare the actions, civil and criminal, in such cases as those against the members of the Canal Ring. The machinery of justice under the State government has not the unity and efficiency that it has under the Federal government, where the district attorneys and marshals are appointed by the Chief Executive instead of being elected in their localities. On the whole, however, these cases have proceeded with more rapidity than could have been expected under the circumstances. You will have become, doubtless, aware before this reaches you that George D. Lord was convicted a few days since at Buffalo. The principal civil suit against Beldon, Denison & Co. is set down for trial on the 12th of July. The trial was put off for a few weeks by the court against the opposition of the Attorney-General. The most important thing, of course, was to break up the system, and that has been done. A secondary object is to deter from the commission of similar offences in future, and that work is going on satisfactorily."

P. H. SMITH TO TILDEN (TELEGRAM)

"Springfield, Ill., June 21, 1876.

"To Gov. Sam. J. Tilden,
"15 Gramercy.

"The Chicago Times to-day says that you were chairman of platform committee in eighteen hundred and sixty-four which put forth the famous peace resolution pronouncing the war as a failure. Please telegraph the fact. Large majority of this convention for you.

"P. H. Smith."

MANTON MARBLE TO PERRY H. SMITH (TELEGRAM)

"June 21, 1876.

"To Perry H. Smith,
"Springfield.

"Your telegram shown me. Governor Tilden was not chairman of platform committee of Chicago convention. James Guthrie was. Tilden opposed resolution containing phrase speaking of war as having thus far failed to restore the Union in committee; got it stricken out; refused to agree to resolution with it in. It was then irregularly restored. Tilden refused to agree to resolutions at all stages, and sent messages by me to McClellan advising him to discard it in letter of acceptance. Tilden made speech in New York delegation against resolution, which was briefly reported by me in World, and is copied in Courier-Journal telegraphs. I was present in New York delegation and at meetings of committee or in adjoining room."

At the Democratic convention of the State of New York, held at Utica, May, 1876, Governor Tilden was recommended as a candidate for President to the National Democratic Convention, to be held at St. Louis on the 26th of June following. At the meeting of that convention an informal ballot disclosed such a decided partiality for Mr. Tilden over either of the other candidates that he was nominated on the next ballot.

MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER TO TILDEN

"Garden City, L. I., June 29th, '76.

"To his Excellency, Gov. Samuel J. Tilden.

"My dear Governor,—I cannot refrain from offering you my sincere congratulations on your nomination to the exalted office of the President of the United States. As a quiet observer of the political events of the nation, I know of no one in my day that has afforded me so much satisfaction, and sincerely hope and believe that the wisdom shown by the selection at St. Louis will be fully ratified by the great mass of our people in November next. We require reform in politics, religion, and morals, and I am convinced that we will receive them generously at your hands. The whole government of the nation has been corrupt—desperately corrupt—and the honor and glory of applying the antidote, I am convinced, will belong to you. If the fact of your nomination does not enhance the material values of the nation I am sure your election will do it. Already I seem to breathe a new atmosphere, as is the case with every well-wisher of the country.

Sincerely yours,
"J. Hooker."

CLARKSON N. POTTER TO TILDEN

"61 Wall St., N. Y., June 29, '76.

"My dear Governor,—Your letter was well received yesterday at Union College, and I am glad you sent it.

"I got down last evening just in time to hear of your nomination in the street and take into your house the news. Heaven grant you may be elected. The country needs that, far more than you do or can desire it.

"Faithfully yours,
"Clarkson N. Potter."

WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER TO TILDEN

"New York, June 29, 1876.

"My dear Governor Tilden,—I congratulate you most heartily. Whatever may be the fortunes or the fate of the coming struggle, there is nothing but satisfaction to your old friends in your well-earned victory at St. Louis, and you can well understand how specially gratifying it is to

"Yours sincerely,
"William Allen Butler."

ROBERT B. MINTURN TO TILDEN

"New Brighton, Staten Island, July 3, 1876.

"My dear Governor Tilden,—No one has been more delighted than I by your nomination; and you, knowing how much I have desired it, may have been surprised at not receiving any word of congratulation from me.

"The truth is that, at a time when the mails and the wires have been burdened with messages of felicitation for you, it seemed that you would scarcely care to have any formal expression from those of whose regard and support you were already assured. I may have been wrong in this feeling, and perhaps I should at once have written to tell you how much I was rejoiced at your nomination, and how thoroughly I have admired your noble fight against the worst constituents of our politics—culminating in your victory, at the St. Louis convention, over all the jobbing elements of the party, which were strengthened by a most unprecedented and venomous opposition from your own State.

"My gratification at your nomination has, however (I must confess), been mingled with deep regret at the phrase in the platform which denounces the resumption clause of the act of 1875. I know as well as any one the fraudulent character of that act—I know that the Cincinnati convention refused to endorse it—but, nevertheless, I feel that it was a solemn pledge of the national faith, a pledge which cannot be repudiated without discredit, not to say, disgrace.

"The act of 1875 was a settlement—unsatisfactory and inadequate, no doubt—but still a settlement which, in every point of view, should (as it seems to me) be respected. If present legislation is inadequate to carry it into effect, fresh legislation should be provided. If the time that remains is now too short to make effectual provision for resumption, the period should be extended to admit of proper preparation. But to say (as the platform does) that the resumption clause is itself an obstacle to resumption, and to propose its naked repeal, is (as it seems to me) to talk nonsense, and, what is worse, very dishonorable and disgraceful nonsense.

"Knowing how thoroughly sound you are on this subject, I cannot but believe that you will take some occasion (probably in your letter of acceptance) to relieve yourself and your supporters from the odium of permitting the phrase to pass without explanation. I observe that Mr. Hendricks exults in the expression, as being equivalent to an abandonment of any policy looking towards resumption by the government. But the phrase is capable of receiving a different interpretation, as was shown by one of the Ohio delegates in the convention, who said that it might be taken to express a disapproval of the resumption clause only because it did not contain sufficiently vigorous provisions for a sufficiently early resumption. But if nothing should be said by you, I am satisfied that the interpretation of Mr. Hendricks is the sense which will be affixed to the platform both by friends and foes; and it is a sense which (in my judgment) will do very great harm, and, indeed, is already working mischief.

"I trust that you will not consider it impertinent in me to write thus strongly and with so much frankness. I feel very strongly that the conservative sentiment of this country will not willingly see the settlement of 1875 rudely and thoughtlessly repudiated; and I am confident that not only is this the real feeling of the country, but that it is a noble and honorable sentiment which cannot with impunity be disregarded by those who represent a reform of politics.

"You may be very sure, my dear Mr. Tilden, that if I had not a very genuine confidence in you, and an earnest desire for your success, I should not have ventured to write you thus. Pray take this view of my letter, and believe me,

"Yours most sincerely,
"Robt. B. Minturn.

"His Excellency S. J. Tilden, &c., &c., &c."

WHITELAW REID TO BIGELOW

"Personal.

"New York, 23 Park Ave., July 9, '76.

"My dear Mr. Bigelow,—I am sorry that I missed you on Saturday. I had just run over to the Phelps' to assist them in some of their final preparations in sailing again for Europe. You know they took my niece over, returned with her to nurse her, went with me to the West to bury her, and are now just starting back to try to get up their own health again.

"I would like very much to talk over the political situation with you. I am exceedingly sorry that the Hendricks nomination and the platform seem to shut us up to the support of Hayes. At the same time, I feel like congratulating the independent press and honest men of all parties on the great reform they have succeeded in securing in forcing unobjectionable nominations from the Republicans, and compelling the Democrats to take Tilden. It does not seem to me by any means clear that he will not be elected. If he is we ought all to pray night and day that his health may be preserved to protect us against Hendricks.

"Very truly yours,
"Whitelaw Reid."

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS TO GOVERNOR TILDEN

"New York, July 10, '76.

"My dear Sir,—Gov. Hayes leaves to you a clear field. Since reading his letter I am the more confirmed in the views which I hurriedly expressed on Saturday. You now have a great opportunity to do two things: first, to make the country see that the resumption of specie payments means measures, and not barren promises; that the attitude of the Republicans in regard to specie payments is like the attitude of the government in regard to its notes—the holder asks for payment, and he gets another paper promise; the country asks to have specie payments restored, and it gets the law wh. says it shall be done in 1879, but takes no step towards a fulfilment of the pledge. Secondly, you now have a grand opportunity to show the inflationists of our own party that they indulge a false alarm about contraction; that the very gist of the problem is to avoid contraction that will hurt anybody by putting the finances of the govt. into a condition to supply a circulating medium that will appreciate in value from the moment of the enactment of the very first measure, and will go on appreciating until it becomes at par with gold in the market and in the purchasing and paying power.

"Let the people see that you are not, as your rival certainly is, a mere puppet in the hands of others. Speak, speak as if ex-cathedra; for your position is now one that will cause anything you say, that appears to come from conscious power to handle the subject, to sink deep in the public mind. Your opponent not only shows no such conscious power, but he shows that he possesses no more of it than a child; in which respect, indeed, he is a good average representative of his party. Now is your time to strike a blow that will be felt.

"Yours very truly,
Geo. Ticknor Curtis."

"Gov. Tilden.

C. H. McCORMICK TO TILDEN

"Spring House, Richfield Springs, N. Y., July 11, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—Your kind expressions of me when at your house yesterday have induced me to make a suggestion to you in confidence.

"If uncommitted on the question, and if you could do no better (of course) as Secretary of the Treasury, I venture to submit that in that important [post] I might be able to command confidence to a large extent where I am known.

"With your views as expressed, one word from you at St. Louis would have given me the nomination for the 'second place.' I suppose the place above mentioned is of more importance to the public in a 'reform' point of view than the second place. These things, Govr., are only for your consideration, with neither claims nor representations on my part, only asking that if not approved they will not further be thought of.

"When I left St. L., Gen. Preston, of Ky., and other influential friends from other States requested permission to use my name for the V.-P. shd. Govr. H. on any account decline, etc.

In much haste,
"Your frd. & obt. St.,
"C. H. McCormick."

TILDEN TO S. S. COX

"State of New York, Executive Chamber,
"Albany, July 22, 1876.

"Dear Mr. Cox,—Your note of the 15th came several days ago, but I have since that time been so exceptionally occupied that I could not give any attention to my correspondence.

"I did, however, immediately direct the messages you desired to be at once sent, and I now will answer your inquiry in respect to the statement of Federal taxation for the year 1870, contained in my last annual message.

"The year taken is that which ends on the 30th of June, 1870, being most nearly identical with that in which and for which the census statements are made.

"The statement is of taxation and not of expenditures. All the statements in the comparative tables are of taxation. In the long run, unfortunately, the expenditures equal the taxes. At any rate, the comparison is a comparison of taxation.

"If you will refer to the first page of the report of the Secretary of the Treasury for December 5, 1870, you will find the receipts for the year ending June 30, 1870, stated as follows:

"To reduce the gold revenue from the customs to currency requires the addition of the premium on gold. The gentleman to whom I intrusted that computation made an average which fixed the premium at 24 per cent. That is no doubt considerably below the real premium at the times when the revenues were collected.

"The amount of the premium is $46,689,209.86. From that should be deducted premium received on the sales of gold which form the larger part of the 28,000,000 of receipts from miscellaneous sources, and amount to $15,294,137.37, leaving a balance of $31,395,072.49—

"The estimate of the amount drawn from the people by taxation by the Federal government, contained in the table to which you refer, is made in round numbers $450,000,000.

"There can be no doubt it is below the truth.

"Very respectfully yours."

HENDRICKS TO TILDEN (TELEGRAM)

"Cleveland, O.

"Rec'd at Albany, July 15, 1876.

"To Governor Tilden,
"Albany, N. Y.

"I have spent the afternoon here and seen many Democrats. Our gains are large, and we can carry Ohio, but all say it is worth thousands of votes to repeal the resumption clause on some terms. I think you should urge a proper measure of repeal.

"T. A. Hendricks."

ABRAM S. HEWITT TO TILDEN

"House of Representatives, July 26th, 1867.

"My dear Governor,—We have got over another day, thanks to an election case, without action on the silver bill. We believe now that we shall be able to defeat action, if not vote down the measure. It has been a hard fight, and, if we win, it will be due to considerations of expediency rather than of principles on the part of the Southern members.

"The object of this note is mainly to suggest something in regard to the civil-service plank. A very intelligent newspaper man says that the real issue is not so much in the personnel of the clerks as in the modes and machinery of administration in the several departments of the Govt. In other words, that the abuses are largely due to the defective organization of the department, that the business has outgrown the methods and machinery devised by Hamilton, and that it is the framework of the government machine which needs reformation, reconstruction, and adaptation to the requirements of the public business. In this view, the mere appointment and discharge of a few clerks is of but little consequence, compared with such a reform in the mode of conducting the public business.

"This crude statement seems to contain the germ of a position in politics in regard to civil service, far higher and more practical than the declaration of Hayes.

"The P. S. dept. may be instanced to illustrate the state of affairs. When it was a small affair it was not of such consequence, and before the days of railroads and telegraphs indispensable, perhaps, that it should use its receipts to pay its expenses and pay over to the Treasury any balance that might remain at the end of the fiscal year. Now, however, when the receipts are very great, they should be paid all into the Treasury, and the expenses drawn thence by warrant, as in other departments of the government. This is not the case, but the Postmaster-General, having the control of the money, authorizes and allows expenditures, such as repairs and improvements to buildings, amounting to large sums, without any authority from Congress, such as is necessary in the other departments for such outlays.

"So the bookkeeping of the government is not in accordance with the experience of the times, but is crude, old-fashioned, unsatisfactory, and even contradictory. Now a broad declaration from you that you will endeavor to reform these abuses which are of a gravity far greater than the incompetence or negligence of clerks, and that this reform is the most urgent and will receive careful attention would, I think, strike the public favorably.

"Faithfully y'rs,
"Abram S. Hewitt.

"Scott Wicks, of Ill., one of our best members, and who stood by us on the banking and currency committee, has lost his renomination in consequence. It is a severe blow to him and to me, and if we win he must be taken care of. He is a first-class man.

"I do not think you begin to appreciate the bitterness of these Western inflationists."

ABRAM S. HEWITT TO TILDEN

"Personal and private.

"Sunday, 8 P.M., Washington, Aug. 6, '76.

"My dear Governor,—I have been very unwell all day, caused by the nervous exhaustion of yesterday's work in the House. And yet I will try to give you some idea of the situation and the results. The banking and currency committee decided to report the repeal of the resumption date on Friday. I persuaded them to wait till Saturday, hoping that your letter would come and change the situation. The letter did come, but the committee were perfectly fixed in their determination to report. I tried to get them to substitute a commission to inquire and report in December on the whole resumption question. They offered to accept this as an amendment, but not as a substitute. To this the hard-money New England men would not agree, and so I decided to offer my substitute, as we could well vote for repeal pure and simple, without measures of preparation. We had a debate of two hours. You will find what I said in the Record. After the debate was over they declined to let my substitute be offered. The House was determined to get a vote on it, and so no quorum voted on the motion for the previous question. This brought them to terms, and they allowed the substitute to be offered. It was lost by twelve majority. If the House had been full it would have carried. The vote then recurred on the repeal, and it was carried by 20 majority, all the hard-money men voting against it. There was no hard feeling, and no bitterness remains. The hard-money men have made their record, and the soft-money men have got the repeal, and no longer any excuse for not carrying their States. I think that the matter is in the best possible shape. The party is committed to specie payments by the platform and your admirable letter, and by Hendricks' mushy acquiescence.

"Immediately afterwards we passed a concurrent resolution establishing a commission to consider the silver question and the resumption of specie payments. So that we can say that we have made provision for investigation and the elaboration of a practical scheme for resumption.

"On the whole, I now think that the matter has been managed as well as the difficulties of the situation would admit.

"Your letter gives general satisfaction, especially to the Southern members, who [are] loud in its praise.

"I hope that Congress will adjourn this week, so that we may organize for the campaign. I have in preparation all the necessary documents to show the frauds and corruption of the administration, and if we have means to circulate them I anticipate the best results.

"Faithfully yours,
"Abram S. Hewitt."

Considering the friendly and very intimate relations which had subsisted between Mr. Bryant and Mr. Tilden from the latter's early boyhood, it was natural that the Governor should inspire the request contained in the following letter from one of his nephews. The correspondence which ensued, and its results, will be found in Bigelow's Life of Tilden, Volume I., page 300. It is proper to repeat here that Mr. Bryant, at the time he wrote his letter declining to be named as one of the Tilden electors, was only a proprietor of half of the Evening Post property, and his partner, Mr. Henderson, feared the effect upon the prosperity of the paper which would be likely to result from the appearance of its editor in such conspicuous relations with the Democratic party. Mr. Bryant, however, went so far as to give instructions, which were pretty carefully observed, to permit nothing personally hostile to Mr. Tilden to appear in the columns of the Post during the canvass, and voted for him at the election.

Besides the reasons here stated for Mr. Bryant's embarrassing attitude towards Mr. Tilden, there were others communicated to Mr. Tilden a few weeks later by Miss Julia Bryant in the note succeeding Mr. Pelton's.

W. T. PELTON TO JOHN BIGELOW

"(August, 1876.)

"My dear Mr. Bigelow,—It seems very desirable that Mr. Bryant should be put on as one of the electors at large, and we must know that he will not decline if nominated. Will you undertake to communicate with him at once? I would suggest that you write him and send a messenger with the letter to Cummington—or perhaps it would be better to write Mr. Godwin, who is there, or was a few days ago. Of course, you can state as strongly as you please how much it is desired here that he accept.

"Can't you send Monday morn, train, so as to get reply early.

"Sincerely yrs.,
"W. T. Pelton.

"Satrdy. evg."

JULIA BRYANT TO TILDEN

"Roslyn, Sept. 30, '76.

"Dear Mr. Tilden,—I am very, very sorry that you and your friends and your enemies will not see the article in regard to the slanders about your income tax which my father wrote at Cummington last Saturday. He bestowed much time upon it, read it to me, and pronounced it himself 'a good article,' and sent it on Monday to Mr. Sperry,[9] with the injunction to publish it entire, whatever might have appeared previously on the subject in the Evening Post.

"After our return here this week a letter came from Mr. Sperry begging my father most earnestly not to publish the article, as it would certainly be followed by abuse of Mr. Henderson in the Times—abuse more virulent than ever before—because in this article the Times was attacked, although indirectly, and most severely censured. It was urged that my father should not persist in publishing what would cause such distress to Mr. Henderson, already so worn by his troubles. On this score my father felt that he must yield, but he did it most unwillingly and quite ungraciously.

"I am anxious, however, that you should know what has passed; and should know, also, that my father, averse as he is to such constant watchfulness, has had much to combat in keeping attacks on you out of the papers, and has insisted that you should not be treated in the Evening Post otherwise than with respect. You may think that he has not exerted himself in your behalf, as he might have done for an old and esteemed friend, and one who has done him such good service; but, truly, it has required no small effort on his part to keep the paper as moderate as it is.

"He knows that I am writing this now.

"I am obliged to finish in great haste, as I am just going to town.

Yours truly,
"Julia Bryant."

TILDEN TO MISS HUNT

"138 Eagle St., Albany, Aug. 8th, 1876.

"Dear Miss Hunt,—I lately learned by chance that it is to you that I am indebted for a copy of the new edition of the works of Ed. Livingston on criminal jurisprudence. No information as to the source of the presentation had ever before reached me. I ought, perhaps, to have caused inquiry to be made into that matter, but in the rush of things amid which I have lived, did not. The work which has fallen on me in my present career has been constantly outgrowing my help and my own capacity for attention to the secondary things; and I must confess in myself a tendency to become more and more absorbed, with increasing intensity and increasing persistence, in the parts of the work on which its success depends as on the turning-points of battle—a habit not favorable to secondary things, very unfavorable to the human machine, but surprisingly serviceable to the work which gets the benefit of it.

"I will now say what I would have contrived the opportunity to say earlier, if I had ever known to whom it should have been addressed.

"It is impossible to appreciate more highly than I do the character, abilities, and services to his country and to the world of Ed. Livingston. And then, I have always taken a special interest in the man. Among my early recollections is this of him: He used to come to Lebanon Springs, which is on the edge of the beautiful valley in which I was born and passed my youth. My father's acquaintance with him was the occasion of my seeing him and retaining a recollection of his form and features. His taste for antiquarian researches led him to dig open some mounds in the neighborhood and leaving on the rustic mind some impression of eccentricity. My father had been more intimate with the chancellor, and deprived from him a taste for Merino sheep, and shared in his importations.

"I need not add with how much interest I read Mr. Hunt's biography of Ed. Livingston, which is itself a delicious portrayal of a most attractive character.

"I beg you to accept my thanks for the volumes you were so kind as to send me, and believe me,

"Very truly yours,
"S. J. Tilden."

MISS HUNT TO TILDEN

"Montgomery Place, Barrytown-on-Hudson, Aug. 10th.

"Dear Governor Tilden,—Your kind note has reached me safely, while mine, sent with the books, never arrived at its destination, as it should have done.

"My aunt, Mrs. Barton, in a spirit of filial piety, had preserved a number of copies for the purpose of presenting them in suitable quarters. But before she could accomplish the object Mrs. Barton herself suddenly died. The duty having consequently devolved on me of distributing the volumes, I felt special satisfaction in offering you a copy of them, who, as the Governor of the native State of Edward Livingston, are so conspicuous for wisdom and devotion to the cause of public reform.

"May I venture to add a few words, and to say that at such a moment as this it is quite impossible not to feel the deepest interest in the work which you tell me has proved so absorbing to yourself. It is, indeed, your high fortune to lead in the reform all over our country, and no one, watching the drift of the national canvass in your favor, can fail to be full of hope and belief in the future.

"Should you ever come in our neighborhood, I beg that you will not pass us by. It would be a great gratification to me to have the pleasure of receiving you at Montgomery Place.

"Louise Livingston Hunt."

TILDEN TO HON. JOHN BRAGG, MOBILE

"138 Eagle Street, Albany, Aug. 11th, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—Mrs. Van Buren has been so kind as to send me your letter to her. I am glad to renew an acquaintance which, although slight, has not wholly passed from my recollection.

"You mention an inquiry of yours in 1872, whether I had entirely abandoned public life. In the sense of official life, I can scarcely be said ever to have any. Tho' I have given almost half my life to public affairs, it has been as a private citizen. In 1846 I went to the Assembly for a special object, to help Mr. Wright in a crisis of his administration, and retired. In 1872 I went again to the same body to obtain the impeachment and removal of corrupt judges who swayed the administration of justice in the metropolis, and again retired. In 1846, and again in 1867, I served in conventions to revise the State Constitution. That is all in that long period.

"I never destined myself to a public career. I did not come into my present trust until I found myself unable in any other way to have it on the side of reforms I had begun three years before, and to which I had surrendered my professional business, attention to my affairs, and my peace and comfort. I had felt gloomily the decay of all my early ideals of my country, and engaged in the effort to restore them in the city and State in which I live, with no idea of any result to myself except of sacrifice. The logic of events has brought me into my present situation. I have been tempted to do so much to satisfy the curiosity of an old acquaintance, and, as I stop, I do not know but I have provoked more than I have satisfied.

"At any rate, it is a real pleasure to refresh what remains of a set of early associations. I think you were something of a pet of Mr. Van Buren, as I was also. He would have been interested in the course of present events; and puzzled about me, for he told me, near the close of his life, when he had observed me for thirty years, that I was the most unambitious man he had ever known.

"I will send you a pamphlet which will give you some idea of the events in this State to which I have alluded.

"With much esteem, I am very truly yours,

"S. J. Tilden.

"Hon. John Bragg, Mobile, Ala."

SIDNEY WEBSTER TO TILDEN

"Newport, 12 August, 1876.

"Dear Governor,—Since reading your admirable letter of acceptance I have begun two letters to you to say how sincerely I congratulated you, but have destroyed both, chiefly moved thereto by memories of my young days, when I had occasion to know how pestered a candidate for the Presidency is by letters from friends which have no business importance, but which, nevertheless, either consume his precious time by the reading or are turned over to the files. This letter now begun may have a better fate!

"I cannot see how an acceptance-letter could have been framed better adapted to the imperative needs of the situation. Repeal of the law of 1875 was on the platform, and you had to deal with it. 'Contraction' is a red rag to our friends in the West and South, and that must be accepted. And along the Atlantic coast are they who fancy their pecuniary salvation depends on instantly lifting the greenback to an equality with gold, and these could not be lost sight of. And, finally, you had to keep in mind a policy which you could 'work' when you enter the White House next March.

"There was possibly a little peril in departing from the traditional acceptance-letter of fine phrases and loyalty to the platform; but you did wisely to incur that peril, for I do think your letter has practically eliminated the financial issue from the canvass—has prevented an alarming sectional conflict and bad blood between debtors and creditors—and will in the end convince all reasonable people you purpose to 'resume' as rapidly as human power can. And besides this (which may seem a contradiction), I believe you have given a hint to those who are in pecuniary distress and sorrow, and would like inflated business to lift them, as they think, out of their misery, that they had better join hands with the Democracy.

"My idea of the canvass is that the independent voters will soon come to think there is little difference in the purposes of you and Governor Hayes, and the only question is which of you is likely to be most able to carry them out. That, of course, leads to an inquiry into the personal qualities of the two candidates and the temper of the party behind each. On both of those inquiries you ought to win, and you will (excepting in a contingency to which I will presently refer) win. If the independent voters appreciated your mental and moral fibre as I do, they would not doubt as to the first; and as to the second, our party is new in power, ambitious to establish a dynasty, and is extremely amenable to reason and fair-dealing.

"I was a little sorry you said anything of a second term. You cannot accomplish much if it is known you won't have a second, and a good way to treat Hayes would be to suggest that he resign at the end of two years (if elected), or never be inaugurated.

"My forecast of the situation is that 'the machine' will squelch the reformer (but of that we can judge better after the Republican State nominations); that the financial issue will drop to the rear; and the Republican managers will endeavor to force on us the Southern question and obscure the reform issue. I hope our friends will not dally with the Southern question, but say (defiantly and offensively, if need be) that they will give no moral sympathy or support to those who seek to deprive the negroes of any of their political rights or embarrass the free exercise of them. Rightly or wrongly, they are citizens, and we at the North must look upon them as such. Under the recent decisions of the Supreme Court (which are correct) the Federal govt., certainly the President, can do little; but it does seem to me that your moral influence, if judicially manifested in a letter for publication (as it would be by you), would do good in every respect.

"I have written, as you see—currente calmo—and at too great length, for all I wished to express was my appreciation of the wisdom of your acceptance-letter, and my belief in your triumphant victory.

"Faithfully yours,
"Sidney Webster."

PARKE GODWIN TO JOHN BIGELOW

"Cummington, Aug. 28th, '76.

"My dear Bigelow,—I don't know what Mr. Bryant has written, but I presume he has not consented. John and I have both tried to get him to pronounce himself publicly, but he will not, tho' saying that he means to vote for Tilden all the while. I presume he feels himself bound in some way to the E. P. I hope to be in Alb'y on Wednesday or Thursday with Minna!

"Yours very truly,
"Parke Godwin."

F. O. PRINCE TO TILDEN

"Boston, Augt. 28, 1876.

"Dear Mr. Tilden,—I am much concerned touching the matter about which Messrs. Avery and Collins and myself conferred with you a few days at Albany.

"Although the Fenian sympathizers seem disposed to oppose the nomination of Mr. A.,[10] I think their opposition can be controlled; but a certain candidate, who has hitherto expressed himself willing to waive any claims he may have for the nomination in favor of our man, has now changed his mind and wants it.

"We fear he will cause such discord in the convention as to prevent our offering the nomination to Mr. A. upon the terms upon which he consents to accept it. These are, that it should be made with reasonable unanimity.

"We can carry the convention for our candidate, but not, probably, with such general consent as would be required.

"We have had several interviews with the party causing the trouble, and tried our best to impress upon him the importance of nominating Mr. A. for the sake of our cause outside of Massachusetts, but to no effect.

"If we fail in this matter I shall feel that we have lost some of our chances for success.

"Congratulating you upon the auspicious outlook elsewhere,

"I am, very truly, y'rs,
"F. O. Prince."

CHARLES F. ADAMS TO BIGELOW

"Adams Building, 23 Court St., Boston, January 10, 1906.

"My dear Mr. Bigelow,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of yesterday, the 9th.

"The extract you make from the letter of F. O. Prince is quite intelligible to me. I remember all the circumstances.

"Mr. Tilden was very anxious, indeed, that my father should be the Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1876. Mr. F. O. Prince was then chairman, I think, of the Democratic committee; at any rate, he was influential. Mr. Tilden, as you very well know, was never at a loss when it came to handling men.

"Mr. Tilden worked through Mr. Prince to accomplish his end. William A. Gaston, afterwards Governor, desired the nomination. It is he who is referred to as a 'certain candidate.' My father was wholly unwilling to accept the nomination unless it came to him unsought, and with 'reasonable unanimity.' The Irish were strongly opposed to him. Their dislike, or rather personal antipathy, to him dated far back—as far, indeed, as 1840, when the questions relating to the burning of the Ursuline Convent at Charlestown were before the General Court of Massachusetts, of which my father was a member.

"Considerable pressure had to be brought to bear upon Mr. Gaston, who finally consented to withdraw, and did, although not with very good grace, nominate my father at the convention. His nomination, of course, gave a certain prestige to the ticket. As a popular candidate in that election my father did not prove a success. A considerable Irish element refused to vote for him.

"It is rather strange to reflect that all these events occurred now thirty-one years ago—nearly the lifetime of a generation; but it is the Irish opposition to which Mr. Prince refers as the 'Fenian sympathizers.' They proved quite irreconcilable. The whole thing is now ancient history.

"Believe me, etc.,
"Charles F. Adams."

JOHN BIGELOW TO AN INQUIRER

(MR. TILDEN'S WAR RECORD)

"Sept. 1876.

"My dear Sir,—I have an abiding faith that a falsehood never hurts any but those who propagate it. It is also my conviction that no man can pay a much greater homage to another than to deliberately misrepresent him. It is a cowardly confession of weakness and of inferiority. With this sort of homage no public man in this country, so far as I know, has ever been so liberally favored as Mr. Tilden. But two short years ago and there was no American of equal political prominence who could to a greater extent be said to receive the praises of his countrymen, without distinction of party, nor one, perhaps, who had enjoyed fewer of the advantages of adverse criticism. From the moment, however, that he loomed above the horizon as a probable candidate for the Presidency until now, the invention of his political adversaries has been taxed to the utmost to feed whatever appetite remained unsatisfied for calumny and scandal.

"Most of these inventions are so improbable and monstrous that they perish in coming to the birth. As, however, you seem to think the charge of disloyalty during the war has been raised to the dignity of an exception by the recent letter of Gen. Dix, which you enclose, I cheerfully comply with your request to furnish what I trust you and those other Republican friends in Maine, with whom it has been my privilege in times past to co-operate, will regard as a satisfactory answer, not only to the insinuation of Gen. Dix, but to any and every other charge or insinuation that has been or may be made in impeachment of the loyalty or patriotic devotion of Mr. Tilden to the Union, whether before, during, or since the war of the rebellion. To make this perfectly clear I may be obliged to ask your patience, but I will try not to abuse it.

"Let me first dispose of the statement of Gen. Dix that 'Mr. Tilden did not unite in the call for the great Union meeting in New York, after the attack and surrender of Fort Sumter; but he refused to attend it, though urgently solicited to by one of his own political friends.'

"The most charitable construction to be put upon this statement is that the writer had been misinformed; he certainly could have had no personal knowledge upon the subject. It was publicly contradicted when it first appeared in print; it is not true in point of fact; and, if it had been, it would not follow, by any means, that Mr. Tilden did not sympathize in the objects of the meeting.

"Mr. Tilden received a formal written invitation, bearing date the 18th of April, inviting him to act as an officer of the meeting in question. As soon as he found himself at liberty he went to the proper quarter to ascertain what resolutions were to be proposed, and, on being satisfied in regard to them, then and there assented to the use of his name as one of the officers of the meeting. He not only assented to such use of his name, but was himself in actual attendance upon the meeting; and not only did he attend this meeting, but only two days later he attended another meeting of the New York bar, which was called for a similar purpose, and took part in its deliberations.

"Now let me state to you precisely the attitude which Mr. Tilden occupied during the war, and why he manifested so much caution in any action which might possibly influence the course of events at that critical moment.

"It has been my privilege to know Mr. Tilden familiarly, not to say intimately, during his entire public life, embracing a period of nearly or quite forty years. During that time, though we frequently differed about processes, and were often enlisted under opposing political organizations, and though we took widely different views of the fittest way to meet the storm which had been brewing since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it never occurred to me for one moment to suppose there was any man in the country less tolerant than he of the doctrine of secession, or prepared to make greater sacrifices to preserve our Union and the republican institutions which had been bequeathed to us.

"At the comparatively youthful age of eighteen years Mr. Tilden had acquired settled opinions upon and shared in the public discussions of the subject of secession. In a speech at a Union meeting, held in Union Square, at which Gen. Dix presided, and Hamilton Fish, William H. Aspinwall, James Brown, Andrew Carrigan, and many other Republicans were vice-presidents, on the 17th of September, 1866, Mr. Tilden, in vindication of President Johnson, incidentally alluded to his early investigation of the subject of secession, and to the conclusion to which he then arrived. He said:

"'The Constitution of the United States is, by its own terms, declared to be perpetual. The government created by it acts within the sphere of its powers directly upon each individual citizen. No State is authorized, in any contingency, to suspend or obstruct that action, or to exempt any citizen from the obligation to obedience. Any pretended act of nullification or secession whereby such effect is anticipated to be produced is absolutely void. The offence of the individual citizen, violating the lawful authority of the United States, is precisely the same as if no such pretended authority ever existed.'

"On the subject of slavery, Mr. Tilden's opinions were no less fixed. Though never what used to be known as an Abolitionist, neither was he ever the advocate or apologist of servile labor. In the controversy which grew out of our territorial acquisitions from Mexico in 1847, he was for doing everything to secure those Territories the benefit of the social and industrial institutions of the North. In that sense he acted in 1848 in opposing the extension of slavery into any of the free Territories by the act of the Federal government; and again, in 1854, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was under consideration in Congress, and the flames of sectional controversy broke out afresh, Mr. Tilden was open and decided in his opposition to the repeal, in reference to which he stated in a letter to Wm. Kent in 1860:

"'I used all my influence, at whatever sacrifice of relations, against the repeal ... because I thought a theoretical conformity to even a wise system dearly purchased by breaking the tradition of ancient pacification on such a question and between such parties.'

"Accustomed as I was to converse with Mr. Tilden freely upon all public questions, even when our views were most at variance, having always been in the habit of reading everything which I knew to come from his pen, I feel that I may safely challenge anybody to produce a particle of evidence, either oral or in print, of any sympathy on his part either with secession or with slavery, or any evidence that in the course he felt it his duty to pursue he was not actuated by his best judgment as to what was wise and right for the government and for the welfare of his country. After the breach with the South in 1854, I think I am competent to affirm that he had no partisan relations whatever with slave-holding States. In a letter to the Evening Post, written in February, 1863, he speaks of being taunted by Senator Preston King as an object of proscription by the South, and of being asked if he thought his name could pass the Senate of the United States.

"'I answered,' said Mr. Tilden, 'that it was a matter of very little consequence to me whether it could or not; but that it was of great consequence to me that I should do what I thought best for the country.'

"Every act and every expression of his during the war, so far as it has come under my cognizance, was in full accordance with this position, and, what is more, in entire harmony with the whole tenor of his life.

"Better than any person that I knew, he comprehended the irreconcilability of the forces that were arraying themselves against each other in the country. Exaggerating, perhaps, the danger of attempting to rule the country by a sectional party, he deemed it the part of wise statesmanship to postpone as long as possible, in the hope, through the mediatorial offices of time and its inevitable changes, of avoiding a collision.

"No one contested the force of his reasoning on this subject; but they derided his apprehensions of a civil war. So preposterous did they appear to the impassioned multitude in the North, that I remember myself to have been asked by one of his personal friends whether he was quite in his right mind on the subject.

"In 1860, after the failure of the Democratic party at Charleston—though he was then and had been for several years withdrawn from political life—he did not hesitate openly to proclaim his conviction that the dissolution of the Democratic party and the attempt to govern the country by a party like the Republican, having no affiliation in the Southern States, would inevitably result in civil war. He was asked to fill a vacancy in the delegation from New York at the adjourned meeting of the Democratic convention of that year in Baltimore. In that body he made two speeches, in which he portrayed, as an inevitable consequence of a sectional division of the Democratic party, a corresponding division of the States and an armed conflict. These speeches were described by those who heard them as inspired by a solemn sense of patriotic duty and a most vivid perception of impending dangers. After the election of Mr. Lincoln, and when the dangers he had foretold were becoming realities, he took part in several conferences in which Hamilton Fish, the late Charles H. Marshall, the late Daniel Lord, Moses H. Grinnell, the late Wm. B. Astor, Moses Taylor, William B. Duncan, Richard M. Blatchford, A. A. Low, and other gentlemen of more or less prominence participated; and on two of these occasions he made speeches in which he sought to impress upon his hearers a juster sense than was generally entertained of the threatened dangers, and of the fittest means of averting them.

"Earnestly as Mr. Tilden labored to avert the war and to thwart the measures which seemed to him calculated to precipitate it; anxious as he had been to contribute no fresh ingredient of hatred to the seething caldron; when, without any responsibility on his part, the war came, he never for a moment hesitated as to the course he was to pursue. He felt it to be the duty of every citizen to sustain the government in its resistance to territorial dismemberment. To those who thought, as did many then calling themselves Republicans, that on the whole it would be as well to consent to a peaceful separation, Mr. Tilden always answered that peaceful separation was an illusion; that the questions in controversy would be rendered infinitely more difficult by separation, and new ones still more difficult would be created; that, if the antagonized parties could not agree upon peace within the Union, they certainly would not have peace without the Union. They never could agree upon terms of separation, nor could they agree upon the relations to subsist between them after the separation; and, however lamentable might be the consequences, force could be the only arbiter of their differences.

"Though Mr. Tilden was opposed to any illusory concessions to the spirit of disunion; though he was satisfied, after the attack on Fort Sumter, that the differences between the two sections could only be settled by the last argument of kings; and though he was disposed to do everything in his power to make that argument as effective and decisive as possible—his co-operation with the administration of President Lincoln was qualified by a fixed difference of opinion upon several points.

"This opinion was in accord with the view Mr. Tilden had frequently expressed on other occasions, and was also in accord with the opinion which he subsequently gave when his advice was solicited by the then Secretary of War. The week preceding and the week following Mr. Stanton's assuming the duties of Secretary of War, and at his invitation, Mr. Tilden had frequent conferences with him, at the first of which he is reported to me to have said in substance: 'You have no right to expect a great military genius to come to your assistance. The whole human race have been able to furnish such men only once in a century or two; you can only count on the average military talent; you have three times the available population and perhaps nine times the industrial resources of your antagonist; though you occupy the exterior line, you have an immense advantage in the superior capacity of your railways to move men and supplies. What you have to do is to make your advantages available; you must make your combinations so as to concentrate your forces and organize ample reserves to be ready to precipitate them on critical points. In the probable absence of military genius you must rely on overwhelming numbers, wisely concentrated.' Mr. Stanton appeared to adopt these views, but unhappily they did not prevail in the councils of the government.

"A year and a half later, when Mr. Tilden, accompanied by ex-Gov. Morgan, visited Washington for the purpose of securing greater harmony of action between the Federal and State government, Mr. Stanton, in a conversation with Mr. Tilden, referred to this advice, and added: 'I beg you to remember I always agreed with you.' I refer the more freely to the deference which Mr. Stanton testified to Mr. Tilden's judgment in these matters, because it is known not only to the Hon. Peter H. Watson, then Assistant Secretary of War, but to some, at least, of the members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet who are now living.

"On the subject of the finances, an element so vital to the successful prosecution of a war, Mr. Tilden's views were at variance with those adopted by the administration; he had more faith in the people, in their readiness to bear the burdens and make the sacrifices which the occasion required, than was manifested by the authorities at Washington. Before their financial policy was fully determined upon he advised that the money for carrying on the war should be chiefly drawn from loans to be supplemented by taxes, and no more Treasury notes not bearing interest issued than were barely necessary to supply the new uses created by the government in its own payments. He was of the opinion that if these measures were promptly adopted, so that the supply should keep pace with the wants of the government, the war might be carried on without any serious embarrassment, without any exorbitant inflation of prices, and without any extreme depreciation of the government bonds. In discussing the financial situation of our own State in his first message to the Legislature in 1875, Gov. Tilden briefly restated the views which he then entertained and expressed upon this subject.

"Though Mr. Tilden foresaw the disastrous consequences of the policy which prevailed at Washington, the wild inflation of prices, the ruinous depreciation of government securities, the extravagant premium on gold, and the certainty that the continuation of that policy would lead, as it has done, to incalculable disaster; and believing, as he did, that it might even endanger the ability of the government to continue the war, he rigorously abstained from any public discussion of them that might tend to create the discredit which he apprehended, and restricted himself to private remonstrances with the more influential friends of the administration.

"While doing all he could to counteract what he deemed the errors of the government, both in the management of the war and of the finances, he was determined neither to be made responsible for nor to be compromised by either. His attitude throughout that pregnant period of our history was, so far as possible for a private citizen holding no official or even active relations with any political party, that of patriotic constitutional opposition to supposed errors of administrative policy, openly co-operating with all the measures of the government of which he approved, and privately discouraging those of which he disapproved.

"At the same time he said, in a speech:

"'That in a time of war we could not deal with our government, although disapproving of its policy, without more reserve than was necessary in debating an administrative question during a period of peace; that the reason was that, if we should paralyze the arm of our own government, we yet could not stay the arm of the public enemy striking at us through it; that it was this peculiarity which had sometimes caused minorities to be suppressed in the presence of public danger, and made such periods perilous to civil liberty.'

"Mr. Tilden was more solicitous than almost any other prominent man in the country to avert the war, because he saw more clearly than most men the grave proportions it was likely to assume; and when it broke out he did not associate himself publicly with the party which he had thought had unwisely precipitated it, because he could not entirely approve of the methods by which they were conducting it. I have yet to see one particle of authentic evidence that, when the war had become inevitable, Mr. Tilden did not do everything that might have been reasonably expected of him to make all the resources of the country available for its vigorous and successful prosecution. Happily my own convictions on this point are confirmed by abundant testimony, some of which it may be a satisfaction to your friends that I recapitulate:

"On the occasion of presenting a stand of colors to the Thirty-seventh Regiment of New York State Volunteers on the 22d of June, 1861, Mr. Tilden was among the speakers, 'and,' says John T. Agnew, who was also present and took part in the ceremony, 'made a stirring appeal to the officers and men of the regiment; a speech not excelled in patriotism by any public speaker during the war of the rebellion.'

"At even an earlier period Mr. Tilden made a journey to Washington, at the request of Brig.-Gen. Ewing, in the especial interest of the Seventy-ninth Regiment of Highlanders.

"The Hon. J. D. Caton, formerly Chief-Justice of the State of Illinois, and the bosom friend of President Lincoln, in a recent letter to the Hon. Mr. Hewitt, which has already been published, says that during the war of the rebellion he had several interviews with Gov. Tilden on the subject of the war, and ever found him ardent and earnest in its support.

"The Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, who, during the war, was in constant intercourse with the War Department, and much depended upon by its chief for his advice at the period, was also in almost daily intercourse with Mr. Tilden. In a recent speech in Congress, which has already become famous, he indignantly repelled the idea that Mr. Tilden ever manifested any sympathy with disunion.

"In October, 1862, Mr. Tilden prepared, in behalf of the Democratic party, a declaration of its adhesion to the Union, and of the war to preserve it. This declaration was made in substance as written, and in so authentic and authoritative a form as to produce a profound popular impression, both in the South as well as in the North. I have examined the manuscript, which has fortunately been preserved, and, with a perfect familiarity with the Governor's handwriting, have no difficulty in verifying its authenticity.

"In 1864, Mr. Tilden, though absorbed by his profession and holding no relations with the public not shared by any private citizen, found himself appointed a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago. He deemed it his duty to attend. In the delegation he made a speech, the substance of which was briefly reported. The points of it were:

"1. Opposition to any declaration in favor of an armistice.

"2. He insisted that the adjustment of the controversy pending between the North and the South, on any other basis than the restoration of the Union, was manifestly impossible.

"At this convention Mr. Tilden used all his influence to resist, though ineffectually, the adoption of certain expressions in the platform that might have a tendency to discourage the further prosecution of the war; he always refused to acquiesce in them, and subsequently sent a message to Gen. McClellan, the nominee of the convention, urging him to disregard them in his letter of acceptance.

"To these evidences of Mr. Tilden's earnestness in the prosecution of the war, let me add one more, which is perhaps more conclusive than all the rest.

"All the members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet were perfectly cognizant of his position during the war, and were in the habit of soliciting his advice; and two of the three who still survive, and with whom Mr. Lincoln had the most intimate and durable relations, are now publicly advocating his election to the Presidency.

"I wish you to realize, as I do, how utterly wanton and shameless is this attempt to associate Mr. Tilden's name with the enemies of his government, and how desperate must be any cause which has to rely upon such methods for success.

"As it seemed to be my duty as a journalist to oppose and often to criticise the course pursued by Mr. Tilden, both before and during the war, I feel it but simple justice to him to bear this testimony to the honorable and patriotic motives with which I never doubted him to be animated.

"John Bigelow.

"Highland Falls, Orange County, New York."

NELSON J. WATERBURY TO TILDEN

"No. 152 Broadway, New York, Sept. 1, 1876.

"Gov. Tilden.

"Dear Sir,—I wish to direct your attention to four acts of Kelly at Saratoga hostile to our success—not for effect upon him, but that they may enter into your mind in respect to action affecting the cause:

"1. He showed disregard of success in placing himself at the head of the electoral ticket.

"2. He tried to defeat the party by his attack upon the Liberal Republicans.

"3. He made a deadly effort to foreclose success by forcing Potter.

"4. He never, during the whole convention, said a word to encourage the Presidential canvass.

"Yours truly,
"Nelson J. Waterbury."

SAMUEL HAND[11] TO TILDEN

"Confidential.

"Saturday Evening, Sept. 9th, 1876.

"My dear Governor,—I had supposed, after what was said at Saratoga, Tuesday and Wednesday, that our friends tacitly agreed with me that the idea of bringing my name forward for Governor should not be seriously entertained, and therefore I did not think it necessary or becoming to take any further steps about. But I learn, on my return from the North, from Mr. Manning and others, that the project is assuming definite shape and may, unless at once ended, be carried to a nomination.

"I appreciate how high the office is, and of what importance and conspicuousness, and am sensible how much it is beyond anything to which I could at present naturally aspire. I feel gratified that I should have been thought of at all in connection with so great a trust, and am especially proud that you should have deemed me fit successor.

"The more I reflect, however, the more convinced I am that it will not do.

"I feel certain that under the present circumstances my nomination would be a mistake, and know that it might be fatal.

"Aside from these public considerations, I have private reasons which you would admit sufficient, if I could trouble you with them, to prevent my acceptance of the nomination. I should deeply regret it if these, in fact, interfered with the success of our party, but I am sure such is not the case. I regard them as insuperable, and I have written Mr. Manning a note, of which he can make public use, declining to have my name used at the convention.

"I write this that you may first and at the earliest moment know of my conclusion.

"Yours with the greatest respect,
"Samuel Hand."

THE SHERIFF OF NEW YORK CITY TO TILDEN

"Sheriff's Office, City and County of New York,
"September 14, 1876.

"To his Excellency Samuel J. Tilden,
"Governor of the State of New York:

"The recent publications in the newspapers of the capture of William M. Tweed, at Vigo, in Spain, are confirmed by a private telegram received by me.

"There are several indictments for forgery, found by the Grand Jury of this county, against said Tweed, which were untried at the time of his escape on the 4th day of December last.

"He was also at that time in my custody, under an order of arrest, issued in a suit commenced against him by the people of the State of New York, in which a judgment has since been perfected in an amount over $6,000,000, the execution on which has been returned wholly unsatisfied.

"It is said that the government of Spain are willing to surrender said Tweed to the authorities of this county.

"May I ask you to present the subject to the government of the United States, so that prompt and efficient measures may be taken to secure his surrender?

"I remain,
"Your obdt. Servant,
"Wm. C. Connor,
"Sheriff."

GOVERNOR TILDEN TO HAMILTON FISH

(APPLICATION FOR ARREST OF WM. M. TWEED, A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE)

"City of New York, Sept. 19th, 1876.

"Sir,—I transmit herewith for the use of your department a copy of the official application made to me by the Sheriff of the City and County of New York concerning the case of William M. Tweed, a fugitive from the justice of this State, who is understood to be at this time held in custody as such at Vigo by the Spanish government.

"Owing to my being in this city, this document did not come to my knowledge until late yesterday, and, although advised that the Attorney-General of this State has already addressed you to the same effect, I deem it proper now to superadd my earnest request that the government of the United States may employ its efficient and perfectly adequate powers to induce a delivery of this great criminal into the hands of the sheriff at this city.

"Yours respectfully,
"(Sd.) Samuel J. Tilden,
"Governor of the State of New York.

"Hon. Hamilton Fish,
"Secretary of State of the United States."

L. P. WALKER TO TILDEN

"New York, Sept. 19, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—As a Southern man, whose interest in your election is greater than your own, because it involves the right to live, I beg permission to make a single suggestion, the result of general intercourse here for the last ten days with gentlemen from all sections of the country. The politicians, as a rule, are not overzealous for your success. Could they separate their fate from yours this feeling would be openly manifested. Your self-poise offends their vanity, and they are controlled where they think they should direct. It was the confidence of the people in this phase of your character, as much, even, as the spirit of reform, that secured you the nomination at St. Louis. It certainly greatly influenced my action. Still, I think, if you will allow me to say it, it might be proper for you to recognize and act upon certain suggestions that have been made with reference to the campaign in Indiana. Your election may not depend upon the result in that State in October, but it will be so urged and considered generally, and I am very sure that you have not overlooked this possibility. The suggestion I wish to make is that you would in some proper way manifest such interest in that election as to satisfy your friends in that State and elsewhere that you appreciate the importance of carrying that State in October. My excuse for this letter is the fact, known to you, that I was an original Tilden man, and, I will add, I have seen no reason to regret it.

"I shall leave to-day for Alabama, carrying with me the conviction that your election is almost an assured fact. God grant it. With high respect, yours very truly,

"L. P. Walker."

ACTING SECRETARY OF STATE TO GOVERNOR TILDEN

"Department of State, Washington,
21st September, 1876.

"To his Excellency Samuel J. Tilden,
Governor of the State of New York, Albany.

"Sir,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter from New York of the 19th inst., accompanied by a copy of one addressed to you by the Sheriff of the City and County of New York, concerning the case of William M. Tweed, a fugitive from the justice of that State. In reply, I have to assure you that it may not be doubted that if the person adverted to should come into custody of authorities of this government he will be received for the purpose of being transferred to the proper authorities of New York, agreeably to your Excellency's request.

"I am, Your Excellency's Obedient Servant,
"(Sd.) W. Hunter,
"Acting Secretary."

W. C. BRYANT TO JOHN BIGELOW

"Cummington, Massachusetts, September 21st, 1876.

"Dear Bigelow,—The attacks on the personal character of Mr. Tilden are shameful. There was no need of asking me to see that a fair and just treatment of his statement in refutation of the story about the income tax should be accorded to him in the Evening Post. I wrote to Mr. Sperry yesterday on the subject, telling him that I thought that the paper should express as great indignation at the slander, as soon as its refutation should be made public, as if the Republican candidate had been the subject of it. I only wish that the opportunity for such an expression had been given a little earlier.

"Yours very truly,
"W. C. Bryant."

CHARLES O'CONOR TO TILDEN

"New York, Sept. 22d, 1876.

"To his Excellency Samuel J. Tilden,
"Governor of the State of New York.

"Sir,—It is probable that William M. Tweed, a noted delinquent, who went abroad many months since, will be tendered to the custody of the Sheriff of the City and County of New York within a few days.

"At the time of his departure the same sheriff held him in formal custody under an order of arrest in a civil action requiring bail in $3,000,000. Since his departure judgment has been recovered against him in that action at the suit of the State to an amount exceeding $6,000,000.

"For his negligence in permitting the escape there was, in fact, no ordinary civil remedy against the sheriff except a very trivial and inadequate one on his official bond. The proper steps for securing this measure of redress have been pursued with all proper diligence; and, until this time, there did not seem to be any utility in prosecuting any other line of action. But as Tweed may be again in custody at an early period, it has now become important to consider what course should be adopted for the purpose of rendering that custody safe and secure. As already stated, the remedies allowed by law against the delinquent custodian who allows his prisoner to escape are totally inadequate. Consequently, should Tweed be again in legal custody, there will be no effective security for his detention to meet the awards of civil and criminal justice, except what may be afforded by the personal and official fidelity and vigilance of the custodian.

"Your predecessor, Governor John A. Dix, made a public and official remonstrance against the palpable favoritism displayed towards this person in his then existing custody as a prisoner in the Penitentiary. During the same year the Sheriff of the City and County of New York, by gross negligence, suffered the escape of Genet, a convict of the same general class as Tweed.

"With these circumstances to excite vigilance, the present sheriff nevertheless allowed Tweed to enjoy a sort of free custody, precisely similar to that which had been accorded to Genet; and Tweed, availing himself of the facility, left the State.

"Would it be proper, on Tweed's return, to place him in charge of the same officer? I think you will answer this question in the negative.

"The Constitution, arts. 10, secs. 1 and 5, together with the act of 1848, Edmonds Statutes, vol. 3, p. 330, affords to you as Chief Executive the means of meeting the exigency. You can, on brief notice to him, remove the present sheriff and appoint a perfectly reliable custodian to receive the prisoner.

"Perhaps all the office I ought to assume in this matter properly ends here. But, when one acts at all in an important affair, he ought to do all that his best judgment dictates towards accomplishing the object in view.

"The history of Tweed's prosecutions, imprisonments, judicial releases, and ultimate deliverance from custody is well known to you and the public. To it I refer for a justification of my further remarks.

"The person whom you may appoint to fill the place made vacant by a removal of the present sheriff can hold only until the end of the present year. A new sheriff, elected by the people, with full notice of their needs in November next, will enter on his duties on the 1st of January, 1877. For the short term of about three months created by the removal, I take leave to recommend the appointment of General Francis C. Barlow. His persistent hostility to official swindlers, and his zealous activity in prosecuting Tweed to conviction, are well known to you. Tweed would not escape from his hands. I have consulted no one on this subject, nor have I any knowledge that General Barlow would accept the office. Should he do so, you will have well performed your duty; and, in any event, your tender of the appointment will effectually refute all assertions that you owe Tweed favor, or fear his disclosures.

"Yours, &c.,
"Ch. O'Conor."

WM. M. TWEED PLACED AT THE DISPOSAL OF THE NEW YORK AUTHORITIES

"Department of State, Washington, Oct. 10, 1876.

"To his Excellency Samuel J. Tilden,
"Governor of the State of New York.

"Sir,—Referring to the letter which your Excellency addressed to me from the city of New York on the 19th Septr. last, with reference to the case of William M. Tweed, at that time understood to be held in custody by the Spanish government, and to the acknowledgment of that letter by the Acting Secretary of State on the 21st ultimo, I have the honor to state that in the month of July last there were received in this department duly authenticated copies of two indictments, found in the Court of General Sessions for the city and county of New York, against William M. Tweed and others for forgery and other offences.

"In the month of June last a person believed to be Tweed, but passing under the name of John Secor, had clandestinely landed on the island of Cuba, and the authorities of that island, with the sanctions of the Spanish government at Madrid, purposed to deliver him to the United States, but he escaped from the island on or about the 27th day of July, and sailed for a port in Spain.

"The Captain-General of Cuba despatched a steamer in pursuit, which failed to intercept his flight, and on his arrival at Vigo he was immediately arrested and placed in confinement.

"Instead of returning him to Cuba, the Spanish government decided to deliver him directly to the United States, and placed him on board the U. S. steamer Franklin, which left the port of Vigo on or about the 28th day of September with Tweed, alias Secor, on board, under orders to sail for the port of New York, where she may be expected to arrive some time from the 20th to the last of this month. After the news of the arrest in Spain became known, the sheriff of the city and county of New York also addressed me a letter, stating that he had process against Tweed, requiring the custody of his person in the county of New York, from which he escaped in December last, and requesting such action on the part of the government as will secure his return to answer the behest of the process in his hands, and offering to bear all the necessary expenses of conveying him to New York.

"The uncertainty at that time attending a surrender by the Spanish government prevented any definite reply to the sheriff, or any more positive answer on the subject than that which was addressed to you on the 21st September.

"But now, as the person referred to has been actually delivered by the Spanish government to the government of the United States, and as no doubt seems to exist that this person, calling himself Secor, is William M. Tweed, the President, in pursuance of the intention with which he decided to receive him, deems it proper to place him at the disposal of the authority of the State of New York, and instructs me for that purpose to inform your Excellency, as Governor of the State, that on the arrival of the Franklin orders will be given to the naval officers for the delivery of Tweed into the custody of the sheriff of the city and county of New York, such being the disposition theretofore requested by you in your letter.

"Inasmuch as such orders must necessarily pass through the proper channels of the Navy Department and should be explicit, and in New York awaiting the arrival of the steamer, to be executed immediately upon such arrival, I venture to request the earliest possible expression of any particulars or details which you may desire carried out to insure the proper transfer of the custody of this person into the hands of the authorities of New York, so that the instructions may be in the proper hands by the 20th of this month; and I venture to suggest that it may greatly tend to facilitate the matter if no public information be given as to the details of the matter.

"I have the honor to be,
"Your Excellency's obedient Servant,
"Hamilton Fish."

HORATIO SEYMOUR TO GOV. TILDEN

"Utica, October 25, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—I have reason to know that your opponents in and out of the party count upon the large towns to defeat you. They rely upon distress among Democrats, hard times, and the use of money. The word 'reform' is not popular with working-men. To them it means less money spent and less work. Most of these men are Catholics. You will see that the Republicans have dropped the school question. I think it important that some quiet, judicious person should visit the large towns and see the leading Irishmen and call their minds back to the hostility of Hayes and the Republicans to their nationality and religion. There is danger of a loss of vote among the class.

"I am still out of health, and I write with difficulty. I gain slowly, but I do not expect to enjoy hereafter full health and vigor.

I am truly yours, &c.,
"Horatio Seymour."

C. B. SMITH TO TILDEN

"Richmond, Ind., Oct. 27th, 1876.

"My dear old Classmate,—Permit me to thank you for your letter on the 'rebel claims.' It is worthy of you, and that is saying, in the estimation of all your old friends, all that can be said in its praise. It is indeed noble and strong, while it crushes with the force of fate. It spikes the last gun of the administration. It is indeed a triumph and a victory.

"We are all proud of you, and look forward with joyful and confident anticipations of soon seeing you the Chief Magistrate of this great nation. Your mission is a great and noble one, but you are equal to every possible condition and emergency. I firmly believe this era has raised you up to bring the nation back to its old historic thought respecting honesty and economy, and make it fit for honest men to live in.

"Pardon my familiarity and earnestness, for the feelings of boyhood are sure to control me when writing to or of a classmate.

"Yours truly,
"C. B. Smith."

R. D. RICE TO S. J. TILDEN

"Confidential.

"Portland, Oct. 27, '76.

"Hon. S. J. Tilden.

"Dear Sir,—As I was just ready to leave N. York last evening, some facts came to my knowledge of which it may be well for our friends to be appraised (in case they are not already) as to the then last line of policy of our opponents. You are aware that Z. Chandler and Tyner were both in the city and at the wheel. Your State is substantially abandoned by them; the fight is, of course, to be kept up there nominally, at least. The real fight is to be made in the Carolinas, Louisiana, Florida, etc., in the South, and some of the doubtful States in the North and N. West, including Indiana. To carry these States by the commercial element in each has been fully resolved, and the means put in requisition for that purpose to an extent, especially in Ind., exceeding the amounts used in the last election is, I think, beyond a doubt. Larger hopes are entertained from the greenback element. They must contest this battle to the last, however desperate it appear. Excuse this hasty note. Our people here are in ecstasies over your letter, and in the best of spirits.

Yours Truly,
"R. D. Rice."

L. W. WALKER TO GOVERNOR TILDEN

(APPROVING GOVERNOR'S LETTER ON REBEL CLAIMS)

"Huntsville, Ala., Oct. 27th, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—I have read with sincere pleasure and approval your letter of the 24th inst. to the chairman of the national Democratic committee. It states only the literal truth as to the South. I think I know as well as any one the sentiments of the people of this State, and I am sure there is not a man, woman, or child in it who entertains the idea that the government could, would, or should pay for the loss of slaves, or for the loss of any other property during the war, belonging to persons who were engaged in, or sympathized with, what has been judicially designated the rebellion.

"The South absolutely surrendered at Appomattox the whole sectional past, and now looks alone, in perfect good faith, to a common American future.

"In this campaign of unparalleled profligacy waged by the Republicans, no greater calumny has been uttered against the people of the South, and against the possibilities of your administration, should you be elected President, than this charge, first made noticeable, not by the character, but by the ability and official position, of Mr. Blaine, the unanswered license of whose statements, after the passions incident to the election shall have subsided, must shock the conscience of the whole nation, and consign him to immortal infamy.

"With sincere regards, your very truly,
"L. W. Walker."

C. K. FOOTE TO S. J. TILDEN

"Mobile, Nov. 2, 1876.

"To his Excellency Samuel J. Tilden,
"Governor of the State of New York.

"Sir,—Your letter of 24th ult., in reply to the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, relative to the 14th amendment and 'rebel debts,' is no doubt a good campaign card, and well played at this particular time in check of the clamor and misrepresentations, and its use and effect in the pending Presidential election.

"I beg to assure you of an abiding confidence in your election to the Chief Executive office of our government, and to promote this great 'reform' the intelligence, the property, and the integrity of the South is solid and zealous in this great work, believing and trusting in your known and tried integrity to the principles of justice and right to all.

"In the matter of the 'cotton tax,' from June, 1865, to September, 1868, after peace was restored and promised, it was not an element of the 'war,' nor was it 'an incident to military operations for maintaining its existence.' The compiled record of H. H. Smith, Esqr., clerk of the committee on war claims of the 43d Congress, may be official facts, and are no doubt the truth, so far as the guilty persons are concerned that have rendered infamous and odious the offices they have prostituted to embezzlements, thefts, and wickedness. The facts connected with that 'cotton tax' have not come to the surface. Those that have made haste to buy and sell, and to bribe and lobby their way through a most foul administration, are not the standard or measure for honest claimants that have patiently waited, with the evidence of the money paid into the United States Treasury, against the day of 'reform' and the return to honesty, and a just discrimination on the merits and facts of the case; nor should it be ruthlessly set aside without a fair investigation and examination by discreet, honest men.

"Your 'veto' and your integrity will be accepted together, trusting in the latter all the time, and the use of the former on all suitable occasions, and for the good of the nation.

"With sentiments of highest esteem and admiration, I am,

"Respectfully yours,
"C. K Foote."

THE ELECTION OF 1876

On the 7th of November, 1876, the people of the State of New York, and the people of the United States, expressed their preferences among the several Presidential candidates to succeed President Grant, as follows, according to the Albany Evening Journal Almanac:

It is to be remarked that Tilden's vote was larger than any of the State or local candidates', and was vastly larger than had ever been cast for any other man.

JUST WHAT CHANDLER DID, AND HOW THE PLAN WAS LAID TO DEFEAT THE POPULAR CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT

[From the New York "Times" of June 15, 1887.]

"The New York Sun, after three days of hard labor, has finally produced a curious reply to the Times's comments upon Mr. William E. Chandler's connection with the election of 1876. The best answer to its series of misrepresentations will be found in the following statement of what did actually occur at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on the morning of Nov. 8 of that year.

"As stated on Saturday last in the Times, a gentleman entered the Fifth Avenue Hotel at the Twenty-third Street door about 6.30 o'clock in the morning, possibly a little before that hour. He went at once to the rooms of the national committee and found them occupied only by a number of servants in the hotel, who were engaged in cleaning and setting the rooms to rights. He was informed that everybody had gone home or to bed a couple of hours before. He left the room and started for the clerk's desk to ascertain the number of Mr. Zachariah Chandler's room. While opening the first door in the direction of the reading-room, on his way to the office of the hotel, he came in collision with a small man, wearing an immense pair of goggles, his hat drawn down over his ears, a great-coat with a heavy military coat, and carrying a grip-sack and a newspaper in his hand. The newspaper was the New York Tribune. The gentleman did not recognize the stranger, but the stranger recognized the gentleman immediately. The stranger cried out: 'Why, Mr. Blank, is that you?' The gentleman knew the voice, and said: 'Is that you, Mr. Chandler?' He answered: 'Yes, I have just arrived from New Hampshire by train. D—n the men who brought this disaster upon the Republican party.' The gentleman replied: 'The Republican party has sustained no disaster. If you will only keep your heads up here, there is no question of the election of President Hayes. He has been fairly and honestly elected.'

"Chandler replied: 'Look at this paper.' The answer was that the paper had not the news, and the gentleman began to give Mr. Chandler an idea of the situation, when Chandler interrupted him, saying: 'I have just got the key to my room; come up-stairs.' Upon entering the room, Mr. Chandler placed his grip-sack in the corner, took off his overcoat, sat down in a chair—the gentleman taking the only other one in the room—and Chandler said: 'Now go ahead.' The visitor went over the ground carefully, State by State, from Maine to Oregon, counting the electoral vote in each State, and showing the vote as it was finally counted for Hayes and Tilden. After he had finished, William E. Chandler said: 'Well, what do you think should be done?' The gentleman replied:

"'Telegraph immediately to leading Republicans, men in authority, in South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, California, Oregon, and Nevada.' Mr. Chandler made no direct reply to this proposition, but said:

"'We must go and see Zach.'

"The gentleman said:

"'Do you know the number of his room?' William E. Chandler replied:

"'Yes, I know where it is.' To which the gentleman answered:

"'If you don't know exactly, I'd better go to the office and get the number; I was going there when I met you.' Chandler said: 'No, I know where it is,' and led the way around to the Twenty-fourth Street side of the hotel. After proceeding a short distance down the corridor he looked up at the number over a door and said: 'This is Chandler's room.' Then he began to knock and kick at the door. The noise at once awakened the inmate, and there proceeded from the room a series of shrill screams and shrieks, followed by an affrightened female voice crying out: 'What do you want? Go away; I'm a lone woman.' Chandler immediately darted down the corridor. The gentleman said: "See here, if you don't know the number of the room we'd better go immediately down to the office and get it; we don't want anything more of this kind." Chandler insisted that he would be right the next time, however, and walking still further down the corridor he selected a room about four doors below the first one he had attacked. The response to his knock was immediate and not uncertain. There was no scream in this case, but the inmate shouted in angry tones: 'Get out; I'm a lady. Why do you disturb me at this hour. Go right away, or I will call the servants.' Chandler then remarked: 'I guess I'll have to go down to the office.' Whereupon he darted down-stairs, ascertained the number of Zachariah Chandler's room, which was between those of the two ladies whom he had thus unceremoniously aroused, and he began kicking and knocking at the door, of the right room in this case, and did so for a little time without effect. The gentleman then joined with him in thumping and kicking the door, remarking: 'We'll wake up the whole house and will have the police down on us if we don't look out,' when in a moment came the well-recognized voice from the inside, 'Who's there?' to which William E. Chandler replied: 'It's me, Chandler; open the door, quick.' The door was shortly opened, and Mr. Zachariah Chandler was discovered standing in his nightdress. Mr. William E. Chandler then said, closing the door: "Here is a gentleman who has more news than you have, and he has some suggestions to make.' To which Zach Chandler replied: 'Yes, I know him. What is it?' With this he seated himself on the edge of his bed. William E. Chandler then said: 'The gentleman will tell you the story himself. He understands the case better than I do.'

"The gentleman then went over the details of the election, and added the recommendations he had made to William E. Chandler.

"The chairman of the national committee laid down and said: 'Very well, go ahead and do what you think necessary.' The two visitors left the room and went to the telegraph office in the hotel. It was just five minutes before seven by the hotel clock when they arrived there. The telegraph office was not open, and they were informed that it would not be open until 8, possibly later. The two men stood by the receiver's shelf at the little telegraph inclosure, Chandler with his back to the door opening towards Twenty-third Street entrance. The other gentleman faced Chandler, leaning on the shelf, with his back to the door leading into the great hall of the hotel. The only other persons in the room were a few servants and a clerk in the newsstand. The gentleman said: 'I'll have to take these messages to the main office of the Western Union.' Chandler called a servant and directed him to have a carriage brought to the Twenty-third Street entrance. Then Chandler said: 'Well, what do you want to do?' The gentleman replied: 'We'll first telegraph to Gov. Chamberlain, of South Carolina.' The gentleman dictated the despatch, which appeared in the Sun, and which was as follows:

"'To D. H. Chamberlain, Columbia, S. C.:

"'Hayes is elected if we have carried South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. Can you hold your State? Answer immediately.'

"Mr. Chandler took the despatch in shorthand, as dictated. The gentleman then proposed to send a similar despatch to S. B. Conover, of Florida. Mr. William E. Chandler immediately objected, saying that Conover was as much of a Democrat as he was a Republican, and would probably show the despatch to the Democrats as early as he would to any Republican in town. At any rate, the Democrats would get it first. The gentleman remarked:

"'Have you any other proposition to make, or have you any one in your mind whom it would be safer or better to address?' Mr. William E. Chandler scratched his ear with his pencil, and after a moment's consideration said he had not. The gentleman then said it was imperative that some one should be woke up down there, and if Mr. Chandler could think of no one else it was essential to telegraph to Conover. Mr. Chandler hesitated for an instant, and said: 'Well, I suppose we must; something has to be done.' The gentleman accordingly dictated to Chandler the Conover despatch. Here it is:

"'To S. B. Conover, Tallahassee, Fla.:

"'The Presidential election depends on the vote of Florida, and the Democrats will try and wrest it from us. Watch it and hasten returns. Answer immediately.'

"The gentleman then suggested S. B. Packard as the proper person to address in Louisiana, and the Packard despatch was dictated to, and taken down by, William E. Chandler in shorthand:

"'To S. B. Packard, New Orleans, La.:

"'The Presidential election depends on the vote of Louisiana. The Democrats will try to wrest it from you. Watch it and hasten returns. Answer immediately.'

"The gentleman then asked: 'To whom shall we send in Oregon?' Mr. Chandler said: 'John H. Mitchell.' The Oregon despatch was then dictated:

"'To John H. Mitchell, Portland, Oregon:

"'Without Oregon Hayes defeated. Don't be defrauded. Hasten returns. Answer.'

"The gentleman suggested that George C. Gorham, of San Francisco, was the proper man to receive a telegram. Chandler at once assented. Then the gentleman suggested that probably he might be able to do something with Nevada and Oregon, and a despatch something as follows was prepared:

"'To George C. Gorham, San Francisco, Cal.:

"'The Presidential election depends on our having both Nevada and Oregon, which are reported for Hayes. Telegraph both those States immediately. Watch them and hurry results. Answer immediately.

"'W. E. Chandler,
"'Fifth Avenue Hotel.'

"Chandler says, in his testimony before the Potter committee, that he found the Gorham despatch among some papers. This happened in this way: After the despatch had been written some verbal changes in it were suggested. Mr. Chandler found some trouble in making them on the telegraph blank, and the gentleman who dictated the despatch remarked: 'You'd better write that despatch over again; you'll save time.' Chandler did so, and the original despatch got into his pocket with the rest of his papers.

"William E. Chandler signed with his own name the despatches to Oregon and to Gorham, of San Francisco. To the despatches sent to Conover, Packard, and Chamberlain the narrator's recollection is he signed the name of Zachariah Chandler. William E. Chandler at once took telegraph blanks and wrote from his stenographic notes the five despatches above printed, the gentleman standing by him taking every despatch as he finished it and carefully reading it. When the last despatch was transcribed, Chandler handed it over to the gentleman and said: 'Are they all right?' He was informed that they were. Chandler immediately started to open the door from the reading-room to the Twenty-third Street entrance that the gentleman might make a hasty exit, but Chandler made a bungling job of it; finally the two reached the outer door. The gentleman jumped into the carriage there waiting and told the driver to get to the main office of the Western Union with all possible speed. Probably the quickest time ever made by a carriage from the Fifth Avenue Hotel to the Western Union was made that morning. Arriving at the Western Union office the gentleman went to the receiver's desk and handed in the despatches. The receiver, who knew the gentleman very well, said: 'Good-morning.' The gentleman said: 'Get these despatches off as quickly as possible, and charge the Republican National Committee.' The receiver replied: 'The National Committee has no account here, and we can't do it. Why not charge them to the New York Times account?' The gentleman replied, 'All right,' and the receiver immediately handed them back to him to be countersigned. This was promptly done, the gentleman returned to his carriage and was driven back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. There was still nobody stirring connected with the National Committee.

"And now a few extracts, which the Sun failed to discover in the Potter committee's report, are pertinent. First, in regard to the telegram to George C. Gorham, in San Francisco, Mr. Chandler testified:

"'I found among those papers this copy of a telegram which I sent from the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I think before daylight on the morning of Nov. 8. It bears date of the 7th of November, but it was really written and sent on the morning of the 8th.'

"Immediately after this comes the following sentence, bear in mind, from William E. Chandler's testimony before the Potter committee:

"'The remaining copies are in shorthand, and I will read them.'

"If these messages were not dictated to Mr. William E. Chandler, why should he have written them in shorthand? When time was so precious, is it to be believed that William E. Chandler wrote his own messages first in shorthand and then transcribed them? Further down on the same page (526) of the testimony occurs the following:

"'This paper [handing to the chairman a paper from which he had read] is worn from carrying it in the pocket.'

"The chairman: 'Who made these stenographic marks?'

"The witness: 'Those are my own. I learned to write shorthand many years ago.'

"It is perfectly clear from this (Chandler's own testimony) that these messages were dictated to Chandler by another person. They were so dictated exactly as described in the foregoing narrative. The New York Times has never to this day been reimbursed by the National Committee or William E. Chandler, nor has William E. Chandler or any national committee ever offered to pay the Times for the telegraph tolls or for any of the expenses incurred on that morning.

"Mr. Chandler's efforts in behalf of the grand old Republican party on the morning of Nov. 8, 1876, may therefore be briefly summarized as follows:

"First.—He frightened two lone women nearly out of their wits.

"Second.—He finally discovered the number of Zachariah Chandler's room.

"Third.—He acted as an amanuensis for a gentleman who dictated five despatches. (Work well done.)

"Fourth.—He asked a servant to bring a carriage around to the Twenty-third Street entrance of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. (Result satisfactory.)

"Fifth.—He attempted to open a door to enable the gentleman bearing the despatches the more readily to reach the street. (Made a mess of it.)

"Mr. Zachariah Chandler, chairman of the National Committee, asked the gentleman above alluded to, on the evening of Nov. 8, if it would not be well to send William E. Chandler to Florida. The gentleman thought it would. Mr. William E. Chandler left for Florida on the following day at 6 P.M. Mr. William E. Chandler, therefore, did not initiate the idea of going to Florida. The truth is that Zachariah Chandler wished to send to Florida a gentleman who had been formerly a private secretary to William H. Seward, but the person was not at hand and could not be reached in time. William E. Chandler for this important mission was a second choice.

"The whole scheme of sending what were afterwards called 'visiting statesmen' to the doubtful States originated in the brain of Zachariah Chandler, not William E. Chandler.

"If the New York Sun and Mr. William E. Chandler can find any comfort in the foregoing plain narration of facts they are entirely welcome to it."

Notwithstanding Mr. Tilden's popular majority, the public needs not now be told that he was counted out by the instrumentality of an extemporized tribunal, not only unknown to the Constitution, but in distinct disregard and violation of the provisions of that instrument for counting the electoral votes for Presidents and Vice-Presidents. A detailed account of the processes by which this great national crime was initiated will be found in the first chapter of the second volume of Bigelow's Life of Tilden. To that record, however, some important testimony has since been disclosed which appears to have escaped the biographer's notice.

At a meeting held at Chickering Hall on the evening of November 12, 1891, to sympathize with Governor Nichols's war on the Louisiana lottery system, the late Abram S. Hewitt was one of the speakers. In the course of his remarks in denunciation of the lottery gambling in Louisiana, Mr. Hewitt said:

"I can't find words strong enough to express my feelings regarding this brazen fraud.

"This scheme of plunder develops a weak spot in the government of the United States, which I would not mention were it not for the importance of the issue. We all know that a single State frequently determines the result of a Presidential election. The State of Louisiana has determined the result of a Presidential election. The vote of that State was offered to me for money, and I declined to buy it. But the vote of that State was sold for money!"

A day or two after this anti-lottery meeting the New York Sun recites this passage of Mr. Hewitt's speech, and accompanies it with the following pertinent and instructive comment:

"We do not remember that this highly important testimony has ever before been elicited from Mr. Hewitt in any public declaration. He says that he has personal knowledge that the vote of Louisiana was sold to Mr. Hayes' managers for money; that the same vote was offered for money to him as Mr. Tilden's representative, and that he declined to buy it—very properly, as all patriotic citizens and all honest men will agree.

"Some time in the summer of 1878, when the great crime was less than two years old and the beneficiaries of that crime were still in the full enjoyment of its fruits, there occurred a spirited, we may even say a bitterly personal, controversy between the Hon. Henry Watterson and Mr. Hewitt as to the extent of the latter's responsibility for the failure of the Democratic party to obtain its rights by the seating of Mr. Tilden in the office to which he had been elected. Col. Watterson acrimoniously, and, as we are glad to believe, unjustly, charged Mr. Hewitt not only with a mismanagement of Democratic interests at the time of the electoral count, but also with suppressing the fact of Mr. Tilden's personal disapproval of the electoral commission bill at a critical time in the deliberations of Mr. Tilden's friends at Washington.

"The merits of the Watterson-Hewitt controversy are not now of living interest. Time doubtless has softened the sentiments of each of the two statesmen with reference to the other's part in the events of 1876 and 1877. We refer to the incident merely to say that even under the strongest provocation to disclose all that he knew about the theft of the Presidency, Mr. Hewitt withheld the statement which he made so distinctly and emphatically at an anti-lottery meeting in Chickering Hall fifteen years after the crime.

"There was also, as it may be remembered, a searching investigation into all of the circumstances surrounding the theft of the vote of Louisiana, conducted by the special committee of the Forty-fifth Congress, known as the Potter committee. The object was not to remedy the irremediable, but to bring out the whole truth, to fix the responsibility where it belonged, and to make a repetition of the crime forever impossible. Those Democrats who possessed special knowledge bearing upon the crime came forward and testified. The report and testimony of the Potter investigation fill about twenty-five hundred printed pages, but on no page is there any piece of evidence more important than that which Mr. Hewitt volunteered on Thursday night before a mass-meeting called for an enterprise of moral and social, rather than political, reform.

"We speak of the Potter investigation merely to say that the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt was not among the witnesses before that committee. He did not appear to testify to the sensational facts which he gave so freely to the anti-lottery meeting in Chickering Hall. In all the twenty-five hundred pages he appears only once, and then indirectly. Major Burke testified that when he went to Mr. Hewitt as the ostensible manager of Mr. Tilden's case in the House, and asked him whether Louisiana was to be abandoned by the Democratic managers, Mr. Hewitt replied, among other things, that 'the Democratic party could not afford to take the responsibility of plunging this country into anarchy and strife, upsetting values and disturbing trade.'

"But Mr. Hewitt's silence on previous occasions, when his testimony would have been so valuable, does not render it less interesting, now that its importance is mainly historical."

In Harper's Magazine for the month of March, 1907, will be found an article from the accomplished pen of Frederick Trevor Hill, entitled "The Hayes-Tilden Contest—A Political Arbitration," in which occurs the following statement of an incident of the nefarious transaction under consideration, which no one has ventured to contest, and which leaves no longer a doubt that Mr. Tilden must have been declared President instead of Mr. Hayes, despite all the other devices by which he is believed to have been counted out, but for the forgery of signatures to the returns from Louisiana which escaped the attention of the perhaps too-eminent counsel in charge of Mr. Tilden's case, a forgery for the concealment of which Senator Ferry seems to be indirectly responsible:

"The proceedings opened as usual with the reception of the conflicting certificates from the Senate chamber—five documents in all—and while these important papers were being perfunctorily examined and initialed by the presiding justice, the journalists in the gallery watched the scene, the lawyers whispered together and prepared for the coming contests; the general public waited, bored and inattentive, and some of the Republican managers sat quaking with fear.

"Judge Clifford finally laid aside his pen, and it was ordered that the various exhibits which he had been marking be printed and copies furnished for the convenience of the counsel and commissioners. Had a single objection to this routine been interposed; had prudence, habit, or even curiosity impelled any of the Democratic counsel to scrutinize the original documents, or had enterprise prompted any journalist to examine and compare them, a sensational exposure would have been inevitable, for one of the Republican certificates was clumsily, even obviously, forged.[12]

"Had this been discovered, it is not improbable that one or more of the Republican commissioners, who were suspected of wavering in their party allegiance, would have voted for a thorough investigation, and an entirely different result might have been effected. Neither suspicion nor inspiration, however, put the Democratic champions on their guard, and the opportunity passed unheeded, never to return."

FRANCIS C. BARLOW[13] TO JOHN BIGELOW

"New York, Nov. 6, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—I believe I have never thanked you for the legislative documents, which I beg now to do.

"I did not overlook the last clause of your letter, in which you express a hope that you may see me on the stump for Tilden. I have been on the stump for Hayes, doing what I can, and I have the strongest confidence that we are going to elect him, and that because I believe there is too much good sense in the American people to turn over this govt. and its credit to those who 10 or 12 years ago were trying to destroy it. I think this will carry us through.

"Neither Mr. Tilden nor any one else can stem the rebel influence if he is elected.

"I have always said that I thought that Tilden, if elected by the Republican party, would make an admirable President, but with the rebels and copperheads and the Democratic party, with all its villainies behind him, he will ruin us.

"On Wednesday you will be as sorry that you did not advocate Hayes, as I shall be (win or lose) glad that I opposed Tilden.

Yours truly,
"Francis C. Barlow."

In the last paragraph of this letter the general got both his boots on the wrong legs. When John Sherman, as the Warwick of the Hayes dynasty, was sending all of the staff officers of the Republican party into the South to see not if, but that, Hayes was elected, General Barlow was one of the number, and the only one, I regret to say, of that formidable crowd who had the manliness to admit on their return that the ballot had been tampered with, and that Hayes was not honestly entitled to the electoral vote. The general, however, unfortunately both for himself and the country, was too strong a party man to publicly assail the corrupt scheme devised by the conspirators to place in the Presidential chair one who was not the choice of the nation.

I do not think that he was as glad that he had opposed Tilden as I was and am that I did not advocate the election of Mr. Hayes.

FRANCIS KERNAN TO TILDEN

"Utica, Nov. 8, '76.

"My dear Sir,—Assuming, as I do, that you are elected, I greatly rejoice. I congratulate you, and I congratulate the country. I have never felt so much solicitude as to any political matter as in reference to the result of this election. The welfare of the people and their govt. demanded a change. The entire people will be blessed by the restoration of economy and honesty in the administration of the Federal govt. Under you I am confident we will have the greatly needed reforms.

"We did not do as well in this county as I expected and believed we would. But our young men, especially, worked hard and deserved success. But the Republicans made a very great effort to and did hold their people pretty well; and a good deal of money, wherever it came from, was used in the county, and they, with this, got most of the purchasable vote. I hope you are well. Take care of your health.

"Yours Truly,
"Francis Kernan."

GEO. W. QUACKENBOS TO TILDEN

"Ten o'clock, A.M., 58 Wall Street,
"New York, Nov. 10, 1876.

"Dear Sir,—A meeting of Republican chiefs was held at Washington night before last, at which it was decided to send some one by express train or special train to Florida.

"Report is that the person sent to go was Zac. Chandler himself.[14] Whoever he was, he was expected to reach Palatka about daybreak this morning. The steamboat, with returns from the outlying counties, was expected at Palatka at 3 o'clock this morning, and the messenger was to receive these returns at once.

Yours truly,
"George W. Quackenbos."

AUGUST BELMONT TO TILDEN

"Sunday Morning, Nov. 11, '76.

"My dear Governor,—The Herald and Post have the following despatch from Conover on their bulletin:

"'The agony is over. Florida has gone Democratic.' Gold has at once declined from 109³⁄₄, ⁷⁄₈ to 109¹⁄₄, and is now 109³⁄₈.

"God grant that Conover's telegram may be confirmed.

"No other solution but your election can end the agony of the country and prevent the most disastrous consequences.

"Yours most truly,
"August Belmont."

EDWARDS PIERREPONT TO TILDEN

"103 Fifth Avenue, Nov. 11, 1876.

"The Honorable Saml. J. Tilden.

"Dr. Sir,—I did the best I could to elect our candidate. You beat us overwhelmingly, and you have showed a level head since. We cannot elect the U. S. Senator; you ought to take that place. It gives you just enough of time before the spring of 1879[15] to make useful acquaintance, but not enough to create personal irritations and jealousies.

"No man can be two years Governor of New York without destroying many ambitious hopes and making many bitter enemies.

"Tho' these suggestions come from a political opponent, they are not the less genuine.

"Yours truly,
"Edwards Pierrepont."

WM. A. WALLACE TO TILDEN

"Clewfield, Pa., Nov. 14, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—Your firmness and courage now is the only hope for the perpetuity of our institutions. The country is with you, and will sustain you in any event and at all hazards.

Very truly yours,
"William A. Wallace."

BENJAMIN RUSH TO TILDEN

(SUGGESTS GOVERNOR GIVE A PUBLIC DECLARATION OF HIS VIEWS ON THE SITUATION)

"1728 Chestnut Street, Phila., 18th Nov., 1876.

"Dear Sir,—May I venture, with great respect, to offer a suggestion which, in this extraordinary crisis, might, it seems to me, if you approve, have a good effect with the other side.

"Would not a public expression of your well-considered views now, in the present state of things, tend to exercise a good influence? Your friends all remember how much good was done, on a different occasion, by that admirable letter to Mr. Hewitt, shortly before the election, about rebel claims, etc.

"Might not the calm, patriotic, and therefore assuaging utterances of your pen now tend to an early settlement upon the basis of right and justice by bringing to bear, with accumulated force, upon the bad men so conspicuous in the disputed States, the just indignation and censure of honest and influential men of their own party, who could not fail to be influenced by such an expression from you, causing those men, at least, to pause in their mad career?

"Might it not, at least, have the effect of gaining time, and smoothing the way for the dispassionate and final and possibly controlling judgment of the better elements of the Republican party?

"Pray pardon the freedom of the suggestion. It is doubtless not new to you or the friends about you, but this may at least serve to show how the suggestion strikes another mind at a distance.

"Suffer me to avail myself of the occasion to congratulate the American people and yourself upon the unmistakable majority of the Electoral College and immense popular majority in your favor.

"I have the honor to be, with the highest respect.

"Your friend & obt. serv't,
"Benjamin Rush."

GID. J. PILLOW TO TILDEN

"Confidential.

"Memphis, Tenn., Nov. 18th, 1876.

"His Excellency Samuel J. Tilden, etc.

"Enough has developed itself since my former letter to confirm the correctness of the views there expressed. I see indications of a weakness in the backbone of the Republican leaders, and if they stood without a controlling power over them they would yield. But the President has his own purposes to accomplish, and he will not let them yield.

"On and after the 5th of March next, if there be no President or Vice-President elected and inaugurated, there is no provision in the Constitution for the further existence of any government. The Constitution, which is the chart of the government, will have expired, leaving nothing but the physical skeleton of the constitutional government. Grant knows this and sees it, and will shape everything to bring about that end. He will, by his measures, defeat you and Hayes both by shaping the means to the end.

"The constitutional government, thus ended, with no power or provision anywhere for its reorganization, Grant finds himself in possession of a physical government, without the restraints of a Constitution—with the army, navy, and treasury at his command; he will be the absolute ruler of a government of force, in which his will will be the law. If Congress should prove refractory he will know how to deal with that body. There are three notable historical parallel cases for his guidance.

"His professions of a purpose to have a fair count, using his army and navy to bring it about, is one of the means by which he will delude the people and conceal his real purpose. His purpose will not be lost sight of, and he will hold to the Republican party and its confidence until his usurpation is assured.

"You are the only man who can save the government—preserve the Constitution and the liberties of the people. To accomplish these ends, you must act. In the end, three-fourths of the American people will sustain you. The time will soon pass when action will accomplish anything or will be possible. Time by action may possibly avert the great national calamity, but without action the case is hopeless.

"I do not expect you to answer my letters. I cannot write more fully. I can only make suggestions. Let your private secretary say my letters are received. If deemed necessary I would visit you.

"Your friend,
"Gid. J. Pillow."

GEO. W. MORGAN TO TILDEN

"Mount Vernon, Ohio, Nov. 18th, 1876.

"My dear Mr. President,—For so I still believe you to be. Your course during the late canvass inspired me with great confidence in your judgment, and nothing but the momentous issue now upon us could induce me to make suggestions for your consideration.

"A party that drifts in a crisis like the present is certain to wreck upon the breakers. And whatever policy is to be adopted should be carefully considered, promptly be determined, and be decisive. The inauguration of two Presidents means a war which in its destructiveness would dwarf the rebellion. Not to count the electoral vote and declare an election would be to create a dictatorship which would soon result in armed conflict. This is one side of the picture.

"If you are counted out by fraud, as is probable, would acquiescence cause a repetition of the wrong four years hence; or would it electrify the country and cause an outburst of indignation against the wrong-doers?

"Again, is it certain that an armed conflict would not disintegrate the Union? If they found the battle going against them would not the pretended Republicans of the North offer to recognize the independence of a Southern confederacy?

"If two Presidents are inaugurated then comes the problem of money and munitions. New York and other ports would be put in blockade, and revenue be thus cut off.

"Men who do not dream of going into the conflict themselves may glibly advise a recourse to arms.

"If your policy be one in the interest of peace, then a patriotic address to your countrymen would give you a noble immortality, preserve constitutional government, and restore the Democracy to power at the next election. Should such be your determination, meetings should be simultaneously held throughout the Republic, declare your election, but waive the administration of the government, and denounce the usurpers who seek to overthrow the Constitution.

"In conclusion, I have but to say, if the facts show that you are elected, for one I will stand by you, let the result be what it may.

"With great respect for your ability and entire confidence in your patriotism, I have the honor to subscribe myself,

"Your very obedient servant,
"George W. Morgan."

J. THOMAS SPRIGGS TO TILDEN

(SUBSTANCE OF A CONVERSATION WITH SENATOR CONKLING)

"Utica, Sunday, Nov. 19, 1876.

"President Tilden.

"My dear Sir,—I have had an hour's talk to-day with Senator Conkling, and I am happy to inform you he is sound as a bullet all through. He says of course he is desirous his party should succeed, but if it is expected he will consent to succeed by fraud they are mistaken. He is sound in all the questions that will arise, and means to act with his friends.

"He is devoting himself to the law, and means to act with our friends in the Senate.

"He asked me what position our people meant to assume, and whether they meant to act upon the good-boy principle of submission, or whether we mean to have it understood that Tilden has been elected and by the Eternal he shall be inaugurated? Thinks the latter course advisable; the submission policy he don't much believe in.

"You may rely entirely upon his hearty co-operation. I hope to see you soon, but I fear shall not be able to come down before the 1st of December.

"I don't know whether the Senator will unbosom himself to Kearner, but I know he is all right, and I am correspondingly hopeful and happy as ever.

"Yours truly,
"J. T. Spriggs."

AUGUST BELMONT TO TILDEN

"Private.

"Thursday (Nov. 23, 1876).

"My dear Governor,—I had a long talk with Curtis, and have made it all right. He volunteered the information that he wrote the Sun's article yesterday, but without entering into the discussion of the merits of his argument I told him that all our friends viewed the question differently.

"He will keep quiet, I know, and I hope Barlow has been equally successful with Dana. No pains ought to be spared to get him all right so as to end, as far as he can, the mischief of yesterday's article.

"Curtis is anxious for your success, but he is a vain man, who likes to be made something of. I think some little notice of him by you or your friends in the way of asking his legal advice or other co-operation would secure him completely to your interests and silence his constitutional croaking.

Yours sincerely,
"August Belmont."

The editorial of the Sun here referred to, after giving in detail the provisions of the Constitution for the counting of the electoral votes for President and Vice-President, proceeds to give the advice which so disturbed Messrs. Belmont and Barlow:

"We[16] now proceed to state what, in our opinion, the Constitution means by counting the votes. It is to be noted that the Constitution commits the choice of a President and Vice-President, in the first instance, to a body of electors who are to be chosen in each State as its legislators may direct. These electors are to meet, to vote, and to make and sign and seal up a certificate of their votes. These instruments, denominated in the Constitution 'the certificates,' are to be transmitted to the President of the Senate 'sealed.' They are, in our opinion, not merely prima facie, but they are conclusive, evidence that the Electoral Colleges of the States from which they come gave the votes which they purport to certify.

"We can conceive of no reason why the Constitution required the electors to make and sign and certify lists of the votes which they gave, excepting that it was required in order to give legal verity to the contents of the certificates. For the same reason we hold that to 'count the votes' so certified does not import or imply a power to inquire into the legality, sufficiency, or regularity of the appointment of the electors whose appointment is duly certified by the State authorities whose duty it is to give to the two Houses of Congress legal information of that appointment. It will never do, in our judgment, to draw analogies for the government of this matter from the practice of legislative bodies in judging of the rights of their members to seats. That practice rests upon an express constitutional provision; and it is from that express power to determine the legality of an election that their whole authority to go behind the certificate of a sitting member is derived.

"But these Electoral Colleges are peculiar bodies, whose appointment is committed wholly to the States, whose certificates, when their official character has been duly vouched by their States, become by force of the Constitution the sole and exclusive legal evidence that the votes of those States have been cast for such and such persons as President and Vice-President. It cannot be, therefore, that any authority can reside anywhere to try any question, or to find any fact, that is to warrant the two Houses in rejecting the votes of any Electoral College of whose authority to give those votes the State, through its constituted authorities, has legally informed Congress. All such questions and all such facts belong to the proper authorities of each State to try and determine before the persons supposed to be chosen electors are assembled to give their votes. Any attempt by the two Houses, or either of them, to go behind the certificates and to determine the right of the electors to give the votes which they have certified, when the State has determined that right by its competent authorities, will lead to conclusions in which the people of this country will not acquiesce.

"Thus, if it shall be found on an inspection of the certificates of the Electoral Colleges, when they are opened in the presence of the two Houses, that Mr. Hayes has received 185 votes, or more, that result must be accepted by the people as the legal result, whatever may have been the frauds committed in Louisiana or any other State in taking or returning or counting the popular vote. It is perfectly proper for Congress to ascertain the fact of such frauds in an authoritative and conclusive manner for the information of the people, but the certainty that there are such frauds cannot affect the legally certified election. Mr. Hayes must be inaugurated and acknowledged as President, even if the legal result is so tainted with fraud that honest men revolt at the very thought they must submit to. There is no alternative but civil war; and that forms an unnecessary and inadequate remedy, and is not to be thought of. If Hayes shall be declared President, with grave reason to believe that he has not been honestly and fairly entitled to have the electoral votes of certain States, he and his party must bear the consequences. Those consequences, if his opponents are wise, will be, not that his title to the office is to be resisted, but that the people are to be appealed to to use their constitutional and peaceful methods of redressing all wrongs and punishing all outrages—namely, by the ballot-box. No such appeal can be made if the country is to be plunged into anarchy by denying Hayes' title to the office. Our government must be preserved and perpetuated; and that it may be, grievous as the wrong will be that takes from Tilden States in which he has certainly carried a majority of the popular vote, we must submit to that wrong, in the entire certainty that the party responsible for it will in due time be rewarded with political annihilation.

"We shall therefore deprecate and oppose any action by the House of Representatives looking to any dispute of the regular electoral certificates from any of the States. The responsibility for what is done in the three controverted States is with the Republicans, and there let it rest. All that the House of Representatives can properly do in the premises is to ascertain and determine the precise nature, methods, and extent of the frauds, and then leave the question to the judgment of the country, and to the legal and constitutional remedy afforded by the next elections."

SAML. WARD TO TILDEN

(WANTS GOVERNOR TO ASSIST EVARTS IN UNVEILING STATUE OF DANIEL WEBSTER)

"Private.

"Brevoort House, 24th Nov., 1876.

"Dear Mr. President-elect,—A cat may look at a king, and an old fossil like myself may offer a suggestion to a much wiser man.

"I humbly suggest that you assist at Evarts' oration to-morrow, upon the unveiling of the Webster statue in Central Park.

"If he meditates mischief your presence will check him, and if he intends preaching from the Constitution it will encourage him. If he carries out the doctrine of State-rights as against Conkling's speech of last winter, he covertly justifies nullification and secession.

"Yours faithfully,
"Saml. Ward.

"His Excellency Governor Tilden, President-elect."

WM. P. CRAIGHILL TO G. W. MORGAN

"Balto., Md., Nov. 24, 1876.

"Dear General,—Now is a time, it seems to me, when every true lover of our country will desire to do all he can to allay excitement and to reach an honest and fair conclusion upon the question about which all are thinking—Who ought to be the next President? I believe a great majority of the American people, North and South, desire peace and quiet, as well as an honest decision on that question; but there are, unfortunately, some in both sections, and perhaps in Congress, who have nothing to lose and may gain something by turmoil, strife, and excitement.

"When the pot boils much froth and scum rise to the surface, which otherwise might never be known to exist.

"It appears to me the crisis will be upon us when the two Houses of Congress meet to count or see counted the electoral votes. Disputes must arise about many questions, by reason of the complications now surrounding the situation. Who shall decide between them? The great want is a tribunal to whom may be referred at once, without debate or excitement, all disputed points. This tribunal should not only be honest and impartial and able, but the Congress and the people should believe so. Could not such a tribunal be organized before the dispute begins? It might be extraconstitutional, but its decrees could be made binding in this particular case by consent of all concerned.

"Let Congress request Mr. Tilden to select the chief judge in his State or in New Jersey or Virginia, and let Mr. Hayes take the chief judge of Ohio or Pennsylvania or Illinois or Massachusetts; let these two be joined by the Chief Justice of the U. S. as a third member.

"The last named has never been a violent partisan, and is specially acceptable to the bar in Richmond, Virginia, and elsewhere in the South. Let this tribunal decide all disputed points in accordance with the Constitution and precedents, as far as applicable, by common law and common-sense. Let their judgment be final and conclusive. By such a course justice would be done and all parties satisfied.

"Very truly yours,
"Wm. P. Craighill.

"Gen'l Geo. W. Morgan,
"Mount Vernon, Ohio."

G. W. MORGAN TO TILDEN

"Mount Vernon, Ohio, Nov. 27, 1876.

"My dear Mr. President,—Colonel Wm. P. Craighill, the writer of the inclosed, is an officer of the Engineer Corps, and is one of the finest and ablest men in our military service. He does not dream that you would see his letter, but I deem it proper to submit it for your consideration.

"I remain, Mr. President, with great respect,

"Your very obedient servant,
"G. W. Morgan.

"His Excellency Samuel J. Tilden."

CERTIFICATE OF THE ELECTORAL VOTE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK IN 1876

"State of New York, ss.:

"We, the Secretary of State, Comptroller, Treasurer, and Attorney-General of the said State having formed a Board of State Canvassers, and having canvassed and estimated the whole number of votes given for Electors of President and Vice-President, at the general election held in the said State, on the seventh day of November, in the year 1876, according to the certified statements received by the Secretary of State in the manner directed by law, do hereby determine, declare, and certify, that

were, by the greatest number of votes given at the said election, respectively elected Electors of President and Vice-President of the United States.

"Given under our hands, at the office of the Secretary of State, of said State, in the city of Albany, the twenty-fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six.

"John Bigelow, Secr'y of State.
"L. Robinson, Comptroller.
"Charles N. Ross, Treasurer.
"Charles S. Fairchild, Attorney-General.

"State of New York, }
"Office of the Secretary of State.} ss.:

"I Certify the foregoing to be a true copy of an original certificate of the Board of State Canvassers, on file in this office, and of the whole thereof.

[SEAL]

"Given under my hand and seal of office, at the city of Albany, the twenty-fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six.

Edgar K. Apgar,
"Deputy Secretary of State."

FRANK CROCKER TO TILDEN

Washington, D. C., Jan. 15, '77.

"Hon. S. J. Tilden.

"Sir,—I have in my possession a telegram sent to Z. Chandler, chrm. Repn. com., by O. C. Babcock, dated Chicago, Dec. 4/76.

"I consider it not only very valuable, but the key to the editorials and political arguments on the 'electoral count' which has filled the columns of the National Republican, the administration organ, for the past month.

"Respectfully Yours,
"Frank Crocker,
"617 6th St., N. W."

O. C. BABCOCK TO Z. CHANDLER (TELEGRAM)

"Chicago, Dec. 4th, 1876.

"Hon. Z. Chandler,
"Chairmn. Repn. Com., Washington.

"The Illinois electors here have agreed they will vote an open ballot. If any elector refuses so to vote, or refuses to throw a ballot for Hayes and Wheeler as he votes, they will immediately declare a vacancy in the district thus represented by such judge and elect another in his place; they claim that such action is not only perfectly justifiable, but that it cannot be reviewed by any tribunal, as the action of the electors is final. If this meets with your approbation I suggest you to telegraph this programme to every Republican State.

"O. C. Babcock."

The subscriber of the last preceding letter during the Civil War was on the staff of General Grant, and when the latter became President acted as his private secretary. He was indicted in 1876 by the Grand Jury of St. Louis for frauds upon the revenue and for the "safe-burglary conspiracy" referred to in the following testimony of one of the witnesses in the trial, Col. H. C. Whitley, who was one of the parties charged, but desired, before doing so, to place on the record a conditional pardon granted him.

"'Harrington took a letter from his pocket and asked me if the signature was that of A. B. Cornell, and I said it was not. He said that some of Pinkerton's detectives were here, and I should send some of my men to work in with the memorialists and find out what they were doing. I sent men out. Harrington gave me some names on a paper whom he wished to be worked in with. I don't remember the names. I told Harrington that I would send men over, naming Mr. Nettleship. I went to New York on the same night (15th) and sent Mr. Nettleship over, giving him the names, and telling him that they were the parties to be worked. I don't remember that I gave Nettleship any instructions to report to Harrington at this particular time. I was again in this city on the 29th of March, having previously sent over a man named Oberworth with Nettleship. I found on my arrival that Oberworth had been arrested for peddling cigars without a license, and I told Harrington that he (Oberworth) was one of my men, and he was released. Mr. Harrington complained that the men were good for nothing, and he wanted men who would push matters along and work to some purpose. Harrington said something must be done; that he had a plan which would throw dirt and ridicule on the memorialists. He said they thought that Evan's books were in his office, and they were trying to get them, and he thought that to have his office robbed was the best plan; he said he did not care if his safe was knocked or blown to hell, as the damned safe belonged to him. I said I did not wish the men to get into trouble, and Harrington replied that there was no danger, as he was district attorney, and they should not be hurt. I came from New York on the 29th, and returned the same night. I came again on the 8th of April, and saw Gen. Babcock at his office. I asked how matters were about the investigation, and he said all right, that Harrington kept him posted up.

"'I was again in Washington on the 27th, arriving in the afternoon, four days after the safe was blown up. I went up to Harrington's house, and he told me about what had transpired during the blowing of the safe. He said that everything would have worked all right except for the interference of Major Richard, the superintendent of police, who would not co-operate with him. After that I called upon Gen. Babcock at his office in the White House. He spoke about the safe burglary, saying that it was very badly managed; that he thought I was smarter than to allow things to go on as they did. The next time I saw Babcock was in New York, in the May following. I went up to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in that city. After talking to him a while I said that I expected that there would be some more trouble about the case. Babcock said: "No; stand by your guns; I'll protect your rear." I spoke to him about Bluford Wilson, then the Solicitor of the Treasury, investigating my office in New York for the purpose of ascertaining whether any of the secret-service men were connected with the safe burglary, and then told him I would do it, that is, stand by my guns if he protected the rear.

"'Soon afterward I had an interview with Harrington at the Metropolitan Hotel, New York. I complained to him that the whole matter of the safe burglary seemed to be falling upon the secret service, and that we would likely get into trouble about it. Harrington said: "No; I am the real district attorney at Washington, and I will protect all of you." I told him that Somerville wanted some money, and Harrington gave me $500 for him. I paid it all to Somerville as part of his fee. Harrington did not say what particular service Somerville rendered. During the same month I had an interview with Babcock here. I called to see him at his house. Harrington then lived a few doors from him on the same row. I told Babcock I wanted to see Harrington, and Babcock sent after him. Harrington came in by the alley gate to Babcock's yard. I told Harrington that Somerville wanted more money, but do not remember that Babcock heard me speak to Harrington, or that he knew the money was to go to Somerville. All I remember is that Harrington brought me the money, and that I gave it to Somerville, who said he wanted to use it to get Benton, the burglar who was arrested on the night of the burglary, out.'

"In speaking of other interviews with Babcock, Whitley testified as follows:

"'In the autumn of 1875 I called at Babcock's cottage at Long Branch and had a talk with him. I told him that Albert Cunz and Delome, two former secret-service men, had been thrown out of employment in consequence of the safe burglary and their connection with it. Babcock said he would try and get them in the New York Custom-House. I told him that I would like for myself a commission to go somewhere, and Babcock said he would see the Secretary of the Treasury, and have me sent to Europe with some bonds. I told him I did not want to go to Europe, but wanted to go to Colorado. Babcock said: "If any trouble comes up you can 'slide off,'" or words to that effect. I told him I had had trouble enough in connection with the case, and did not want any more.

"'I had a conversation with Harrington after we were indicted in the fall of 1874 in the Metropolitan Hotel. I told him I did not like the idea of being indicted in the matter. He told me it would be all right, that he would pay counsel for me. He directed me to write and employ Gen. S. S. Henkin, of Washington, as my attorney, which I did. That case resulted in a hung jury. This spring, previous to going before Proctor Knott's committee, I called at the White House to see Gen. Babcock, and requested him to do all he could to have Mr. Rice, who was with me, appointed postmaster at Pueblo, Colorado. He said he would assist all he could. As I was leaving the room, I remarked to him: "Things look like we will have more trouble." He answered: "Yes, things do look squally; but it will all blow over again."'"[17]

Babcock was acquitted, with the aid of a deposition by General Grant, and only a few weeks before this trial was promoted to a colonelcy.

Only four months before the indictment and trial of Babcock, Secretary Belknap, a member of President Grant's Cabinet, was impeached and put on trial before the Senate at Washington. During the trial the late George F. Hoar, one of the Republican Senators from Massachusetts, addressed the Senate, and closed his discourse with the following fearful arraignment of the administration during the Presidency of Grant, and gave a transparent exposure of the reasons why the satellites of the President were determined to shrink from no crime necessary to prevent the inauguration at Washington of a President who had become famous by the havoc he had already made of the Tweed Ring plunderers in New York and the Canal Ring plunderers at Albany, and whose advent to Washington would put to flight the horde of miscreants who then infested both ends of the capitol:

"My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office, but in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I have heard the taunt from friendliest lips, that when the United States presented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world in generous competition in the arts of life, the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all others beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Union foremost in power and wealth four judges of her courts impeached for corruption, and the political administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a by-word throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, now a distinguished member of this court, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exaltation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three committees of Congress, two of the House, and one here, that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted companions of the President. These things have passed into history. The Hallam, or the Tacitus, or the Sismondi, or the Macaulay who writes the annals of our time will record them with his inexorable pen; and now, when a high Cabinet officer, the constitutional adviser of the Executive, flees from office before charges of corruption, shall the historian add that the Senate treated the demand of the people for its judgment of condemnation as a farce, and laid down its high functions before the sophistries and jeers of the criminal lawyer? Shall he speculate about the petty political calculations as to the effect of one party or the other which induced his judges to connive at the escape of the great public criminal; or, on the other hand, shall he close the chapter by narrating how these things were detected, reformed, and punished by constitutional processes which the wisdom of our fathers devised for us, and the virtue and purity of the people found their vindication in the justice of the Senate?"

CHARLES MASON TO TILDEN

"'Alto,' near Edge Hill,
"King George, Va., Dec. 5, '76.

"Dear Sir,—Although I am confident if any one in the U. S. has the ability to cope with the rogues who are bent on cheating the people out of the hard-earned victory they have achieved, in the Presidential contest, it is yourself; yet, at the risk of being thought highly presumptuous, I venture on a few suggestions I have not observed thrown out by any one.

"That the Constitution does not provide for the extraordinary condition of things in which we are placed by the Congress, nor that any of its annotators furnish an apt construction, is certain; and for the same reason, I suppose, as that given by Bishop Warburton, why no allusion was made in the Pentateuch to a future state. The patriots of the Revolution, like the Patriarchs after the creation, no doubt thought the proposition so self-evident and the provisions so ample for pious and honest men that they did not dream of the world's being peopled by such a race of sinners and corruptionists.

"If precedent is to be weighed in counting the votes, let the spirit of the first example be wholly and rigidly observed. There is doubt, in the first election of Gl. Washington, the president of the Senate did perform that ministerial duty. But the order of the Senate, prepared by a committee, and signed by John Langdon, the prest. 'elected for that purpose,' expressly says 'the underwritten, appointed president of the Senate for the sole purpose of receiving, opening, and counting the votes of electors, did, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives,' etc., leaving it to be inferred (and no other conclusion will hold water) that in doing this his functions ceased. Subsequently, as you know, there were some variations from this practice, but all going to the mere ministerial agency of that officer.

"The bald attempt of McDonald, present chief clerk of the Senate, to cite a different practice, in the case of Harrison, when James W. Watson was president of the Senate, by construing his action in his (McDonald's) own language, as to imply judicial authority, does great violence to the truth of history and the greatest injustice to that astute and cautious statesman, who struggled all his life against the exercise of doubtful powers and was never known to practise one. This little incident on the part of McDonald is only a part of the well-laid scheme to revolutionize the government by seizure in the count of either of the returning boards in the subjugated States, should be conscience-stricken and obey the mandates of the Decalogue, rather than the tyrant's order, and cast the electoral vote for you, to whom all justly belong.

"Going through the pageant of a public inauguration is by no means called for, as you are well aware; and I would suggest that instead of allowing Sunday to intervene, that Grant's term expires at 12 o'c. at night on the 3d of March, when his power as Commander-in-Chief will cease, and when Sherman will not dare use the army for their hellish purposes. I make this suggestion for the reason that there is a tradition in the family of Mr. Jefferson, to whom I am nearly allied by marriage, handed down by himself, that being informed commissions were to be made out by Mr. Adams for judges and other officers after midnight, he (Jefferson) entered the office of Secretary of State precisely at 12 o'c. on the 3d of Mar. and demanded it of the Secretary, John Marshall, I think, who, after some remonstrance, yielded and delivered the keys to Mr. Jefferson. Allusion is made to those midnight appointments in his correspondence, but no mention is made of those particular circumstances. I had them from Col. L. G. Randolph, his grandson, confidential friend, executor and sole custodian of his papers until sold to Congress.

"Some persons apprehend that if the election devolves upon the House (which I cannot conceive possible on any reasonable grounds) we shall lose the Vice-President, whose choice will have to be decided by the Senate; but this cannot be, as the contingency will not arise for such a resort. For the Constitution expressly provides that 'the person having the greatest number of electors shall be President, if such number be the whole number of electors appointed.' Now, how can they be appointed unless lawfully done, and who is to judge of such legality? Certainly the House, or it may be both Houses. So if the electoral vote of a State be rejected by either, because of fraud, it is a nullity—no vote at all—and therefore not appointed, and cannot be estimated in the count, leaving you with 84, an undisputed majority of the electors actually appointed. For, mark! The Constitution does not require a majority of the whole Electoral College, but of those appointed.

"If there should be any discussion about the authority of the 'great seal of a State,' you are aware that it has been nowhere so fully ventilated as in the famous New Jersey contest for Congressional seats, when, if my memory serves me, the Govr's. certificate was only respected when there was no suspicion of fraud.

"I am, with great respect & haste,

"Your humble servt.,
"Charles Mason."

CHARLES A. DANA TO TILDEN

"Dec. 15, 1876.

"Dear Sir,—Here is a note from my regular Washington correspondent, which I send to you for your information.

Yours sincerely,
"C. A. Dana."

A. M. GIBSON TO DANA

"Washington, D. C., Dec. 13, 1876.

"My dear Sir,—There is undoubtedly danger of defection among Southern Democrats. The friends of Hayes are certainly bidding high in that direction, and I know that their propositions are being entertained—listened to, considered. The combination between Jay Gould, C. P. Huntington, and Tom Scott, spoke of ten days since in my despatches, is now openly admitted here. Central Pacific gets all west of Ft. Worth and one-half of T. P. east of Fort Worth. The subsidy for T. P. is part of programme, as well as counting in of Hayes. Packard and Chamberlain are to be abandoned, and a new departure in Republican party policy is to date from Hayes' inauguration. I know what I am talking about. Can't you give Tilden a hint? His managers here don't get below the surface of things.

"Very truly,
"A. M. Gibson."

GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK TO GENERAL SHERMAN

"Carondelet P. O.,
"St. Louis Co., Mo., December 28th, 1876.

"My dear General,—Your favor of the 4th inst. reached me in New York on the 5th, the day before I left for the West. I intended to reply to it before leaving, but cares incident to departure interfered. Then, again, since my arrival here, I have been so occupied with personal affairs of a business nature that I have deferred writing from day to day until this moment, and now I find myself in debt to you for another letter in acknowledgment of your favor of the 17th, received a few days since.

"I have concluded to leave here on the 29th (to-morrow), p.m., so that I may be expected in New York on the 31st inst. It has been cold and dreary since my arrival here. I have worked 'like a Turk' (I presume that means hard work) in the country, in making fences, cutting down trees, repairing buildings, etc., etc., and am at least able to say that St. Louis is the coldest place in the winter, as it is the hottest in summer, of any that I have encountered in a temperate zone. I have known St. Louis in December to have genial weather throughout the month; this December has been frigid, and the river has been frozen more solid than I have even known it.

"When I heard the rumor that I was ordered to the Pacific coast I thought it probably true, considering the past discussion on that subject. The possibilities seemed to me to point that way. Had it been true I should, of course, have presented no complaint, nor made resistance of any kind. I would have gone quietly if not prepared to go promptly. I certainly would have been relieved from the responsibilities and anxieties concerning Presidential matters which may fall to those near the throne or in authority within the next four months, as well as from other incidents or matters which I could not control, and the action concerning which I might not approve. I was not exactly prepared to go to the Pacific, however, and I therefore felt relieved when I received your note informing me that there was no truth in the rumors.

"Then, I did not wish to appear to be escaping from responsibilities and possible dangers which may cluster around military commanders in the East, especially in the critical period fast approaching. 'All's well that ends well.' The whole matter of the Presidency seems to me to be simple and to admit of a peaceful solution. The machinery for such a contingency as threatens to present itself has been all carefully prepared. It only requires lubrication, owing to disuse. The army should have nothing to do with the selection or inauguration of Presidents. The people elect the President. The Congress declares in a joint session who he is; we of the army have only to obey his mandates, and are protected in so doing only so far as they may be lawful. Our commissions express that! I like Jefferson's way of inauguration. It suits our system. He rode alone on horseback to the capitol (I fear it was the 'old capitol'), tied his horse to a rail-fence, entered, and was duly sworn; then rode to the Executive Mansion, and took possession. He inaugurated himself simply by taking the oath of office. There is no other legal inauguration in our system. The people or politicians may institute parades in honor of the event, and public officials may add to the pageant by assembling troops and banners; but all that only comes properly after the inauguration, not before, and it is not a part of it. Our system does not provide that one President should inaugurate another. There might be danger in that, and it was studiously left out of the Charter. But you are placed in an exceptionally important position in connection with coming events. The capitol is in my jurisdiction also, but I am a subordinate, and not on the spot, and if I were, so also would be my superior in authority, for there is the station of the General-in-Chief.

"On the principle that a regularly elected President's term of office expires with the 3rd of March (of which I have not the slightest doubt), and which the laws bearing on the subject uniformly recognize, and in consideration of the possibility that the lawfully elected President may not appear until the 5th of March, a great deal of responsibility may necessarily fall upon you. You hold over! You will have power and prestige to support you. The Secretary of War is the mouthpiece of a President; you are not. If neither candidate has a constitutional majority of the Electoral College, or the Senate and House, on the occasion of the count, do not unite in declaring some person legally elected by the people, there is a lawful machinery already provided to meet that contingency and decide the question peacefully. It has not been recently used, no occasion presenting itself, but our forefathers provided it.

"It has been exercised, and has been recognized and submitted to as lawful, on every hand. That machinery would probably elect Mr. Tilden President and Mr. Wheeler Vice-President. That would be right enough, for the law provides that in a failure to elect duly by the people, the House shall immediately elect the President, and the Senate the Vice-President. Some tribunal must decide whether the people have duly elected a President. I presume, of course, that it is in the joint affirmative action of the Senate and House, or why are they present to witness the count if not to see that it is fair and just? If a failure to agree arises between the two bodies there can be no lawful affirmative decision that the people have elected a President, and the House must then proceed to act, not the Senate. The Senate elects Vice-Presidents, not Presidents. Doubtless, in case of a failure by the House to elect a President by the 4th of March the President of the Senate (if there be one) would be the legitimate person to exercise Presidential authority for the time being, or until the appearance of a lawful President, or for the time laid down in the Constitution. Such course would be peaceful, and, I have a firm belief, lawful.

"I have no doubt Governor Hayes would make an excellent President. I have met him, know of him. For a brief period he served under my command, but as the matter stands I can't see any likelihood of his being duly declared elected by the people unless the Senate and House come to be in accord as to the fact; and the House would, of course, not otherwise elect him. What the people want is a peaceful determination of this matter, as fair a determination as possible, and a lawful one. No other administration could stand the test. The country, if not plunged into revolution, would become poorer day by day, business would languish, and our bonds would come home to find a depreciated market.

"I was not in favor of the military action in South Carolina recently, and if Genl. Ruger had telegraphed to me or asked for advice, I would have advised him not under any circumstances to allow himself or his troops to determine who were the lawful members of a State Legislature. I could not have given him better advice than to refer him to the special message of the President in the case of Louisiana some time before.

"But in South Carolina he had had the question settled by a decision of the Supreme Court of the State—the highest tribunal which had acted on the question—so that his line of duty seemed even to be clearer than the action in the Louisiana case. If the Federal court had interfered and overruled the decision of the State court there might have been a doubt certainly, but the Federal court only interfered to complicate, not to decide or overrule.

"Anyhow, it is no business of the army to enter upon such questions, and even if it might be so in any other event, if the civil authority is supreme, as the Constitution declares it to be, the South Carolina case was one in which the army had a plain duty.

"Had General Ruger asked me for advice, and if I had given it, I should, of course, have notified you of my action immediately, so that it could have been promptly overruled if it should have been deemed advisable by you or other superior in authority. General Ruger did not ask for my advice, and I inferred from that and other facts that he did not desire it, or that, being in direct communication with my military superiors at the seat of government, who were nearer to him in time and distance than I was, he deemed it unnecessary. As Genl. Ruger had the ultimate responsibility of action, and had really the greater danger to confront in the final action in the matter, I did not venture to embarrass him by suggestions. He was a department commander and the lawful head of the military administration within the limits of the department; but, besides, I knew that he had been called to Washington for consultation before taking command, and was probably aware of the views of the administration as to civil affairs in his command. I knew that he was in direct communication with my superiors in authority in reference to the delicate subjects presented for his consideration, or had ideas of his own which he believed to be sufficiently in accord with the views of our common superiors to enable him to act intelligently according to his judgment and without suggestions from those not on the spot, and not as fully acquainted with the facts as himself. He desired, too, to be free to act, as he had the eventual greater responsibility, and so the matter was governed as between him and myself.

"As I have been writing thus freely to you, I may still further unbosom myself by stating that I have not thought it lawful or wise to use Federal troops in such matters as have transpired east of the Mississippi within the last few months, save so far as they may be brought into action under the article of the Constitution which contemplated meeting armed resistance or invasion of a State more powerful than the State authorities can subdue by the ordinary processes, and then only when requested by the Legislature, or, if it could not be convened in season, by the Governor; and when the President of the United States intervenes in that manner it is a state of war, not peace.

"The army is laboring under disadvantages, and has been used unlawfully at times, in the judgment of the people (in mine, certainly), and we have lost a great deal of the kindly feeling which the community at large once felt for us. 'It is time to stop and unload.'

"Officers in command of troops often find it difficult to act wisely and safely when superiors in authority have different views of the law from theirs, and when legislation has sanctioned action seemingly in conflict with the fundamental law, and thus generally defer to the known judgment of their superiors. Yet the superior officers of the army are so regarded in such great crises, and are held to such responsibility, especially those at or near the head of it, that it is necessary on such momentous occasions to dare to determine for themselves what is lawful and what is not lawful under our system if the military authorities should be invoked, as might possibly be the case, in such exceptional times when there existed such divergent views as to the correct result. The army will suffer from its past action if it has acted wrongfully. Our regular army has little hold upon the affections of the people of to-day, and the superior officers should certainly, as far as lies in their power, legally and with righteous intent, act to defend the right—to us—the law and the institutions we represent. It is a well-meaning Constitution, and it would be well if it should have an opportunity to be recognized as a bulwark in support of the people and the law. of the people and the law.

"I am, Truly Yours,

(Signed) "Winfd. S. Hancock.

"To General W. T. Sherman,
"Com'd'g Army of the U. S., Washington, D. C."

HON. GEORGE HOADLEY TO THE "EVENING POST," JULY, 1901

(MRS. SPRAGUE AND THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION OF 1876)

"To the Editor of the 'Evening Post.'

"Sir,—My attention has been called to an article which appeared in the Evening Post of Saturday, June 30, giving an account of the various Democratic national conventions, in the course of which there is, I think, a cruel and untrue attack upon the memory of a lady who had hard luck enough in this world, without being followed into her grave, the late Mrs. Katherine Chase (Sprague). The statement is directly made that a bolt from the decision of the electoral tribunal which counted in Hayes in 1877 had been organized by Mr. Conkling, but that he was deterred from executing it by Mrs. Sprague's interference, based on revenge for Mr. Tilden's opposition to her father's nomination by the Democratic convention in 1868.

"I do not believe there is one word of truth in this story, so far as it relates to Mrs. Sprague. It is perfectly true that Mr. Conkling organized such a bolt, and that he secured the adhesion of Senators enough to have reversed the decision of the electoral tribunal in the matter of the Louisiana electoral vote, and would in this way have made Mr. Tilden President had circumstances not happened to break up the scheme, in consequence of which he went to Baltimore, and was not in the Senate and did not vote on the subject that day.

"I was in Washington at the time, and possessed the confidence of the Democratic leaders, and argued, as you know, the Florida and Oregon cases. My information was, in one sense, second hand. I possessed Mr. Conkling's confidence with regard to the general subject. I knew perfectly what his views were. He did not hesitate to express them fully, even going so far as to state them at length in conversation with myself and my wife and Senator John W. Stevenson, of Kentucky, on the street in front of the Arlington, a few days before the decision of the electoral tribunal. He put the case as it stood in his mind in the most vivid terms. He was a master of vituperative language, as you know, and he did not spare anybody; but more especially he put the matter as a question of law, and with more ability than I have ever heard it done by any one else, but I have not time within the confines of a letter to repeat what he said. Whether Mrs. Sprague was in Washington at this time I do not know.

"The only person on the Democratic side who communicated with Mr. Conkling was Senator William H. Barnum, of Connecticut, chairman of the Democratic National Executive Committee. Mr. Barnum talked to others, as he deemed it discreet, but we all thought it unwise that any one on our side should approach any one on the opposite side of politics, except Senator Barnum. During the afternoon of the day before the final vote was given in the Senate on the Louisiana case, Senator Stevenson, whose daughter was the wife of one of my partners, and who was until he died my very dear and honored friend, communicated to me, as having come to him from Senator Barnum, all the details of what I may call, for brevity's sake, 'this plot' to arrest the high-handed dealings of the Republicans, and I went to bed that night in full confidence that Mr. Tilden would be placed on a legal basis for inauguration to the Presidency in the morning. Eight (or nine) Senators had agreed with each other to cast their votes in the Senate so as to reverse the judgment of the electoral tribunal in the Louisiana case.

"When I came down to breakfast in the morning, William R. Pelton, Gov. Tilden's nephew, told me that 'the fat is all in the fire'; that at two o'clock in the morning one of the Senators, whose name, for reasons personal to myself and to him, I do not feel at liberty to use, had come to Senator Conkling and told him that he did not dare to go any further with the enterprise; that his political and perhaps his personal future would be ruined if he did not vote for Hayes. Conkling thereupon made up his mind that the game was lost, and took the earliest train to Baltimore, where he would, as Pelton said, spend the day, and where he did, as I afterwards learned, spend the day. Although I possessed Mr. Conkling's confidence and regard (I have a letter from him somewhere, couched in more earnest terms of gratitude than I ever received from any other human being), I never spoke with him on this subject. My information was derived entirely from Senator Stevenson and William T. Pelton, with the latter of whom I was, as I have already explained I was with the former, on terms of confidence.

"During this period I never heard Mrs. Sprague's name mentioned. I do not know whether she was in Washington or not. I was her father's friend, as you probably know, and I was her friend, and in the matter of the divorce from Gov. Sprague I was (with Winchester Britton, of Brooklyn) her counsel, and procured her divorce. I have had many consultations with both Pelton and his uncle upon various political and personal matters, but never heard this matter alluded to by either of them, or by Mrs. Sprague, and I do not believe that the story has any foundation in truth whatever. She knew perfectly well, for many years before she died, that I was a friend of Gov. Tilden's; that my wife and I both had enjoyed his personal hospitality, and knowing, as she did, my feelings towards her father, and having been her legal agent and representative, as I was, in association with the late Richard T. Merrick, in an attempt, which never came to daylight, to kill Judge Warden's grotesque biography of S. P. Chase, this is the first time I ever heard any interference of hers in the matter of the electoral tribunal even referred to. Mrs. Sprague has left children and friends who mourn over her sad fate and grieve at her death, and, among others,

"Geo. Hoadley.

"[Judge Hoadley's means of information are certainly unsurpassed. We accept his statement as conclusive on the point at issue.—ED. Evening Post.]"

It was currently rumored in the clubs, and even found expression in the public prints, that Mrs. Sprague, a daughter of Chief-Justice Chase, was influential in preventing Mr. Conkling from taking a stand in the Senate against the findings and decision of the electoral tribunal in favor of Mr. Hayes. As the report savored of scandal, it was, of course, rapidly circulated and heedlessly credited, though out of respect to all parties interested, the stories slumbered for many years until the means by which Mr. Hayes was inaugurated as President could be more dispassionately discussed than on the eve of the distribution of the patronage of a new administration. Fourteen years after Hayes' inauguration the scandal was revived for partisan purposes in part, and in part, presumably, in the interest of historic justice. A phase of the discussion at that time in the New York Evening Post provoked the foregoing letter from Hon. George Hoadley, ex-Governor of Ohio, which probably gives the most authentic information the country can ever expect to have of the mysterious and vacillating conduct of Mr. Conkling. My attention was called to it by the Hon. Smith Ely, formerly Mayor of New York, to whom I sent the following acknowledgment:

JOHN BIGELOW TO HON. SMITH ELY

"Highland-Falls-on-Hudson, June 19, 1904.

"My dear Mr. Ely,—I am extremely obliged to you for the clipping you sent me from the Evening Post. Though familiar with rumors of that nature, it is the first statement with any semblance of authenticity I have met with of the reasons why Conkling did not keep faith with our friends. I am not sure that Conkling himself did not weaken at the pinch as much as the recalcitrant Senator. Had he stood up on that occasion, as he should have done, he would have established for himself a reputation for virtues which no biographer can now claim for him.

"I do not remember the name of the Senator alluded to, because I never knew the fact. Was it Kernan?

"Yours truly.

"P. S.—Cannot you give us a candidate for the Presidency without making prostitutes of the judiciary?[18] When we made judges elective we went as far in that direction as was safe, and farther than was prudent. It was a perversion of the representative system when we submitted the choice of experts, like judges and district attorneys, to the popular vote. If we encourage judges to aspire to the Presidency the suitors for justice will have to take their check-books to court, and their cases will be argued, as they are said to be, before Turkish cadis.

"Yours Truly,
"John Bigelow."

About the middle of January, 1877, and before the Electoral Commission had given its decision, I received a telegram from Washington that a friend of the Honorable S. S. Cox, then a representative in Congress from New York city, wished to confer with me in reference to the Presidential contest pending in Washington. Cox's friend proved to be Mr. Corbin, a brother-in-law of President Grant. I replied to my correspondent that he might arrange for an interview with me anywhere in New York city except in Mr. Corbin's house, Corbin at that time having a residence in New York city.

It was arranged that we should meet at the Westminster Hotel, about noon, on the 27th of January. I had known something of Corbin through my relations with Colonel Benton many years before, and had become slightly acquainted with him. What I did know of him disinclined me to give him my confidence. I had no idea of the motive which led him to invite this interview. He had intimated to Mr. Cox that he would talk with me, but with no other of Mr. Tilden's friends. The grounds for his taking me into his confidence exclusively was equally unintelligible, beyond the fact that we had been political friends of long standing as common friends of Senator Thomas Benton, of Missouri.

He opened the interview by giving at considerable length what he regarded as evidence of Senator Sherman's expectation that his brother the general would have been nominated at Cincinnati in 1876 instead of President Hayes, and of the intrigues already making for the general's nomination of 1880. At length he proceeded to speak for and in the name of his brother-in-law, the President. He said Grant wished to retire with grace and honorably from his office, and had no special interest in the success of either of the candidates whose fate was depending upon the action of the Electoral Commission. He said that for himself he preferred Tilden forty times to Hayes, and that all the ladies of Grant's family were champions of Tilden. He wound up by saying that if he could be useful in letting the President's views be known to Governor Tilden, when they might serve a useful purpose, he would be glad to do so, and that that was the special purpose of his inviting this interview.

I said to him that in a contingency not difficult to imagine there might be two persons claiming a title to the White House on the 4th of March, one by the choice of the Senate, another by the choice of the House of Representatives, and that it would interest Governor Tilden very much to know whether General Grant would think it his duty to solve that problem with the sword, or leave it to the solution of time and events. Corbin replied that he would tell me what must not go beyond me and Governor Tilden. Some time ago, he said, Grant sent a number of boxes to his house at Elizabeth for safe-keeping, and in stating his intention to do so, he observed that as the inauguration would occur on Sunday at 12 M. he proposed to vacate the White House Saturday night; whoever, therefore, said Corbin, gets into it first will have a very substantial advantage. The President might perhaps stay in until the following day if sufficient reason were shown for so doing. But, said I, suppose our candidate gets the White House and the other gets the Capitol, what then? Corbin paused a little, and then said: "The keeper of the Capitol is under the control of the Commissioner of Public Buildings. The Commissioner of Public Buildings is an engineer officer, under the orders of Chief-Engineer Humphreys. The present Commissioner of Public Buildings is Babcock; like St. Paul, he is generally believed to have an eye 'to the recompense of reward.' Then, those Irish doorkeepers may be worth looking to." Such was the substance of an interview which occupied about two hours.

What may have prompted Corbin to take the trouble to come all the way from Washington to give me this hint, beyond a desire to give himself importance in the eyes of Mr. Tilden, and how far President Grant countenanced his mission, if he knew anything about it, are questions which I never troubled myself to solve. There is no doubt that President Grant thought Tilden had been elected, and found no satisfaction in the prospect of having Hayes for his successor; but if he had wished to convey to Mr. Tilden any intimation that he would find the White House vacant and ready for his occupation on the night of the 3d of March, I find it difficult to believe that he would have selected Corbin for his emissary. However that may be, neither Mr. Tilden nor myself thought his communication worthy of serious consideration.

On the second day of March the House of Representatives, by a vote of 137 to 88, adopted the preamble and resolutions which follow, declaring that Samuel J. Tilden had been duly elected President, and Thomas A. Hendricks duly elected Vice-President of the United States. If these 137 votes in favor of Tilden and Hendricks represented the requisite constitutional number of States in the Union, it is not easy to see what more was necessary to make the one President and the other Vice-President two days later than simply to take the oaths of office prescribed by the Constitution.

RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES DECLARING TILDEN THE PRESIDENT ELECTED

The following is the text of the declaration of the House of Representatives that Samuel J. Tilden has been duly elected President of the United States, and Thos. A. Hendricks Vice-President of the United States:

"whereas, It is not disputed that the electoral votes of the following-named States, to wit., Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia, amounting in all to 184, were in conformity to the Constitution and laws of the United States cast for Samuel J. Tilden, of the State of New York, for President, and for Thos. A. Hendricks, of the State of Indiana, for Vice-President of the United States, by legally qualified electors appointed by said States, and severally in the manner directed by the Legislatures of said States, lists of which said votes were duly signed, certified, and transmitted sealed by said electors respectively to the seat of government, directed to the president of the Senate and by him opened in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution of the United States; and

"Whereas, The evidence taken and reported to this House in pursuance of the orders thereof, shows conclusively that on the 7th day of November, in the year of our Lord 1876, the following-named persons, to wit., Wilkinson Call, J. E. Yonge, R. B. Hilton, and Robt. Bullock, each of whom was in all respects legally eligible and qualified to be appointed elector for President and Vice-President of the United States, were duly appointed electors by the State of Florida, in the manner directed by the Legislature of said State; and, whereas, the said Wilkinson Call, J. E. Yonge, R. B. Hilton, and Robert Bullock, after having been so appointed electors for President and Vice-President of the United States by said State of Florida, in the manner directed by the Legislature thereof, did, on the 6th day of December, in the year of our Lord 1876, meet in the city of Tallahassee, in the said State of Florida, that being the time and place fixed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and of the State of Florida, at which the electors appointed by said State should meet; and having so met, as the electors duly appointed by the State of Florida as aforesaid, did then and there, in pursuance of the Constitution and laws of the United States, cast by ballot four votes for Samuel J. Tilden, of the State of New York, for President of the United States, and in like manner cast four votes for said Thomas A. Hendricks, of the State of Indiana, for Vice-President of the United States, naming in separate and distinct ballots the person voted for by them for President and the person voted for by them for Vice-President, and then and there made distinct lists of the persons voted for by them for President and Vice-President of the United States, and of the number of votes cast for each, which lists were by said electors signed, certified, and transmitted by them sealed to the seat of government, directed to the president of the Senate, and by him opened in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution of the United States; and

"Whereas, The evidence taken and reported to this House, in pursuance of the order thereof, conclusively shows that on the 7th day of November, in the year of our Lord 1876, the following-named persons, to wit., John McEnery, R. C. Wickliffe, L. St. Martin, E. P. Poche, A. De Blanc, W. Seay, R. G. Cobb, K. A. Cross, each of whom was in all respects legally eligible and qualified to be appointed electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, were duly appointed electors by the State of Louisiana, in the manner provided by the Legislature of said State; and

"Whereas, The said John McEnery, R. C. Wickliffe, L. St. Martin, E. P. Poche, A. De Blanc, W. A. Seay, R. G. Cobb, K. A. Cross, after having been so appointed electors for President and Vice-President of the United States for the State of Louisiana, in the manner directed by the Legislature thereof, did, on the 6th day of December, in the year of our Lord 1876, meet in the city of New Orleans, in the said State of Louisiana, it being the time and place fixed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and of the said State of Louisiana, at which the electors appointed by the said State should meet, and having so met, did, then and there, as the electors duly appointed for the State of Louisiana, as aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws and Constitution of the United States, cast by ballot eight votes for Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, for President of the United States, and in like manner cast eight votes for Thomas A. Hendricks, of the State of Indiana, for Vice-President of the United States, naming in separate and distinct ballots the persons voted for by them for President, and the person voted for by them for Vice-President of the United States, and then and there made distinct lists of the persons voted for by them for President and Vice-President of the United States, and the number of votes cast for each, which lists were by said electors signed, certified, and transmitted by said electors sealed to the seat of government, directed to the president of the Senate, and by him opened in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution of the United States; and

"Whereas, The evidence taken and reported to the House in pursuance of the orders thereof, shows conclusively that certain persons who pretended to have been appointed electors by the State of Florida, and who pretended as such to cast four votes for Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, for President of the United States, and four votes for William A. Wheeler, of New York, for Vice-President of the United States, to wit., F. C. Humphreys, C. H. Pearce, W. H. Holden, and T. W. Long, who were not appointed by the State of Florida, but were falsely and fraudulently declared elected, when in truth they had each and every one of them been defeated by a clear majority, as was well known by the then Governor of Florida and the other canvassing officers of that State, who falsely and fraudulently made such declaration; and

"Whereas, The evidence taken and reported to this House in pursuance of the orders, further shows conclusively that certain persons, namely, William Pitt Kellogg, J. H. Burch, Peter Joseph, Lionel A. Sheldon, Morris Marks, A. B. Levisee, O. H. Brewster, and Oscar Joffrion, were falsely, fraudulently, and corruptly declared to have been appointed electors by the State of Louisiana, and did falsely, fraudulently, and corruptly pretend to cast eight votes for Rutherford B. Hayes for President, and eight votes for William A. Wheeler for Vice-President of the United States, when in truth and in fact they had never been appointed electors by the said State of Louisiana, but had been defeated by a majority of several thousands of the legally qualified voters of said State, at a fair, peaceful, and legally conducted election, held in pursuance of the law of said State, all of which was well known to the Board of Returning Officers, who made the false, fraudulent, and corrupt declaration of their pretended appointment as electors, and who, under the Constitution and laws of the said State of Louisiana, had no jurisdiction or authority to make any such declaration or statement; and

"Whereas, The pretended votes were given by F. C. Humphreys, Charles H. Pearce, William H. Holden, T. W. Long, William Pitt Kellogg, J. H. Burch, Peter Joseph, Lionel A. Sheldon, Morris Marks, Aaron B. Levisee, O. H. Brewster, and Oscar Joffrion, electors, now, therefore, in view of the foregoing facts, the truth of which is attested by an overwhelming array of sworn testimony, as well as by the intelligence of the American people,

"Resolved, By the House of Representatives of the United States of America, that it is the duty of the House to declare, and this House does hereby solemnly declare, that Samuel J. Tilden, of the State of New York, received 196 electoral votes for the office of President of the United States, all of which votes were cast and lists thereof signed, certified, and transmitted to the seat of government, directed to the president of the Senate, in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States, by electors legally eligible and qualified as such electors, each of whom had been duly appointed and elected, in the manner directed by the Legislature of the State in and for which he cast his vote as aforesaid; and that said Samuel J. Tilden, having thus received the votes of a majority of the electors appointed as aforesaid, he was thereby duly elected President of the United States of America for the term of four years, commencing on the 4th day of March, A.D. 1877.

"And this House further declares that Thomas A. Hendricks, having received the same number of the electoral votes for the office of Vice-President of the United States that were cast for Samuel J. Tilden for President, as aforesaid, the said votes having been cast for him by the same persons who voted for the said Tilden for President, as aforesaid, and at the same time and in the same manner, it is the opinion of this House that said Thomas A. Hendricks, of the State of Indiana, was duly elected Vice-President of the United States for a term of four years, commencing on the 4th day of March, A.D. 1877."

H. A. POPE TO TILDEN

"Columbus, Miss., Jany. 8, '77.

"Hon. Saml. J. Tilden.

"Sir,—Although a citizen in private life, I, nevertheless, feel, I trust, as profound interest as any one in the welfare of our common country. In its life it has had crises, but none more alarming since '60 than that which grows out of the Presidential election between you and Gen. Hayes.

"Of your election I do not entertain a doubt; and it were simply to render our beautiful system of self-government on the part of the people a burlesque and reproach to allow a set of gambling politicians to set at defiance the expressed will of the sovereign people.

"Of course we of the South are powerless in the premises, and were it otherwise I am not prepared altogether to suggest the proper course. At this critical juncture peace is more than ever a social and political necessity. But, then, how can we ever expect to preserve constitutional liberty if such a precedent—so violative and destructive of the distinctive and peculiar feature of our more peculiar system of govt., submission to the legally expressed will of the majority—is tolerated.

"To you, sir, I look for counsel, and I trust you will be endowed with more than your recognized distinguished sagacity.

"I have been very much surprised, and not a little amused, at the contradictory opinions which even the learned in the law and governmental science have given both as to the law and practice in the case of the counting of the electoral votes, and as to the ultimate tribunal known to the Constitution as the final arbiter in the premises. Cushing, the learned parliamentarian, and no mean statesman, has gone so far as to intimate Gen. Grant could, under certain circumstances which may exist, hold over after the 4th of March next and continuously—till, indeed, the succession transpires; and so teaches Senator Bogy in a speech in St. Louis.

"A fearful and most dangerous suggestion, verily! And amazing that it should ever have found lodgment and utterance from so distinguished a source. But it has not the semblance of law or the slightest approach to truth in it.

"Cushing reasons from analogy, and says because officers in many of the States hold over till their successors are installed he therefore sees no reason why Gen. Grant should not do so.

"The ready answer to this opinion, however, is very plain and fatal to the force implied in it. In the case of the State officer, he acts in the instance mentioned by express authority of law. But in the case of the President, he is elected for a term of four years, no more or less, and there being no enabling act authorizing him to protract the term a moment beyond the limitation mentioned, should he do so he would be a usurper and deserve death as such at the hands of any citizen. In the cases you at once see there is no analogy whatever, and hence Cushing is certainly mistaken. As to the force and aspect of the 22d rule or any other rule or rules, about which a volume has been written, in solving adverse views, a word or two disposes of them. They are these modes of procedure—centures of the private action of both Houses of Congress, adopted for their convenience and the harmonious despatch of business. But they are dead letters if they contravene the Constitution of the U. S. or attempt to execute any of its requirements.

"Laws are required for the purpose, and not rules. Laws to which all the departments of legislation are necessarily, by law, parties—Congress and the Executive.

"As rules, moreover, they bind only the particular Congress adopting them; and do not lap over, save by acquiescence, express or implied. Hence, as I've said, the 22d rule is dead till revived as suggested, and has therefore no application to the case between you and Hayes.

"But to the general issue. In the event it should be formed from any cause, real or supposed, and purely in the opinion and discretion of Congress, neither you nor Mr. Hayes has the requisite number of 185 electoral votes required to confer the office, then to my apprehension the 12th amendment becomes the law of the case—exclusively and supremely so.

"You are familiar with it.

"It refers the whole question to Congress, and if, upon a review of the facts in the case, if it should decide there has been no election and the two Houses can't agree that there has been, whether the disagreement is real or feigned, then the House must choose the President and the Senate the Vice-President.

"If you will carefully consider the amendment, with the history of the question of electing the President in the Madison papers, you will, I think, agree with me that Congress is empowered with power similar to the omnipotence of Parliament in the premises considered.

"When I remember the House is Democratic I rejoice greatly at the fact, and esteem it most fortunate for the whole country, for your election is certain.

"Although, sir, a very stranger to you, I am, nevertheless, a lover of my whole country—desire peace and the prevalence of law and order, and the perpetuation of constitutional liberty. And with the hope, possibly, of exciting in your mind a new and perhaps valuable train of thought upon the subject, I have ventured to write.

"If you find anything worthy of your consideration I shall be gratified to know.

"With the greatest respect and prayers for the prolongation of your life, I am,

"Your obt. Servt.,
"H. A. Pope."

W. C. P. BRECKENRIDGE TO G. W. MORGAN

"Lexington, Ky., Jan. 13th, 1877.

"My dear General,—I am requested to invite you to meet a few gentlemen of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and possibly Tennessee, at the Galt House on the evening of the 17th instant, the evening before our State convention. It is proposed to have such conference for the purpose of agreement. May I trouble you to let me know if you can be present? I will be here until the night of the 16th, and then at the Galt House.

"Yours truly,
"Wm. C. P. Breckenridge.

"General George W. Morgan."

GEO. W. MORGAN TO TILDEN

(ABOUT INSIDE HISTORY OF LATE CONVENTION)

"Mount Vernon, Ohio, Jan. 15, 1877.

"My dear Mr. President,—A word as to the inside history of our late convention. Knowing the temper of our people, as a precaution against extreme action I wrote to Governor Allen, and to Hancock, of Texas, asking for letters which I could use in committee on resolutions by way of modifying of the wild advice which was certain to be given. Allen answered: 'In the present condition of things, threats of force and war would, in my judgment, very greatly prejudice our cause.'

"Hancock answered by a long letter, conservative in its tone. In conclusion he said: 'It is inconsistent with the genius of our institutions that any official position should be attained by force of arms. A result so accomplished would be a sad commentary on our statesmanship, and nothing but a correction by the people through peaceful modes would prevent our becoming Mexicanized, and the loss of republican government.'

"I read these letters to the committee. To the letter of Allen no comment was made, but Mr. Hancock's was objected to by Mr. Hurd on the ground that Hancock had been a Union man in Texas during the war. It was desired that either Mr. Cook or myself should be chairman of the committee. He declined on the ground of ill-health, and I foresaw that the tone of the resolutions was likely to be extreme.

"A sub-committee, composed of White, Heisley, Ewing, Vance, and myself, was appointed to report resolutions for the action of the full committee. The first and fifth resolutions were mine. The third was drawn by Alex. Long or Hurd. Heisley moved to strike out of that resolution all after 'will be resisted by the people.' The vote stood:

"Ayes—Heisley and Morgan.

"Noes—Ewing, Vance, and White.

"Ewing then moved to strike out all after the words 'last extremity.' The vote stood:

"Ayes—Ewing, Heisley, and Morgan.

"Noes—White and Vance.

"When the sub-committee reported to the committee, Hurd moved to amend by adding after the words 'last extremity' the words, 'even to an appeal to arms.' In the mean time Ward had been called away to preside over the convention, and some one else withdrew. The vote was nine for the amendment, eight against it. The resolution as to the national convention would have been carried by the same vote, but after a declaration in favor of an appeal to arms it was allowed to go by default. All of the speeches but my own were written and in type before the convention met. The convention struck up the 'Marseillaise,' and I took step to the music.

"I still have strong hopes of your inauguration, and if you are not our country will be in peril.

"With great respect,

Truly yours,
"George W. Morgan."

GEORGE W. MORGAN TO HON. W. C. P. BRECKENRIDGE

"Mount Vernon, Ohio, Jan. 16th, 1877.

"Dear Sir,—From some cause yours of the 13th instant has only this morning been received. My engagements are such as to prevent me from being with you to-morrow. All movements, political or otherwise, must have a recognized leader. Mr. Tilden is ours. I have reason to believe that the action of our convention went beyond his wishes. Mr. Pelton wrote to me just before our convention, and not long since I had a note from Mr. Hewitt. The tone of both indicate a policy less pronounced than that taken by Ohio.

"The last clause of our third resolution was adopted by one majority, and would have been rejected had not two of the committee been absent when the vote was taken. I regret that I cannot have a full exchange of views with the gentlemen to be present. My judgment is that we should defer to the views of Messrs. Tilden and Hendricks.

"Truly y'rs,
"George W. Morgan.

"Hon. W. C. P. Breckenridge."

CHARLES F. ADAMS TO TILDEN

"31 Pemberton Square, Boston, 16th Jan., 1877.

"My dear Mr. Tilden,—You must excuse me for failing to call on you at 11 o'cl. Monday, as you requested. The snow-storm worked a very sudden change in my plans, and I hurriedly took the morning train for Boston instead of the afternoon, as I intended.

"For the object I had in view, however, my failure to see you again is of little consequence. Mr. Godwin is fully possessed of my views, and, if they are worth anything, can present them to you.

"The point can be stated in a few words. I am impressed with the idea that the true lead to get us out of our present complication should come from the two Presidential candidates, and not from irresponsible gatherings or a Congressional town-meeting. If the candidates could agree on a practical way out of the trouble, and unite in jointly recommending it to Congress and the country, its adoption would seem inevitable. To bring this about the candidates must be put in communication with each other, the way for which is rendered perfectly simple and obvious through the friendly relations still existing between those who joined in the 5th Avenue conference of last spring.

"My own view is that nothing will satisfactorily settle this question but an appeal to the ballot. The simple, fundamental, direct, democratic appeal to the one great tribunal. If the two candidates would unite in asking to have the people decide between them the path would be plain. But I will not dilate on this, as, if you want my views in detail, Mr. Godwin can give them to you.

"Begging you again to excuse my failure to call upon you, I remain, etc.,

"Very respectfully, &c.,
"Charles F. Adams, Jr."

LOUISE LIVINGSTON HUNT TO TILDEN

"(Jan. 21, '77.)

"Dear Governor Tilden,—I have just received a letter from my brother in New Orleans, a portion of which I copy, because I feel sure it will interest you as an evidence of the genuine feeling at present in Louisiana.

"He says: 'Our people are in an admirable temper, and will do their whole duty. You will find Nichols all that you pronounce him, and I agree with you in thinking he has outshone even Hampton. The latter made a bad mistake in writing to the Pretender Hayes. Has not Mr. Tilden proved himself? Has he not led the South with consummate success until she has for the first time a fair prospect? He has, God bless him for it, shown the whole country a new future, and aroused in it the ancient spirit of truth and courage and zeal for liberty. Nowhere has he been stronger than in his perception of the capacity and will of the people, in his faith in their public virtue and attachment to free government, which ever did and ever must depend upon an honest count of the ballots lawfully cast. The change you observe in public opinion announcing his expected appearance in the Presidency will continue to grow until he is borne where he merits to be—into his great office.'

"How I wish, instead of being only a woman at such a time as this, that I were a Senator or member, endowed with the bold spirit and overruling genius of your own great ancestor! There would be quick work with the present Congress at Washington!

"Forgive me if my letter makes the one-hundredth-and-one of the day; it requires no answer. One word more before I stop. On reflection, I am certain my Uncle Randall alluded to the fact that I was the favorite niece of Mrs. Edward Livingston, my grandaunt, who died not many years since, at a very advanced age. I was very stupid not to think of this solution to the problem at once.

"Very truly yours,
"Louise Livingston Hunt."

THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION AND MR. TILDEN

The following statement, in the handwriting of George W. Smith, Mr. Tilden's private secretary, was from Mr. Tilden's dictation:

"Mr. Tilden's views of the policy which the Democratic party in Congress ought to pursue in respect to the counting of the electoral votes cast for President and Vice-President in 1876 were perfectly defined and freely expressed to all who consulted him long before the meeting of Congress in December of that year. It was to stand firmly and inflexibly on the unbroken series of precedents formed by the twenty-two Presidential counts from 1793 to 1872.

"While the committees of investigation in respect to Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, appointed by the House of Representatives, were engaged in their duties, Mr. Tilden caused a collection of all those precedents to be made and printed. At his request the Hon. John Bigelow prepared an analytical and expository introduction which was prefixed to this volume, and they were printed together by the Messrs. Appleton in the latter part of December, 1876. Mr. Marble assisted in preparing an appendix to the introduction, containing citations of authorities on the various points. This introduction was also issued separately and used in large numbers by the Democratic National Committee. It presents a clear, strong, and well-fortified statement of the position which Mr. Tilden thought the Democratic party ought to assume.

"On the 22d December two committees of the House of Representatives were appointed: the first on the powers and privileges of the House of Representatives in respect to counting electoral votes; the second to confer with a committee of the Senate on the same subject. The Congressional Record of that date contains the following entry:

"'Committee to ascertain and report what are the privileges, powers, and duties of the House of Representatives in counting the votes for President and Vice-President of the United States: Mr. Knott, of Kentucky; Mr. Sparks, of Illinois; Mr. ——, of Virginia; Mr. ——, of Pennsylvania; Mr. Burchard, of Illinois; Mr. Seelye, of Massachusetts; and Mr. Monroe, of Ohio.

"'Committee to meet with the Senate committee as to the counting of the electoral votes for President and Vice-President: Mr. Payne, of Ohio; Mr. Hunton, of Virginia; Mr. Hewitt, of New York; Mr. Springer, of Illinois; Mr. McCrary, of Iowa; Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts; and Mr. Willard, of Michigan.'

"During the Christmas holidays, and for some days after the 1st of January, leading members of the House of Representatives were in New York and had interviews with Mr. Tilden. He was frank, open, and earnest in his conversations with them, and with many others, in advocating the making of an issue first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate. He was for asserting, by formal resolution, the exclusive right of the two Houses acting concurrently to count the electoral vote and determine what should be counted as electoral votes, and for denying, also by formal resolution, the pretension then set up by the Republicans, that the president of the Senate had any lawful or constitutional right to assume that function. He was for urging that issue in debate in both Houses and before the country. He thought that if the attempt should be really made to usurp for the president of the Senate a power to make the count and thus practically control the Presidential election, the scheme would break down in process of execution, and that, in any event, it was in the interest of popular elective government not to yield to the menace of usurpation, all which actual usurpation could take for itself if completely successful.

"On the request of some member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Tilden himself drew two resolutions for the purpose of making this issue. The Democratic members of the Committee on Privileges, &c., found themselves best able to agree on the simplest form of asserting their principles and deemed that most expedient. Resolutions of that character were prepared by them, transmitted to Mr. Tilden for his advice, and returned with his approval. These resolutions were reported by the Hon. Proctor Knott, chairman of the committee. They will be found in the Congressional Record of Jan. 12, 1877. They are as follows:

"This policy seemed to have been generally agreed upon by the Democratic members of the House of Representatives, and it had been recommended persistently by Mr. Tilden for weeks to all who consulted him upon the subject.

"On the afternoon of Friday the 12th of January, Senator Barnum, passing through New York on his way home for the purpose of getting his family to take them to Washington on the following Tuesday, called on Mr. Tilden and expressed his conviction that a majority of the Senators would concur in denying the right of the president of the Senate to make the count. He had not heard a word of the proposed electoral contrivance. It was afterwards ascertained that the Democratic Senator from New York had been left in equal ignorance.

"On the evening of Saturday, 13th of January, Mr. Marble called on Mr. Tilden, found him in receipt of the McCrary House bill with the amendments proposed by Mr. Hewitt, and a letter from Mr. Hewitt informing him that his counsel would be asked the next day about this bill. Mr. Tilden and Mr. Marble sat late into the night analyzing it. Mr. Tilden invited Mr. Marble to come the next day when Mr. Hewitt should be there to consider this bill, which was supposed to be the axis upon which the deliberations of the House were revolving.

"Mr. Marble was therefore present on the following day, which was the 14th of January, when Mr. Tilden received from Mr. Hewitt his first information that the other measures had been abandoned, and that the subject upon which he wished to confer was the Electoral bill.

"Before he read the new bill Mr. Tilden was told that the Democratic members of the Senate committee were already absolutely committed to this bill, and would concur with the Republican members of the committee in reporting it to the Senate whether the House committee should concur or not.

"'Is it not rather late, then, to consult me?' said Mr. Tilden.

"'They do not consult you,' replied Mr. Hewitt. 'They are public men and have their own duties and responsibilities. I consult you.'

"The examination and analysis of the bill then proceeded. Mr. Tilden said, in the progress of the conference, 'I can't advise you to agree to the bill. I will advise you as to its details.'

"In respect to the provision by which six judges were to be described in the bill and one of them to be eliminated by lot, Mr. Tilden said, emphatically, 'I may lose the Presidency, but I will not raffle for it.'

"Mr. Tilden further said, if an arbitration were to be adopted, the tribunal ought to be fixed in the bill itself and not left to chance or intrigue.

"He said, also, that if an arbitration were to be adopted, the duty of the arbitrators to investigate and decide the case on its merits should be made mandatory and not left as a question of construction.

"With both the vital points, the choice of men to compose the tribunal and a function to be performed by the tribunal, left at loose ends, he treated the whole thing as a sort of gamble.

"In the course of the discussion Mr. Tilden said: 'If you go into a conference with your adversary and can't break off because you feel you must agree to something you cannot negotiate—you are not fit to negotiate. You will be beaten upon every detail.'

"Replying to the apprehensions of a collision of force with the executive, Mr. Tilden thought them exaggerated, but said: 'Why surrender now? You can always surrender. Why surrender before the battle, for fear you may have to surrender after the battle is over?'

"Mr. Tilden was pressed to say that if the bill could be modified so as to fix the five judges by a position provision, he would give it his approval, and it was urged that a modification could not succeed unless it was stated that that would make the bill acceptable. He firmly declined.

"Mr. Hewitt stated that the committees of the two Houses were to meet that evening at the house of Senator Bayard, and that he was expected to telegraph them the result of his interview.

"It was perfectly evident that what was sought was not Mr. Tilden's advice, but Mr. Tilden's adhesion. His refusal to give it caused the meeting for that evening to fall through.

"Mr. Tilden condemned the proposed action as precipitate. It was a month before the time for the count, and he saw no reason why there should not be an opportunity afforded for consideration and consultation by the representatives of the people. He treated it as a panic in which they were liable to act in haste and repent at leisure. He did not ask any time for himself or time to decide what he would do in respect to the proposed means. He never for a moment evinced the slightest hesitation or doubt about that; he was clear and inflexible, but he advised more deliberation upon the part of those who were to act in Washington. He believed in publicity and discussion and a wider consultation. He had an inherent and incurable distrust of the scheme, and has frequently said since that so great a stake as the government of forty millions of people with immense civil expenditures and a hundred thousand office-holders to be disposed of by a small body sitting in the Capitol would become the sport of intrigue or fraud.

"Mr. Tilden also disapproved of the secrecy with which the proceedings were shrouded. He thought it unwise to compromise the rights of the members of the two Houses without consulting them, by taking a hasty step which left no different policy practicable than the one thus imposed. Two days later, in a telegram to Mr. Hewitt, he expressed himself again and decidedly on this subject.

"In the whole of this conference Mr. Tilden was never asked to advise what the two committees should do jointly or what the Senate committee should do. He was expressly and repeatedly told that the Senate committee, including the Democratic members, Messrs. Bayard, Thurman, and Ransom, had already determined upon their course whatever his advice or wishes might be. The difficulty on the part of the House committee, in carrying out an independent policy, was pressed upon him as a reason for advising their acquiescence. No argument or persuasion could extract from him a word of personal sanction to the scheme. If, however, it was to be adopted, if it was a foregone conclusion, he manifested a desire that the provisions of the bill should be made to operate as much good and as little mischief as possible, both in their legal effect and in the manner of their execution. He was willing to advise and help in respect to specific provisions, but took care, in doing so, not incidentally to adopt the bill.

"The next day, Jan. 15th, Mr. Hewitt telegraphed from Washington to Mr. Edward Cooper:

"'Washington, Jany. 15, 187-.

"'To E. C.

"'The Senate committee will probably reject five- and report six-judge plan immediately. Our Senators feel committed to concur. House committee will not concur, and for present will probably not report.'

"The answer was as follows:

"'N. Y. Jany. 15, 187-.

"'To A. S. H.

"'Procrastinate to give few days for information and consultation. The six-judge proposition inadmissible.

"'E. C.'

"On the following day Mr. Hewitt telegraphed again:

"'Washington, Jany. 16, 187-.

"'To E. C.

"'After protracted negotiations Senator receded from six-judge. Declined five-judge and offered four senior associate justices who are to choose the fifth judge excluding chief justice. Our Senate friends earnestly favor acceptance, because they don't believe it possible to pass over Field. The Democrats on the House committee believe this is the last chance of agreement. We cannot postpone beyond eleven to-morrow, and if we decline Senate committee will report their original plan to which our friends are committed. Telegraph your advice.'

"To this telegram the following answer was sent:

"'N. Y., Jany. 17, 2 a.m.

"'Be firm and cool. Four-judge plan will not do. Perhaps worse than six. Complaints likely to arise of haste and want of consultation with members, and embarrassment in exercise of their judgment after plan is disclosed by premature committal of their representatives. There should be more opportunity for deliberation and consultation. Secrecy dangerous; probably mistake in itself, and if it results in disaster would involve great blame and infinite mischief.'

"In the evening of Tuesday, the 16th of January, Mr. Marble went to see Mr. Tilden and found him in his library. Several other gentlemen were present. The foregoing telegrams were read. The situation was freely canvassed. In their presence, Mr. Tilden dictated another and longer telegram, which was sent to the committee-room for transmission to Washington. As it was translated into cypher at the committee rooms and had to be retranslated at Washington, it was not delivered until after the committees had taken definitive action. It was not addressed to Mr. Hewitt and therefore was not seen by him. The only value of this telegram now is as a record made at the time in the presence of half a dozen well-known gentlemen, of Mr. Tilden's views, similar to those he had habitually expressed and somewhat fuller than in the other telegrams.