1876 (52 page)

The ceremony’s early stages differed in no way from the usual quadrennial joint session of Congress that receives the Electoral College’s confirmation of the popular vote for President.

In alphabetic order the roll of the states was called, beginning with Alabama. The returns from each state are given to the president of the Senate, who then gives them to the tellers, who announce the vote and prepare the ultimate tally. During the votes of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Delaware, members of Congress, distinguished visitors, and journalists all talked amongst themselves, drowning out the tellers’ announcements of each state’s vote. But with the naming of Florida the voices stopped, and there was absolute silence in the chamber.

Senator Ferry tugged at his beard; cleared his throat. “The chair”—the voice was loud—“hands the tellers a certificate from the State of Florida, received by messenger, and the corresponding one by mail.”

The teller came forward and took the documents from the President of the Senate. In an equally loud voice the teller announced that Florida’s four electoral votes for president and vice president had been cast for Hayes and Wheeler.

The Republican Senator Ferry looked for a moment satisfied. The room was silent, expectant. Then, looking
dis
satisfied, Senator Ferry gave one of the tellers a second set of returns, and we were told that Florida’s four votes had been cast in favour of Tilden and Hendricks.

For what seemed to be a long time, there was silence. Then Ferry asked, almost casually, “Are there any objections to these certificates from the State of Florida?”

A sudden roar from every side of the chamber, and the battle was joined. Members of both houses were on their feet. Finally a New York congressman was recognized. He objected to the returns favouring Hayes. A Californian and an Iowan each objected to the returns favouring Tilden.

The President of the Senate then asked, “Are there any further objections?” Hearing none, Senator Ferry referred the matter to the electoral commission, vacated his throne, and led his fellow senators from the chamber. So the curtain fell on Act One.

During the week since the electoral commission was given the two (actually, because of a technicality, three) sets of Florida returns, things did not appear to go well for us despite the brilliance of Charles O’Conor.

For one thing, the commission has never seriously tried to examine any of the initial voting frauds in Florida. The Republican case is based on the fact that the Hayes returns are the only valid ones because they have been signed by the carpetbag Republican governor of the state, while those favouring Tilden were only signed by the state’s attorney general. For a whole week the number of angels able to dance on that pin’s head have been counted and re-counted. All in all, it has been a discouraging time until tonight—Wednesday, February 7—or, rather, this morning, February 8.

I have just come from a late supper at the house of Hewitt. Tomorrow—today—the commission votes for the first time on whether or not to go behind the returns. Everything hinges on Bradley. If he votes with the Democrats to go behind the returns, Tilden is elected.

Two hours ago, after supper, Hewitt sent a common friend named Stevens to talk to Bradley.

Stevens returned with good news. “Bradley read me his opinion. He thinks the commission is obliged to go behind the returns.”

“And Florida’s electoral votes?” asked Hewitt, kneading his stomach in a positive ecstasy of dyspeptic contraction.

“Belong to Tilden!”

“Then we’ve won.” Hewitt let go his stomach, and offered us champagne.

I shall sleep well tonight.

FEBRUARY 8.

According to Nordhoff, right after Stevens left Bradley, the Republican Senator Frelinghuysen (a member of the electoral commission) and Secretary of the Navy Robeson arrived at Bradley’s house. Both are fellow New Jerseyans and friends. The railroad interests were also heard from, the flag was appealed to, and Mrs. Bradley is reported to have wept when she begged her husband to support Hayes (how Nordhoff finds out these things I do not know).

In any case, whether or not Nordhoff’s information is correct, it is a fact that Bradley today voted
against
going behind the returns.

The seven partisan Republicans are now eight partisan Republicans versus seven partisan Democrats,

Hewitt is stunned. “Something—or someone—changed Bradley’s mind,” he said to me, “between midnight and sunrise.”

FEBRUARY 10. The electoral commission met
in camera
for most of the day. They have just now announced that they have accepted the Hayes electors from Florida. The vote was eight to seven. Bradley has sold out.

Nordhoff is curious what form the thirty pieces of silver took. “I hear he was paid two hundred thousand dollars to change his vote. But that,” Nordhoff admitted, “is unsubstantiated gossip.”

Each newspaper responds to the scandal in its own characteristic way. The
Times
lauds the noble Bradley. The
Sun
hints ominously at money changing hands and reminds the nation of Bradley’s corruption: when he was a West Texas circuit judge, he was bought by the railroad interests. The fifth judge is not Bradley, according to the
Sun
, but the Texas Pacific railroad who will award the presidency to Hayes. The
Sun
says that seventeen carriages containing Republican leaders and Texas Pacific railway men converged on Bradley’s house after Stevens’s departure.

February 16. The electoral commission has accepted the Hayes electors for Louisiana. The vote: eight to seven.

A few days ago Bradley admitted to Hewitt that he had indeed written an opinion favouring Florida’s Tilden electors, but that this was no more than his usual practise as a judge. Apparently Bradley often writes two opinions, one for and one against. How he arrives at his ultimate opinion he regards as no one’s business.

One of Bradley’s fellow Supreme Court Justices on the commission told Nordhoff, privately: “What Bradley says is nonsense. You don’t need to write two opinions as to whether or not to go behind the returns. The arguments were all set before us. So either you behave morally, or you don’t.”

“Tilden or Blood!” Someone is shouting below my window. But there is only silence from Gramercy Park.

Meanwhile Grant has called out the troops (to defend the Capitol?), and soldiers are constantly, pointedly on display. Recently an overwrought local journalist wrote that if Hayes were to go in safety from White House to Capitol for his inauguration, then the people of this country are indeed fit for slavery. This morning the journalist was arrested. The government has indicted him for sedition.

“Tilden or Blood!” I now favour the second if we are to be, by conspiracy, denied the first.

February 19. The commission’s recommendation that the Hayes electors for Louisiana be accepted was passed in a stormy session of the Congress.

Two Republican members of the House voted against their own party, maintaining fraud.

The roll of the states continued after Louisiana until Oregon ...

I HAVE NOT HAD THE HEART to write in this book since I received, on the evening of February 19, the following telegram:
“Denise died this morning we are all devastated her son survives the funeral is tomorrow here on the plantation my love and shared anguish Emma.”

I suppose it is in the nature of things that, as one ages, one is obliged to witness the gradual loss of all that one has ever cared for until the laggard self slips into what is, at the end, an altogether commonplace and so common darkness.

I have telegraphed condolences to Sanford, to Emma.

I feel as if it were Emma who had died.

I persevere for the
Herald
, for Tilden, for my own ... but it is absurd to write the word “future” now. Nothing
will
be ever again; and what has been is all that’s left.

To date, March 2, I have still received no letter from Emma—only a second telegram to say that she will be at the Fifth Avenue Hotel March 5.

I do my best not to think of Denise. Fortunately, there is a good deal to distract one here as, one by one, the pretensions of this ludicrous republic collapse into ruins.

Tilden was originally thought to have won Oregon. But, perhaps legitimately, his 500-vote majority vanished and the state’s three electoral votes went to Hayes. But the law says that no state elector can be an officeholder. Since one of Oregon’s three electors for Hayes is a postmaster, he has been forced to withdraw. The Democratic governor of the state then appointed a new elector who is pledged to Tilden, providing that the Democrats are as devoted to fraud as the Republicans.

During this squalid contest the Southern Democrats in Congress are daily wooed by the Republican leadership in tandem with the railroad interests, and a number of those wooed have been won.

Two conditions exacted by the Southern Democrats. One, Hayes has agreed to appoint two Southerners to his Cabinet. (Nordhoff thinks this an excellent idea; he has also confessed to me that he has been in correspondence with Hayes since last summer. “A weak but honest man. I voted against him of course, but even so ...”) Two, the Republicans agree to remove all Federal troops from those Southern states that are still “unreconstructed.”

Even more compelling than the Republican politicians are the railroad lobbyists; they swarm through the Capitol like maggots through a cheese, openly buying Southern votes for Hayes (they fear reform; they fear Tilden). They are even trying to push their own special legislature through a Congress supposedly dedicated to the sublime task of electing a president.

From about February 19 on, the tide has been turning in favour of Hayes. Tilden may have won the election, but the party that has been in power for sixteen years has no intention of surrendering the presidency. Aside from the buying of Bradley (and God—or the Texas Pacific railroad—alone knows how many members of Congress), the Republicans constantly wave the bloody shirt of rebellion. Daily the nation is reminded that the Democratic party having once gone into rebellion might do so again.

Simultaneously, the rulers praise those “good” Southern statesmen who do not want to see the precious Union, for whom so many died, torn once again asunder by civil war. Even Jamie has been taken in by the atrocious rhetoric. A few days ago he praised the Southern members of Congress for their “patriotic submission.”

On February 24 the Speaker of the House, Mr. Randall, joined the Southern Democrats for Hayes. Hewitt then rose and denounced the electoral commission as a fraud; nevertheless, he was forced to admit that this prolonged political crisis is having a bad effect on every aspect of American life, particularly on the nation’s business. In other words, four years of Hayes is better than four years of civil war.

On February 27 a number of Southern Democrats met with the Republican leadership in a suite at Wormley’s Hotel. The next day the Associated Press gave the official version of the meeting which, amongst other things, emphasized that Hayes would support the claims of the
Democratic
candidate for governor of Louisiana!

Nordhoff tells me that Garfield was present at the meeting, and that he had the grace to be appalled. In fact, he left early. Yet he is to be well rewarded. He is to be made Speaker of the House, with the support of the Southern Democrats.

“Even so,” said Nordhoff, “there he is, one of the electoral commissioners who is on record as saying that the Republicans won Louisiana. Now, to get Hayes elected, he’s forced to say that the Democrats really did carry the state after all. Oh, it was a precious bargain!”

On February 28, as the votes of Vermont were being recorded for Hayes, someone asked (out of curiosity?) if there had been any other returns from that state.

Hewitt sprang to his feet, waving a thick envelope in the best Blaine tradition. “I hold in my hand a package which purports to contain electoral votes from the State of Vermont. This package was delivered to me by express about the middle of December last.” Apparently a similar package had been sent the President of the Senate, who denied to Hewitt he had received it. “I then tendered him this package, the seals of which are unbroken. He declined to receive it!” Much shouting and confusion at this point.

Nordhoff explained. “One of the three Hayes electors is—what else?—a postmaster. So he has to be disqualified. Those returns that came to Hewitt were sent by the Democratic elector who lost the election but now claims he won it because his rival was ineligible.”

“Nonsense, then?”

“Not if there was more time. Tilden needs only one out of the twenty disputed votes. This could be it.”

The joint session divided to consider the matter of the Vermont returns.

MARCH 1. The joint session has now sat continuously for eighteen hours. Without a doubt, it has been the stormiest and most confusing session in the country’s history. The galleries are packed with noisy partisans. The floor is so crowded with lobbyists that at times the members of the Congress are outnumbered by their masters. Around midnight whisky bottles appeared openly. Around one in the morning, a revolver or two was noted.

The mood of the joint session was not improved when it was discovered that Hewitt’s Vermont returns had been mislaid. For some weeks now, a continuing filibuster has stopped dead the work of the election.

Finally a Louisiana congressman named Levy took the floor and asked his fellow Southerners to continue with the count of the states because, “I have solemn, earnest and, I believe, truthful assurances ... of a policy of conciliation toward the Southern states ... in the event of Hayes’s election to the presidency.” A removal of all Federal troops from the South has been guaranteed not only by Hayes but, yesterday, by Grant himself. The deal has been made.

I sat with Nordhoff until the joint session of Congress ended at 4:10 a.m., this morning, Friday, March 2, 1877.