_PUCK, October 13th, 1880._
During the Presidential campaign of 1880, which ended in the
election of Mr. Garfield, Mr. R. B. Hayes, then the incumbent of the
Presidential chair, was treated with studied neglect and coldness by
the leaders of his own party. Although General Grant had failed to get
the nomination at the Chicago convention, in spite of the vigorous
efforts of Mr. Roscoe Conkling, the ex-President and his ally were
prominent in the campaign on their own account.
“They speak at mass-meetings, they are interviewed, they write letters;
they are never out of the public eye,” says PUCK of October 13th, 1880.
Mr. Hayes, however, received no pressing invitation from the party
managers to assist in electing their Republican ticket. Undoubtedly
this deliberate slight was due to the extreme sensitiveness felt by
all classes of Republicans on the question of Mr. Hayes’s title to the
office which he held; and it was in its inception a creditable feeling
that prompted the desire to keep him in the background. At the same
time, it was a severe, almost a cruel retribution to be visited upon
a man who had tried hard to atone for his capture of the Presidential
chair by trick and device, by giving the country an uncommonly good,
and, in some respects, decidedly courageous administration. Messrs.
Grant and Conkling seemed to be solicitous to draw attention to their
complete silence concerning the outgoing administration, and their
enthusiasm in Mr. Garfield’s behalf. Although, to quote again from
PUCK, “both these talkative gentlemen might have found their eloquence
at a discount if Mr. Hayes had not kept up the score of the party
through the last four years.”
“His administration will be held notable, in days to come, not merely
for its positive performances, its vetos of the infamous Silver Bill
and the unconstitutional Chinese Act; but for its negative excellence.
He has done his duty as he saw it. If he has made himself ridiculous by
carrying the contemptibly small social practices of a little Ohio town
into the wider sphere of life to which Fate has introduced him, it is a
pardonable fault. Let us say for him, after all, that, considering the
wretched way in which he got to be President, he has done far too well
with his chances to be snubbed by men in such equivocal positions as
Messrs. Grant and Conkling.”
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