The time is coming, if it has not already arrived, when among
fair-minded and intelligent Americans there will not be two opinions
touching the Hayes-Tilden contest for the presidency in 1876-77—that
both by the popular vote and a fair count of the electoral vote Tilden
was elected and Hayes was defeated; but the whole truth underlying the
determinate incidents which led to the rejection of Tilden and the
seating of Hayes will never be known.
“All history is a lie,” observed Sir Robert Walpole, the corruptionist,
mindful of what was likely to be written about himself; and “What is
history,” asked Napoleon, the conqueror, “but a fable agreed upon?”
In the first administration of Mr. Cleveland there were present at a
dinner table in Washington, the President being of the party, two
leading Democrats and two leading Republicans who had sustained
confidential relations to the principals and played important parts in
the drama of the Disputed Succession. These latter had been long upon
terms of personal intimacy. The occasion was informal and joyous, the
good fellowship of the heartiest.
Inevitably the conversation drifted to the Electoral Commission, which
had counted Tilden out and Hayes in, and of which each of the four had
some story to tell. Beginning in banter with interchanges of badinage
it presently fell into reminiscence, deepening as the interest of the
listeners rose to what under different conditions might have been
described as unguarded gayety if not imprudent garrulity. The little
audience was rapt.
Finally Mr. Cleveland raised both hands and exclaimed, “What would the
people of this country think if the roof could be lifted from this
house and they could hear these men?” And then one of the four, a
gentleman noted for his wealth both of money and humor, replied, “But
the roof is not going to be lifted from this house, and if any one
repeats what I have said I will denounce him as a liar.”
Once in a while the world is startled by some revelation of the unknown
which alters the estimate of a historic event or figure; but it is
measurably true, as Metternich declares, that those who make history
rarely have time to write it.
It is not my wish in recurring to the events of nearly five-and-forty
years ago to invoke and awaken any of the passions of that time, nor my
purpose to assail the character or motives of any of the leading
actors. Most of them, including the principals, I knew well; to many of
their secrets I was privy. As I was serving, in a sense, as Mr.
Tilden’s personal representative in the Lower House of the Forty-fourth
Congress, and as a member of the joint Democratic Advisory or Steering
Committee of the two Houses, all that passed came more or less, if not
under my supervision, yet to my knowledge; and long ago I resolved that
certain matters should remain a sealed book in my memory.
I make no issue of veracity with the living; the dead should be sacred.
The contradictory promptings, not always crooked; the double
constructions possible to men’s actions; the intermingling of ambition
and patriotism beneath the lash of party spirit; often wrong
unconscious of itself; sometimes equivocation deceiving itself—in
short, the tangled web of good and ill inseparable from great affairs
of loss and gain made debatable ground for every step of the
Hayes-Tilden proceeding.
I shall bear sure testimony to the integrity of Mr. Tilden. I directly
know that the presidency was offered to him for a price, and that he
refused it; and I indirectly know and believe that two other offers
came to him, which also he declined. The accusation that he was willing
to buy, and through the cipher dispatches and other ways tried to buy,
rests upon appearance supporting mistaken surmise. Mr. Tilden knew
nothing of the cipher dispatches until they appeared in the New York
_Tribune_. Neither did Mr. George W. Smith, his private secretary, and
later one of the trustees of his will.
It should be sufficient to say that so far as they involved No. 15
Gramercy Park they were the work solely of Colonel Pelton, acting on
his own responsibility, and as Mr. Tilden’s nephew exceeding his
authority to act; that it later developed that during this period
Colonel Pelton had not been in his perfect mind, but was at least
semi-irresponsible; and that on two occasions when the vote or votes
sought seemed within reach Mr. Tilden interposed to forbid. Directly
and personally I know this to be true.
The price, at least in patronage, which the Republicans actually paid
for possession is of public record. Yet I not only do not question the
integrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him and most of those immediately
about him to have been high-minded men who thought they were doing for
the best in a situation unparalleled and beset with perplexity. What
they did tends to show that men will do for party and in concert what
the same men never would be willing to do each on his own
responsibility. In his “Life of Samuel J. Tilden,” John Bigelow says:
“Why persons occupying the most exalted positions should have ventured
to compromise their reputations by this deliberate consummation of a
series of crimes which struck at the very foundations of the republic
is a question which still puzzles many of all parties who have no
charity for the crimes themselves. I have already referred to the
terrors and desperation with which the prospect of Tilden’s election
inspired the great army of office-holders at the close of Grant’s
administration. That army, numerous and formidable as it was, was
comparatively limited. There was a much larger and justly influential
class who were apprehensive that the return of the Democratic party to
power threatened a reactionary policy at Washington, to the undoing of
some or all the important results of the war. These apprehensions were
inflamed by the party press until they were confined to no class, but
more or less pervaded all the Northern States. The Electoral Tribunal,
consisting mainly of men appointed to their positions by Republican
Presidents or elected from strong Republican States, felt the pressure
of this feeling, and from motives compounded in more or less varying
proportions of dread of the Democrats, personal ambition, zeal for
their party and respect for their constituents, reached the conclusion
that the exclusion of Tilden from the White House was an end which
justified whatever means were necessary to accomplish it. They regarded
it, like the emancipation of the slaves, as a war measure.”