In 1876, when the country was in imminent danger of the renewal of
civil war as a result of the contested presidential election, the
conservative element of the Democratic party, advised by Mr. Tilden
himself, determined to avoid anything which might result in extreme
measures. The masses of the people were excited as they had not
been since the close of the Civil War, and the great majority of the
Democrats of the country were undoubtedly opposed to making
concessions. Thomas F. Bayard, who took the lead in the Senate as
the representative of the moderate policy favored by Mr. Tilden, met
the reproaches sure to be visited in such cases on the peacemaker.
Nevertheless, he advocated the Electoral Commission as a method of
settling the contest, and his speech in supporting it, without doubt
one of the best as it was certainly the most important of his life,
paved the way for the final adoption of the bill. It is no more
than justice to say that the speech is worthy of the dignity of that
great occasion.
Mr. Bayard inherited the equable temperament shown by his father and
his grandfather. He was a warm-hearted man with a long memory for
services done him, but he had a faculty of containing himself which
few men exercise to the degree that he exercised it habitually, both
in his public and private life. The habit was so strong, in fact,
that he indulged only on rare occasions that emotion which is
necessary for the highest success as an orator. The calmness of his
thought shows itself in logic which, while it may invite confidence,
does not compel admiration. When he is moved, however, the freedom
of his utterances from exaggeration and from that tendency to rant
which mars many orations makes such periods as those with which he
closes his speech on the Electoral Bill models of expression for all
who wish to realize the highest possibilities of cumulative force.
The son of one United States Senator, James A. Bayard, of Delaware,
and the grandson of another, Mr. Bayard represented well the family
tradition of integrity. Born in 1828, he succeeded to his father's
place in the Senate when forty-one years of age, and remained in the
public service until within a short time of his death. He was
Secretary of State under the first Cleveland administration and
ambassador to England under the second. In the convention which
nominated Mr. Cleveland in 1884, Mr. Bayard, who had been strongly
supported for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1880, was so
close to the presidency at the beginning of the balloting that his
managers confidently expected his success. He became much attached
to President Cleveland, and in 1896 he took a course on the
financial issue then uppermost, which alienated many of his friends,
as far as friends could be alienated by the political action of a
man whose public and private life were so full of dignity,
simplicity, and the qualities which result from habitual good faith.
Mr. Bayard survived almost into the twentieth century as a last
representative of the colonial gentlemen who debated the Federal
Constitution. Supposed to be cold and unapproachable, he was really
warm in his friendships, with a memory which never allowed an act of
service done him to escape it. Few better men have had anything to
do with the politics of the second half of the century. He died in
1898.