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."