(On the Electoral Commission.)
* The reputation of Col. Robert G. Ingersoll had taken
possession of the Boston mind to such an extent that his
expected address was spoken of as "The Lecture." People
talked about going to it, as If on that night all other
places were to be closed, and the whole population of the
City turned into Tremont Temple. Long before the appointed
hour a rare audience, for even lecture loving Boston, had
assembled. Col. Ingersoll stepped upon the platform preceded
by Governor Rice, and followed by William Lloyd Garrison,
James T. Fields and others. After the presentation of two
large and exquisite bouquets Governor Rice introduced
Colonel Ingersoll, and the audience, the most acute and
determined looking I ever saw In Boston, poured out their
welcome! It seemed as if all the cheers that had been
suppressed between the first of November and the decision of
the Electoral Commission, found vent at that moment and the
vigorous clapping was renewed and prolonged until it became
an unmistakable salute to the recent brilliant campaigning
of the great Western orator. It is hardly possible to speak
in too high terms of the lecture which, under the title of
"8 to 7," contained a witty, philosophical and intensely
patriotic review of the political contest preceding and
following the recent election, with wise and timely
suggestions for preventing similar perils in the future.--
Boston, October 22nd,1877.
1877.
I HAVE sometimes wondered whether our country was to be forever governed
by parties full of hatred, full of malice, full of slander. I have
sometimes wondered whether or not in the future there would not be
discovered such a science as the science of government. I do not know
what you think, but what little I do know, and what little experience
has been mine, is, I must admit, against it. We have passed through the
most remarkable campaign of our history--a campaign remarkable in every
respect.
It was bitter, passionate, relentless and desperate, and I admit, for
one, that I added to its bitterness and relentlessness. I told, and
frankly told, my real, honest opinion of the Democratic party of the
North. I told, and cheerfully told, my opinion of the Democratic party
of the South. And I have nothing to take back. But, to show you that my
heart is not altogether wicked; I am willing to forgive and do forgive
with all my heart, every person and every party that I ever said
anything against. I believe that the campaign of 1876 was the
turning-point, the midnight in the history of the American Republic.
I believe, and firmly believe, that if the Democratic party had swept
into power, it would have been the end of progress, and the end of what
I consider human liberty, beneath our flag. I felt so, and I went into
the campaign simply because the rights of American citizens in at least
sixteen States of the Union were trampled under foot. I did what little
I could. I am glad I did it. We had, as I say, a wonderful campaign, and
each party said and did about all that could be said and done. Everybody
attended to politics. Business was suspended. Everything was given
over to processions and torches, and flags and transparencies; and
resolutions and conventions and speeches and songs. Old arguments were
revamped. Old stories were pressed into service. The old story of
the Rebellion was told again and again. The memories of the war were
revived. The North was arrayed against the South as though upon the
field of battle. Party cries were heard on every hand. Each party leaped
like a tiger upon the reputation of the other, and tore with tooth and
claw, with might and main, to the very end of the campaign.
I felt that it was necessary to arouse the North. I felt that it was
necessary to tell again the story of the Rebellion, from Bull Run to
Appomattox. I felt that it was necessary to describe what the Southern
people were doing with Union men, and with colored men; and I felt it
necessary so to describe it that the people of the North could hear the
whips, and could hear the drops of blood as they fell upon the withered
leaves. I did all I could to arouse the people of the North. I did all I
could to prevent the Democratic party from getting into power. The first
morning after the election, the Democracy had a banquet of joy, but
all through the feast they saw sitting at the head of the table the
dim outline of the skeleton of defeat. And, when the tide turned,
Republicans rejoiced with a face ready at any moment to express the
profoundest grief. Then came despatches and rumors, and estimated
majorities, and vague talk about Returning Boards, and intimidating
voters, and stuffed ballot boxes, and fraudulent returns, and bribed
clerks, and injunctions, and contempts of courts, and telegrams in
cipher, and outrages, and octoroon balls in which reverend Senators
were whirled in love's voluptuous waltz. Everybody discussed the
qualifications of Electors and the value of Governors' certificates, and
how to get behind returns, and how to buy an Elector, and who had the
right to count; and persons expecting offices of trust, honor and profit
began to threaten war and extermination, calls were made for a hundred
thousand men, and there were no end of meetings, and resolutions and
denunciations, and the downfall of the country was prophesied; and yet,
notwithstanding all this, the name of the person who really was elected
remained unknown. The last scene of this strange, eventful history, so
far as the election by the people was concerned, was Cronin. I see him
now as he leaves the land "where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
save his own dashings." Cronin, the last surviving veteran of the grand
army of "honesty and reform." Cronin, a quorum of one. Cronin, who
elected the two others by a plurality of his own vote.
I see him now, armed with Hoadley's opinion and Grover's certificate,
trudging wearily and drearily over the wide and wasted saleratus deserts
of the West, with a little card marked "S. J. T. i5 G. P."
Then came the great question of who shall count the electoral vote. The
Vice-President being a Republican, it was generally contended, at least
by me, that he had a right to count that vote. My doctrine was, if the
Vice-President would count the vote right, he had the right to count it.
The Vice-President not being a Democrat, the members of that party
claimed that the House could prevent the Vice-President from counting
it, and this was simply because the House was not Republican. Nearly all
decided according to their politics. The Constitution is a little blind
on this point, and where anything is blind I always see it my way.
It was about this time that some of the Democrats began to talk about
bringing one hundred thousand unarmed men to Washington to superintend
the count. Others, however, got up a scheme to create, a court in the
United States where politics should have no earthly influence. Nothing
could be easier, they thought, after we had gone through such a hot and
exciting campaign, than to pick out men who have no prejudices whatever
on the subject. Finally a bill was passed creating a tribunal to count
the vote, if any, and hear testimony, if any, and declare what man had
been elected President, if any. This tribunal consisted of fifteen men,
ten being chosen on account of their politics--five from the Senate
and five from the House,--and they chose four judges from purely
geographical considerations. I was there, and I know exactly how it was.
Those four men were picked with a map of the United States in front of
the pickers. The Democrats chose Justice Field, not because he was a
Democrat, but because he lived on the Pacific slope. They chose Justice
Clifford, not because he was a Democrat, but because he lived on the
Eastern slope; that was fair. Thereupon the Republicans chose Justice
Strong, not because he was a Republican, but because he lived on the
Eastern slope. You can see the point. The Republicans chose Justice
Miller, not because he was a Republican, but because he represented the
great West. They then allowed these four to select a fifth man.
Well, it was impossible to select the fifth man from geographical
considerations, you can see that yourselves. There was nothing left to
choose between, you know, as far as geography was concerned. They then
agreed that they would not take a Justice from any State in which the
candidate for President lived. They left out Justice Hunt, from New
York, and Justice Swayne, from Ohio. They knew of course that that would
not influence them, but they did that simply--well, they did not want
them there; that was all, and it would be unhandy to pick one man out of
four. So they left Swayne and Hunt out. And then they would pick one
man as between Justice Bradley and Justice Davis. Just at that time the
people of the State of Illinois happened to be out of a Senator, and
Judge Davis was there and expressed a willingness to go to the Senate.
And the people of the State of Illinois elected him, and therefore
there was nobody to choose from except Justice Bradley, and he was a
Republican.
Now, you know this runs in families. His record was good--by marriage.
He married a daughter of Chief Justice Hornblower, of New Jersey. Now,
Hornblower was what you might call a partisan. Do you know they went to
him--it was in the old times, and he was a kind of Whig,--they went to
him with a petition, in the State of New Jersey, a petition addressed to
the Legislature for the abolition of capital punishment, and Hornblower
said, "I'll be damned if I sign it while there is a Democrat in the
State of New Jersey."
As a matter of fact, however, I believe that Justice Bradley and all the
other Justices, and all other persons on that tribunal decided as they
honestly thought was right.
Judge Davis is as broad mentally as he is physically; he has an
immensity of common sense, and as much judgment as any one man ever
needs to use, and, in my judgment, he would have come to the same
conclusion as Judge Bradley, precisely. These men were appointed--it
was a Democratic scheme, and I am glad they got it up--and during that
entire investigation, so much were the members of that party controlled
by old associations and habits, and by partisan feeling that there was
not a solitary one of the seven Democrats that ever once voted on the
Republican side. And, as a necessity, the Republicans had to stand
together. And so, notwithstanding the seven Democrats voted constantly
together, the eight Republicans kept having a majority of one, until the
last disputed State was given against the great party of "honesty and
reform." And, finally, when they found they were defeated, they made
up their minds to prevent the counting of the vote. They made up their
minds to wear out the session and prevent the election of a President.
Just at that point, for a wonder, (nothing ever astonished me more), the
members from the South said: "We do not want any more war; we have had
war enough and we say that a President shall be peacefully elected, and
that he shall be peacefully inaugurated!" As soon as I heard that I felt
under a little obligation to the Democracy of the South, and when they
stood in the gap and prevented the Democracy of the North from plunging
this Government into the hell of civil war, I felt like taking them by
the hand and saying, "We have beaten the enemy once, let us keep on. Let
us join hands." I felt like saying to the Democracy of the South, "You
never will have a day's prosperity in the South until you join the
great, free, progressive party of the North--never!" And they never
will.
Now, I say, I felt as though I were under a certain obligation to these
people. They prevented this thing, and they made it possible for the
Vice-President to declare Rutherford B. Hayes President of the United
States. Now, right here, I want you to observe that this shows the real
defects in our system of government. In the first place, our Government
is being governed by fraud. If the very fountain of power is poisoned by
fraud, then the whole Government is impure. We must find out some way
to prevent fraudulent voting in the United States or our Government is
a failure. Great cities were the mothers of election frauds. They
inaugurated violence and intimidation. They produced the repeaters
and the false boxes. They invented fan-tail tickets and pasters, and
gradually these delightful and patriotic arts and practices have spread
over almost the entire country.
Unless something is done to preserve the purity of the ballot-box our
form of government must cease. The fountain of power is poisoned.
The sovereignty of the people is stolen and destroyed. The Government
becomes organized fraud, and all respect will soon be lost for the
laws and decisions of the courts. The legislators are elected in many
instances by fraud. The judges are in many instances chosen by fraud.
Every department of the Government becomes tainted and corrupt. It is
no longer a Republic, unless something can be devised to ascertain with
certainty the really honest will of the sovereign people.
For the accomplishment of this object the good and patriotic men of all
parties should most heartily unite. To cast an illegal vote should
be considered by all as a crime. We must if possible get rid of the
mob--the vagrants, the vagabonds who have no home and who take no
interest in the cities where they vote. We must get rid of the rich
mob too; and by the rich mob I mean the men who buy up these vagabonds.
Various States have passed laws for the registration of voters; but they
all leave wide open all the doors of fraud. Men are allowed to vote if
they have been for one year in the State, and thirty or sixty days in
the ward or precinct; and when they have failed to have their names
registered before the day of election, they can avoid the effect of
this neglect by making a few affidavits, certified to by reputable
householders. Of course all necessary affidavits are made, with hundreds
and thousands to spare. My idea is that the period of registration, in
the first place, is too short, and, in the second place, no way
should be given by which they can vote unless they have been properly
registered, affidavit or no affidavit. Every man, when he goes into a
ward or precinct, should be registered. It should be his duty to see
that he is registered. Officers should be kept for that purpose, and he
should never be allowed to cast a vote until he has been registered
at least one year. Sixty days, say, or thirty days--sixty would be
better--sixty days before the election the registry lists should be
corrected, and every citizen should have the right to enter a complaint
or objection as against any name found upon that list. Thirty days,
or twenty days before the election, that list should be published
and should be exposed in several public places in each ward and each
precinct, and upon the day of election no man should be allowed to
vote whose name was not upon the registry list. Our wards and precincts
should be made smaller, so that people can vote without violence,
without wasting an entire day, so that the honest business man that
wishes to cast his ballot for the Government of his choice can walk
to the polls like a gentleman and deposit his vote and go about his
affairs. Allow me to say that unless some such plan is adopted in
the United States, there never will be another fair election in this
country. During the last campaign all the arts and artifices of the
city, all the arts and artifices of the lowest wards were spread over
this entire country, and unless something is done to preserve the purity
of the ballot-box, and guard the sovereign will of the people, we will
cease to be a Republican Government.
Another thing--and I cannot say it too often--fraud at the ballot-box
undermines all respect in the minds of the people for the Government.
When they are satisfied that the election is a fraud they despise the
officers elected. When they are satisfied it is a fraud, they despise
the law made by the legislators. When they are satisfied it is a fraud,
they hold in utter contempt the decisions of our highest and most august
tribunals.
Another trouble in this country is that our terms of office are too
short. Our elections are too frequent. They interfere with the business
of our country. When elections are so frequent, men make a business
of politics. If they fail to get one office they immediately run for
another, and they keep running until the people elect them for the
simple purpose of getting rid of the annoyance. Lengthen the terms,
purify the ballot, and the present scramble for office will become
contests for principles. A man who cannot get a living--unless he
has been disabled in the service of his country or from some other
cause--without holding office, is not fit for an office.
A professional office-seeker is one of the meanest, and lowest, and
basest of human beings--a little higher than the lower animals and a
little lower than man. He has no earthly or heavenly independence; not a
particle; not a particle. A successful office-seeker is like the center
of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, and draws all things towards
the office he wants. He has not even a temper. You cannot insult him.
Shut the door in his face, and, so far as he is concerned, it is left
wide open, and you are standing on the threshold with a smile, extending
the hand of welcome. He crawls and cringes and flatters and lies and
swaggers and brags and tells of the influence he has in the ward he
lives in. We cannot too often repeat that splendid saying, "The office
should seek the man, not man the office." If you will lengthen the
term of office it will be so long between meals that he will have to do
something else or starve. Adopt the system of registration, as I have
suggested; have small and convenient election districts, so that, as I
said before, the honest, law-abiding, and peaceable citizen can attend
the polls; so that he will not be compelled to risk his life to deposit
his ballot that will be stolen or thrown out, or forced to keep the
company of ballots caused by fraudulent violence. Lengthen the term of
office, drive the professional hunter and seeker of office from the
field, and you will go far toward strengthening and vivifying and
preserving the fabric of the Constitution. That is the kind of civil
service reform I am in favor of, and as I am on that subject, I will say
a word about it. There is but one vital question--but one question of
real importance--in fact I might say in the whole world, and that is
the great question of Civil Service Reform. There may be some others
indirectly affecting the human race, and in which some people take a
languid kind of interest, but the only question worth discussing and
comprehending in all its phases is the one I have mentioned. This great
question is in its infancy still. The doctrine as yet has been applied
only to politics.*
* Colonel Ingersoll then read the following letter, of which
he was the author.
My Dear Sir:--In the olden times, during the purer days of the Republic,
the motto was, "To the victors belong the spoils." The great object of
civil service reform is to reverse this motto. Our people are thoroughly
disgusted with machine politics, and demand politics without any
machine.
In every precinct and ward there are persons going about lauding one
party and crying down the other. They make it their business to attend
to the affairs of the Nation. They call conventions, pass resolutions;
they put notices in papers of the times and places of meetings; they
select candidates for office, and then insist upon having them elected;
they distribute papers and political documents; they crowd the mails
with newspapers, platforms, resolutions, facts and figures, and with
everything calculated to help their party and hurt the other. In short,
they are the disturbers of the public peace.
They keep the community in a perpetual excitement. In the last campaign,
wherever they were was turmoil. They fired cannon, carried flags,
torches and transparencies; they subsidized brass bands, and shouted and
hurrahed as though the world had gone insane. They were induced to do
these things by the hope of success and office. Take away this hope and
there will be peace once more. This thing is unendurable. The staid,
the quiet and respectable people, the moderate and conservative men who
always have an idea of joining the other side just to show their candor,
are heartily tired of the entire performance. These gentlemen demand
a rest. They are not adventurers; they have incomes; they belong to
families; they have monograms and liveries. They have succeeded, and
they want quiet. Growth makes a noise; development, as they call it,
is nothing but disturbance. We want stability, we want political
petrifaction, and we therefore demand that these meetings shall be
dismissed, that these processions shall halt, that these flags shall be
furled. But these things never will be stopped until we stop paying men
with office for making these disturbances. You know that it has been
the habit for men elected to bestow political favors upon the men
who elected them. This is a crying shame. It is a kind of bribery and
corruption. Men should not work with the expectation of reward and
success. The frightful consequences of rewarding one's friends cannot be
contemplated by a true patriot without a shudder. Exactly the opposite
course is demanded by the great principle of civil service reform. There
is no patriotism in working for place, for power and success. The true
lover of his country is stimulated to action by the hope of defeat,
and the prospect of office for his opponent. To such an extent has the
pernicious system of rewarding friends for political services gone in
this country, that until very lately it was difficult for a member of
the defeated party to obtain a respectable office.
The result of all this is, that the country is divided, that these
divisions are kept alive by these speakers, writers and convention
callers. The great mission of civil service reform is not to do
away with parties, but with conflicting opinion, by taking from all
politicians the hope of reward. There is no other hope for peace. What
do the people know about the wants of the nation? There are in every
community a few quiet and respectable men, who know all about the wants
of the people--gentlemen who have retired from business, who take no
part in discussion and who are therefore free from prejudice. Let these
men attend to our politics. They will not call conventions, except
in the parlors of hotels. They will not put out our eyes with flaring
torches. They will not deafen us with speeches. They will carry on a
campaign without producing opposition. They will have elections but no
contests. All the offices will be given to the defeated party. This of
itself will insure tranquillity at the polls. No one will be deprived of
the privilege of casting a ballot. When campaigns are conducted in this
manner a gentleman can engage in politics with a feeling that he is
protected by the great principle of civil service reform. But just so
long as men persist in rewarding their friends, as they call them, just
so long will our country be cursed with political parties. Nothing can
be better calculated to preserve the peace than the great principle of
rewarding those who have confidence enough in our institutions to keep
silent while peace will sit with folded wings upon the moss-covered
political stump of a ruder age. I am satisfied that to civil service
reform the Republican party is indebted for the last great victory. Upon
this question the enthusiasm of the people was simply unbounded. In
the harvest field, the shop, the counting-room, in the church, in the
saloon, in, the palace and in the hut, nothing was heard and nothing
discussed except the great principle of civil service reform.
Among the most touching incidents of the campaign was to see a few
old soldiers, sacred with scars, sit down, and while battles and
hair-breadth escapes, and prisons of want, were utterly forgotten,
discuss with tremulous lips and tearful eyes the great question of civil
service reform.
During the great political contest I addressed several quite large
and intelligent audiences, and no one who did not has or can have the
slightest idea of the hold that civil service reform had upon the
very souls of our people. Upon all other subjects the indifference was
marked. I dwelt upon the glittering achievements of my party, but they
were indifferent. I pictured outrages perpetrated upon our citizens, but
they did not care. All this went idly by, but when I touched upon
civil service reform, old men, gray-haired and strong, broke down
utterly--tears fell like rain. The faces of women grew ashen with the
intensity of anguish, and even little children sobbed as though their
hearts would break. To one who has witnessed these affecting scenes,
civil service reform is almost a sacred thing. Even the speeches
delivered upon this subject in German affected to tears thousands of
persons wholly unacquainted with that language. In some instances those
who did not understand a word were affected even more than those who
did. Surely there must be something in the subject itself, apart from
the words used to explain it, that can under such circumstances lead
captive the hearts of men. During the entire campaign the cry of civil
service reform was heard from one end of our land to the other. The
sailor nailed those words to the mast. The miner repeated them between
the strokes of the pick. Mothers explained them to their children.
Emigrants painted them upon their wagons. They were mingled with the
reaper's song and the shout of the pioneer. Adopt this great principle
and we can have quiet and lady-like campaigns, a few articles in monthly
magazines, a leader or two in the "Nation," in the pictorial papers
wood-cuts of the residences of the respective candidates and now and
then a letter from an old Whig would constitute all the aggressive
agencies of the contest. I am satisfied that this great principle
secured us our victories in Florida and Louisiana, and its effect on
the High Joint Commission was greater than is generally supposed. It was
this that finally decided the action of the returning boards.
Cronin is the only man upon whom this great principle was an utter
failure. Let it be understood that friends are not to be rewarded.
Let it be settled that political services are a barrier to political
preferment, and my word for it, machine politics will never be heard of
again.