(MRS. SPRAGUE AND THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION OF 1876)
"To the Editor of the 'Evening Post.'
"SIR,--My attention has been called to an article which
appeared in the _Evening Post_ of Saturday, June 30, giving an
account of the various Democratic national conventions, in the
course of which there is, I think, a cruel and untrue attack upon
the memory of a lady who had hard luck enough in this world, without
being followed into her grave, the late Mrs. Katherine Chase
(Sprague). The statement is directly made that a bolt from the
decision of the electoral tribunal which counted in Hayes in 1877
had been organized by Mr. Conkling, but that he was deterred from
executing it by Mrs. Sprague's interference, based on revenge for
Mr. Tilden's opposition to her father's nomination by the Democratic
convention in 1868.
"I do not believe there is one word of truth in this story, so
far as it relates to Mrs. Sprague. It is perfectly true that Mr.
Conkling organized such a bolt, and that he secured the adhesion
of Senators enough to have reversed the decision of the electoral
tribunal in the matter of the Louisiana electoral vote, and would
in this way have made Mr. Tilden President had circumstances not
happened to break up the scheme, in consequence of which he went to
Baltimore, and was not in the Senate and did not vote on the subject
that day.
"I was in Washington at the time, and possessed the confidence
of the Democratic leaders, and argued, as you know, the Florida
and Oregon cases. My information was, in one sense, second hand.
I possessed Mr. Conkling's confidence with regard to the general
subject. I knew perfectly what his views were. He did not hesitate
to express them fully, even going so far as to state them at
length in conversation with myself and my wife and Senator John W.
Stevenson, of Kentucky, on the street in front of the Arlington,
a few days before the decision of the electoral tribunal. He put
the case as it stood in his mind in the most vivid terms. He was a
master of vituperative language, as you know, and he did not spare
anybody; but more especially he put the matter as a question of law,
and with more ability than I have ever heard it done by any one
else, but I have not time within the confines of a letter to repeat
what he said. Whether Mrs. Sprague was in Washington at this time I
do not know.
"The only person on the Democratic side who communicated with Mr.
Conkling was Senator William H. Barnum, of Connecticut, chairman
of the Democratic National Executive Committee. Mr. Barnum talked
to others, as he deemed it discreet, but we all thought it unwise
that any one on our side should approach any one on the opposite
side of politics, except Senator Barnum. During the afternoon of the
day before the final vote was given in the Senate on the Louisiana
case, Senator Stevenson, whose daughter was the wife of one of my
partners, and who was until he died my very dear and honored friend,
communicated to me, as having come to him from Senator Barnum, all
the details of what I may call, for brevity's sake, 'this plot' to
arrest the high-handed dealings of the Republicans, and I went to
bed that night in full confidence that Mr. Tilden would be placed
on a legal basis for inauguration to the Presidency in the morning.
Eight (or nine) Senators had agreed with each other to cast their
votes in the Senate so as to reverse the judgment of the electoral
tribunal in the Louisiana case.
"When I came down to breakfast in the morning, William R. Pelton,
Gov. Tilden's nephew, told me that 'the fat is all in the fire';
that at two o'clock in the morning _one of the Senators_, whose
name, for reasons personal to myself and to him, I do not feel at
liberty to use, had come to Senator Conkling and told him that
he did not dare to go any further with the enterprise; that his
political and perhaps his personal future would be ruined if he
did not vote for Hayes. Conkling thereupon made up his mind that
the game was lost, and took the earliest train to Baltimore,
where he would, as Pelton said, spend the day, and where he did,
as I afterwards learned, spend the day. Although I possessed
Mr. Conkling's confidence and regard (I have a letter from him
somewhere, couched in more earnest terms of gratitude than I ever
received from any other human being), I never spoke with him on this
subject. My information was derived entirely from Senator Stevenson
and William T. Pelton, with the latter of whom I was, as I have
already explained I was with the former, on terms of confidence.
"During this period I never heard Mrs. Sprague's name mentioned.
I do not know whether she was in Washington or not. I was her
father's friend, as you probably know, and I was her friend, and in
the matter of the divorce from Gov. Sprague I was (with Winchester
Britton, of Brooklyn) her counsel, and procured her divorce. I
have had many consultations with both Pelton and his uncle upon
various political and personal matters, but never heard this matter
alluded to by either of them, or by Mrs. Sprague, and I do not
believe that the story has any foundation in truth whatever. She
knew perfectly well, for many years before she died, that I was a
friend of Gov. Tilden's; that my wife and I both had enjoyed his
personal hospitality, and knowing, as she did, my feelings towards
her father, and having been her legal agent and representative, as I
was, in association with the late Richard T. Merrick, in an attempt,
which never came to daylight, to kill Judge Warden's grotesque
biography of S. P. Chase, this is the first time I ever heard any
interference of hers in the matter of the electoral tribunal even
referred to. Mrs. Sprague has left children and friends who mourn
over her sad fate and grieve at her death, and, among others,
"GEO. HOADLEY.
"[Judge Hoadley's means of information are certainly
unsurpassed. We accept his statement as conclusive on the point
at issue.--ED. _Evening Post_.]"
It was currently rumored in the clubs, and even found expression in
the public prints, that Mrs. Sprague, a daughter of Chief-Justice
Chase, was influential in preventing Mr. Conkling from taking
a stand in the Senate against the findings and decision of the
electoral tribunal in favor of Mr. Hayes. As the report savored
of scandal, it was, of course, rapidly circulated and heedlessly
credited, though out of respect to all parties interested, the
stories slumbered for many years until the means by which Mr. Hayes
was inaugurated as President could be more dispassionately discussed
than on the eve of the distribution of the patronage of a new
administration. Fourteen years after Hayes' inauguration the scandal
was revived for partisan purposes in part, and in part, presumably,
in the interest of historic justice. A phase of the discussion at
that time in the New York _Evening Post_ provoked the foregoing
letter from Hon. George Hoadley, ex-Governor of Ohio, which probably
gives the most authentic information the country can ever expect to
have of the mysterious and vacillating conduct of Mr. Conkling. My
attention was called to it by the Hon. Smith Ely, formerly Mayor of
New York, to whom I sent the following acknowledgment: