Editor of the Louisville “Courier-Journal”
I
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
gaiety, 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 an 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 five-and-thirty 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 despatches and other ways tried to buy,
rests upon appearance supporting mistaken surmise. Mr. Tilden knew
nothing of the cipher despatches until they appeared in the “New-York
Tribune.” Neither did Mr. George W. Smith, his private secretary, and
later one of the trustees to 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.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT AND MRS. HAYES IN 1877, AT THE TIME OF THEIR
SILVER WEDDING]