Something of Men I Have Known | Page 8

office. Partisan feeling was at its height,
and the question of the justice of the decision of the Electoral
Commission was vehemently discussed.
To the end that there might be a peaceful determination of the perilous
question, that of disputed succession to the Presidency, I was an earnest
advocate of the bill creating the Commission. Upon the question of
concurrence by the House of Representatives in the final determination
of the Commission, bitter opposition was manifested upon the part of
friends of Mr. Tilden, and a heated partisan debate resulted, and during
this debate I spoke as follows:
"When this Congress assembled in December, it witnessed the
American people from one end of the country to the other divided upon
the question as to which candidate had been lawfully elected to the high
office of President of the United States. The business industries of the
country were paralyzed, public confidence destroyed, and the danger of
civil war was imminent. That Mr. Tilden had received a majority of
more than two hundred thousand of the popular vote was not disputed.
That he had secured a majority of the Presidential electors in the
several States, and was lawfully entitled to be inducted into the great
office, was the firm belief of fully one-half of the people of this country.
The hour was one of great peril to our institutions, and many were
apprehensive that we were but entering into the dark night of anarchy
and confusion. After many weeks of angry discussion, which resulted
in still further arousing the passions of the people, a measure of
adjustment was proposed. It was believed that there was still patriotism
enough left in the American Congress to secure an honorable and fair
settlement of this most dangerous question. We all recall how our

hopes revived, and how gladly we hailed the introduction of the bill
recommended by a joint committee of conference of the Senate and
House of Representatives. It was welcomed as the harbinger of peace
by the entire people of our country.
"I gave that bill my earnest support. It had in the House no friend more
ardent in its advocacy than myself. I believed it to be a measure in the
interest of peace. I believed that those who framed it, as well as those
who gave it their support upon the floor, were honest in their
statements, that no man could afford to take the Presidency with a
clouded title, and that the object of the bill was to ascertain which of
the candidates was lawfully entitled to the electoral votes of Florida
and Louisiana. I never mistrusted for a moment that statesmen of high
repute could in so perilous an hour, upon so grave a question, palter
with words in a double sense.
"We who are the actors in this drama know, and history will record the
fact, that the Conference Bill became a law, and the Electoral
Commission was organized, not for the purpose of ascertaining which
candidate had prima facie a majority of the electoral votes; not for the
purpose of ascertaining that the Governor of Florida, and the de facto
Governor of Louisiana, had given certificates to the Hayes electors. It
was never dreamed that a tribunal, consisting in part of five judges of
the highest court on earth, was to be constituted, whose sole duty was
to report a fact known to every man in the land, that the returning-board
of Louisiana had given the votes of that State to the Hayes electors. The
avowed object of that bill was to ascertain which candidate had
received a majority of the legal votes of those States. The avowed
object of the bill was the secure the ends of justice; to see that the will
of the people was executed; that the Republic suffered no harm; to see
that the title to this great office was not tainted with fraud. How well
the members of this tribunal have discharged the sacred trust
committed to them, let them answer to history.
"The record will stand that this tribunal shut its eyes to the light of truth;
refused to hear the undisputed proof that a majority of seven thousand
legal votes in the State of Louisiana for Tilden was by a fraudulent

returning-board changed to eight thousand majority for Hayes. The
Republican Representative from Florida, Mr. Purman, has solemnly
declared upon this floor that Florida had given its vote to Tilden. I am
not surprised that two distinguished Republican Representatives from
Massachusetts, Mr. Seelye and Mr. Pierce, have in such thrilling tones
expressed their dissent from the judgment of this tribunal. By this
decision fraud has become one of the legalized modes of securing the
vote of a State. Can it be possible that the American people are
prepared to accept the