to restore the Government and the Constitution, and that is for the President to declare these Acts null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpations at the South, dispossess the carpet-bag State governments, allow the white people to re-organize their own governments and elect senators and representatives." General Blair contended that this was "the real and only question," and that until this work was accomplished "it is idle to talk of bonds, greenbacks, the public faith, and the public credit." This letter, as will be noted, harmonized in thought and in language with the plank which Wade Hampton had inserted in the platform, and its audacious tone commended its author to those who had been potential in committing the Convention to this extreme position. General Preston of Kentucky, who had won his stars in the Confederate army, presented General Blair for Vice-President. General Wade Hampton, distinguished in the same cause, seconded it, and the nomination was made by acclamation.

The

The Democratic party thus determined, through its platform and partially through its candidates, to fight its battle on the two issues of paying the debt in depreciated paper currency and overthrowing Reconstruction. Other questions practically dropped out. whole discussion of the canvass turned on these two controlling propositions. No violence of design which the Republicans imputed to their adversaries exceeded their open avowals. The greater positiveness of General Blair, the keener popular interest in the Southern question and the broader realization of its possible dangers, made the issue on Reconstruction overshadow the other. The utterances of Southern leaders confirmed its superior importance in the public estimate. The jubilant expressions of Wade Hampton at Charleston have already been given. In a speech at Atlanta, Robert Toombs declared that "all these Reconstruction Acts, as they are called, these schemes of dissolution, of violence and of tyranny, shall no longer curse the statute-book nor oppress the free people of the country; these so-called governments and legislatures which have been established in our midst shall at once be made to vacate. The convention at New York appointed Frank Blair specially to oust them." Howell Cobb and Benjamin H. Hill also made incendiary speeches during the canvass, proclaiming their confidence in the practical victory of those who had waged the Rebellion; and Governor Vance of North Carolina boasted that all they had lost when defeated by Grant they would regain when they triumphed with Seymour.

It is not probable that the Democrats could, by any policy, have achieved success in this contest. The prestige of Grant's great fame and the momentum given to the Republican party by his achievements during and immediately after the war, would have defeated any opposition, however skillful. But had Governor Seymour himself framed the platform on which he was to stand, and had he been free from the burden and the embarrassment of Blair's imprudent and alarming utterances, his greater sagacity and adroitness would have insured a more formidable battle. As it was, the rash action of the Democratic Convention made it reasonably clear from the beginning that the ticket was doomed to defeat. The progress of the canvass strengthened this impression; the Democracy was placed everywhere on the defensive; its own declarations shotted every gun that was aimed against it; and its orators and organs could neither make effective reply nor divert public attention from its fatal commitment.

The Democrats however made a strenuous contest and sought to counterbalance the weakness of their national contest by strong State tickets. In Indiana Mr. Hendricks was nominated for Governor, and it was hoped that the influence of his name would secure the advantage of success in the preliminary October struggle. In Pennsylvania a vigorous canvass was conducted under the skillful management of William A. Wallace. But all these efforts were unavailing. The October elections clearly presaged Republican victory. The Republicans carried Pennsylvania, in spite of surprising and questionable Democratic gains in Philadelphia; they held Ohio by a satisfactory majority; and in Indiana, Conrad Baker was elected Governor over Mr. Hendricks. With this result in the October States the November, battle could not be doubtful.

The Democratic leaders however did not yet surrender the field. They made one more energetic effort to snatch the victory which seemed already in the grasp of their adversaries. But their counsels were divided. One element proposed to try heroic surgery and cut off the diseased member. While the echoes of the October verdict were still resounding, the New-York World, the leading Metropolitan organ of the Democratic party, in a series of inflammatory articles demanded that General Blair should be withdrawn from the ticket. This disorganizing demonstration met with little favor in the ranks of the party, and only served as a confession of weakness without accomplishing any good. A more significant and better

advised movement was that of Governor Seymour himself. He had thus far borne no public part in the campaign, but he now took the field in person to rally the broken cohorts of his party and if possible recover the lost ground. Up to this time General Blair, through his self-assertion and his bold proclamation of Democratic designs, had been the central figure of the canvass. It was now determined that Blair should go to the rear and that Governor Seymour should go to the front and make a last and desperate effort to change the line of battle.

He started the week following the October elections, and went through Western New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania; ending his tour only with the close of the National canvass. Delivering at least one extended address each day at some central point, and speaking frequently by the way, his journey fastened the attention of the country and amply illustrated his versatile and brilliant intellectual powers. No man was more seductive in appeal, or more impressive in sedate and stately eloquence. With his art of persuasion he combined rare skill in evading difficult questions while preserving an appearance of candor. His speeches were as elusive and illusive as they were smooth and graceful. In his present series of arguments he labored to convince the country that if the Democrats elected the President they would still be practically powerless, and that apprehension of disturbance and upheaval from their success was unfounded. He sought also to draw the public thought away from this subject and give it a new direction by dwelling on the cost of government, the oppression of taxes, the losses from the disordered currency and the various evils that had followed the trials and perils through which the country had passed. But it was not in the power of any man to change the current of public feeling. The popular judgment had been fixed by events and by a long course of concurrent evidences, and no single plea or pledge could shake it. The election resulted in the success of General Crent. Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, in which Reconstruction was not yet completed, did not choose electors. Of the remaining thirty-four States Mr. General Grant's majority on the popular electors he had 214 and Mr. Seymour

Seymour carried but eight. vote was 309,584. Of the had 80.

CHAPTER XVI.

REPUBLICAN VICTORY OF 1868 ANALYZED. —MR. SEYMOUR'S STRENGTH UNEXPECTEDLY GREAT. ASTOUNDING DEFECTION OF CERTAIN STATES.-DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY, AND OREGON. - EVIL OMENS.-DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN LOUISIANA.-WON BY FRAUD AND VIOLENCE. THE FIGURES EXAMINED. — ACTION OF CONGRESS THEREON. FRAUD SUSPECTED IN GEORGIA. - DEMOCRATIC DUTY UNPERFORMED. — IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE. — VARIOUS PROPOSITIONS. AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION.

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- MR. HENDERSON OF MISSOURI. — MR. STEWART of Nevada. MR. GARRETT DAVIS. - PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE.-SPEECH OF MR. BOUTWELL. - ANSWERED BY MR. BECK AND MR. ELDRIDGE. -PASSAGE OF AMENDMENT BY HOUSE. ACTION THEREON IN SENATE. - AMENDMENT of MR. WILSON. - PROPOSITION OF MR. MORTON AND MR. BUCKALEW. DISAGREEMENT OF THE TWO BRANCHES. CONFERENCE COMMITTEE. - FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT REPORTED. — PUBLIC OPINION IN THE UNITED STATES. - FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT NOW MODIFIED. ITS EFFECT AND POTENCY LESSENED. — ITS FAILURE TO REMOVE EVILS. GREAT VALUE OF THE THREE AMENDMENTS. THEIR ASSURED ENFORCEMENT.HONOR TO THEIR AUTHORS. LESSON TAUGHT BY MR. LINCOLN. ITS SIGNIFICANCE.

WHILE

WHILE the result of the Presidential election of 1868 was, upon the record of the electoral votes, an overwhelming victory for the Republican party and its illustrious candidate, certain facts tended to qualify the sense of gratulation and triumph on the part of those who give serious study to the progress and results of partisan contests. It was the first Presidential election since the close of the war, and the candidates represented in sharp and definite outline the antagonistic views which had prevailed among Northern men during the period of the struggle. General Grant was the embodiment of the war feeling, and presented in his own person the spirit of the contest for the Union and the evidence of its triumph. The Democratic candidate, if not open to the charge of personal disloyalty, had done much as Governor of New York to embarrass the National Administration in the conduct of the war, and would perhaps have done more but for the singular tact and address with which Mr. Lincoln had prevented an open quarrel or even a serious conflict of authority. Mr. Seymour was indeed unpleasantly associated in the public mind with the riot which had been organized in the city

of New York against the enforcement of the draft. He had been a great favorite of the Peace party, and at the most critical point in the civil struggle he had presided over a National Convention which demanded that the war should cease.

Under these circumstances it was not altogether re-assuring to the ardent loyalists of the country, that the city of New York, whose prosperity depended in so great a degree upon the preservation of the Union, should now give Mr. Seymour a majority of more than sixty thousand over General Grant, and that the Empire State, which would cease to be Imperial if the Union ceased to exist, should in a popular contest defeat General Grant by fully ten thousand votes. New Jersey made an equally discouraging record by giving Mr. Seymour a majority of three thousand. The Pacific coast, whose progress and prosperity depended so largely upon the maintenance of the Union, presented an astonishing result, — California giving General Grant a majority of only 514, while Oregon utterly repudiated the great leader and gave her electoral vote for Mr. Seymour. Indiana, in the test vote of the October election for governor, was carried for the Republicans by only 961; Ohio gave a smaller majority in the hour of National victory than she had given during any year of the civil struggle, while Pennsylvania at the same election gave the party but ten thousand majority. In the city and county of Philadelphia the Democrats actually had a majority of nearly two hundred votes. The Republican majorities in the three States were considerably increased in the November election by the natural falling off of the Democratic vote, but the critical and decisive battle had been fought in each State in October. It was a very startling fact that if Mr. Seymour had received the electoral vote of the solid South (which afterwards came to be regarded either as the rightful inheritance or the fraudulent prerogative of the Democratic party), he would, in connection with the vote he received in the North, have had a majority over General Grant in the Electoral College. Considering the time of the election, considering the record and the achievements of the rival candidates, the Presidential election of 1868 must be regarded as the most remarkable and the most unaccountable in our political annals.

The result was not comforting to the thoughtful men who, interpreted its true significance and comprehended the possibilities to which it pointed. Of the reconstructed States (eight in number) General Grant received the electoral votes of six,- North Carolina,