The Project Gutenberg ebook of History of the United States, Volume 4, by

200

PERIOD V.

1868-1888

CHAPTER I.

POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE LAST TWO DECADES

The presidential election of 1868 was decided at Appomattox. General Grant was borne to the White House on a flood­tide of popularity, carrying twenty-six out of the thirty-four voting States. Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, became Vice-President. The Democrats had nominated Horatio Seymour, of New York, and F. P. Blair, of Missouri. Reconstruction was the great issue. The democratic platform demanded universal amnesty and the immediate resto­ration of all the commonwealths lately in secession, and insisted that the regulation of the franchise should be left with States.

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The management of the South was the most serious problem before the new administration. The whites were striving by fair means and foul to get political power back into their own hands. The recon­structed state governments, dependent upon black majorities, were too weak for success­ful resistance. The Ku-Klux and similar organizations were practically a masked army. The President was appealed to for military aid, and he responded. Small de­tachments of United States troops hurried hither and thither. Wherever they ap­peared resistance ceased; but when fresh outbreaks elsewhere called the soldiers away, the fight against the hated state gov­ernment was immediately renewed. The negroes soon learned to stay at home on election day, and the whites, once in the saddle, were too skilful riders to be thrown.

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Congress, meanwhile, still strongly repub­lican, was taking active measures to protect the blacks. In 1870 it passed an act imposing fines and damages for a conspiracy to deprive negroes of the suffrage. The Force Act of 1871 was a much harsher measure. It empowered the President to employ the army, navy, and militia to suppress combinations which deprived the negro of the rights guaranteed him by the Fourteenth Amendment. For such combinations to appear in arms was made rebellion against the United States, and the President might suspend habeas corpus in the rebellious dis­trict. By President Grant, in the fall of 1871, this was actually done in parts of the Carolinas. State registrations and elections were to be supervised by United States marshals, who could command the help of the United States military or naval forces.

The Force Act outran popular feeling. It came dangerously near the practical suspension of state government in the South, and many at the North, including some Republicans, thought the latter result a greater evil than even the temporary abey­ance of negro suffrage. The "Liberal Republicans" bolted.

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In 1872 they nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency, and adopted a platform declaring local self­-government a better safeguard for the rights of all citizens than centralized power. The platform also protested against the supremacy of the military over the civil power and the suspension of habeas corpus, and favored universal amnesty to men at the South. Charles Sumner, Stanley Mat­thews, Carl Schurz, David A. Wells, and many other prominent Republicans engaged in the opposition.

Thinking their opportunity had come, the Democrats indorsed the Liberals' platform and nominees. The Republicans re-nom­inated Grant by acclamation, and joined with him on the ticket Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts.

As the campaign went on, the Greeley movement developed remarkable strength and remarkable weakness. Speaking for years through the New York Tribune, Mr. Greeley had won, in a remarkable degree, the respect and even the affection of the country.

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His offer to give bail for Jefferson Davis in his imprisonment, and his stanch advocacy of mercy to all who had engaged in secession, so soon as they had grounded arms, made him hosts of friends even in the South, He took the stump himself, making the tour of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, and crowds of Republi­cans came to see and hear their former champion.

But the Democrats could not heartily unite in the support of such a lifelong and bitter opponent of their party. Some sup­ported a third ticket, while many others did not vote at all. Mr. Greeley, too, an ardent protectionist, was not popular with the influential free-trade element among the Liberals themselves. The election resulted in a sweeping victory for the republican ticket. The Democrats carried but six States, and those were all in the South. Within a month after the election, Mr. Greeley died, broken down by over­exertion, family bereavement, and disap­pointed ambition.

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Troubles in the South continued during Grant's second term. The turmoil reached its height in Louisiana in 1874. Ever since 1872 the whites in that State had been chafing under republican rule. The elec­tion of Governor Kellogg was disputed, and he was accused of having plunged the State into ruinous debt. In August, 1874, a disturbance occurred which ended in the deliberate shooting of six republican offi­cials. President Grant prepared to send military aid to the Kellogg government. Thereupon Penn, the defeated candidate for Lieutenant-governor in 1872, issued an address to the people, claiming to be the lawful executive of Louisiana, and calling upon the state militia to arm and drive "the usurpers from power." Barricades were thrown up in the streets of New Orleans, and on September 14th a severe fight took place between the insurgents and the state forces, in which a dozen were killed on each side. On the next day the state-house was surrendered to the militia, ten thousand of whom had responded to Penn's call. Governor Kellogg took refuge in the custom-house.

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Penn was formally inducted into office. United States troops were hurried to the scene. Agreeably to their professions of loyalty toward the Federal Government, the insurgents sur­rendered the state property to the United States authorities without resistance, but under protest. The Kellogg government was re-instated.

Troops at the polls secured quiet in the November elections. The returning board decided that the Republicans had elected their governor and fifty-four members of the legislature. Fifty-two members were democratic, while the election of five mem­bers remained in doubt, and was left to the decision of the legislature. The Democrats vehemently protested against the decision of the returning board, claiming an all-­round victory. Fearing trouble at the as­sembling of the legislature in January, 1875, President Grant placed General Sheridan in command at New Orleans. The legislature met on January 4th. Our reports of what followed are conflicting.

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The admitted facts are that the democratic members, law­fully or unlawfully, placed a speaker in the chair. Some disorder ensuing, United States soldiers were called in and, at the request of the democratic speaker, restored quiet. The Republicans meanwhile had left the house. The Democrats then elected members to fill the five seats left vacant by the returning board. Later in the day, United States troops, under orders from Governor Kellogg, to whom the re­publican legislators had appealed, ejected the five new members. The Republicans re-entered the house, and the Democrats thereupon withdrew. Subsequently a con­gressional committee made unsuccessful attempts to settle the dispute. The democratic members finally returned, and a sullen acquiescence in the Kellogg government gradually prevailed.

By 1876 every southern State was solidly democratic except Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, and in these republican governments were upheld only by the bayonet.

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The presidential election of 1876 was a contest of general tendencies rather than of definite principles. The opposing par­ties were more nearly matched than they had been since 1860. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, and Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana. Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, and William A. Wheeler, of New York, became the republican standard-bearers. The election passed off quietly, troops being stationed at the polls in turbulent quarters. Mr. Tilden carried New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and Connecticut. With a solid South, he had won the day. But the returning boards of Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, throwing out the votes of several democratic districts on the ground of fraud or intimidation, decided that those States had gone republican, giving Hayes a majority of one in the electoral college. The Democrats raised the cry of fraud. Suppressed excitement pervaded the coun­try. Threats were even muttered that Hayes would never be inaugurated. President Grant quietly strengthened the mili­tary force in and about Washington. The country looked to Congress for a peaceful solution of the problem, and not in vain.

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The Democrats insisted that Congress should continue the practice followed since 1865, which was that no vote objected to should be counted except by the concur­rence of both houses. The House was strongly democratic; by throwing out the vote of one State it could elect Tilden.

Samuel J. Tilden.