Still others, including the Vice President, were left under grave suspicion. Even after this, Congress proved reckless enough to pass the "salary grab." That scandalous Act raised the pay of all members and applied to the past two years. This was more than the country could stomach. Many members who voted for the "back pay never had a chance to draw any future pay. 718. The people of the North were growing weary of military rule in the South, and they were sickened by the corruption in high places in the National government. The elections of '74 gave the Democrats a large majority in the lower House of Congress, and placed them in control in several Northern State governments. Then the presidential election of 1876 closed the long era of political reconstruction. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New York, a prominent reformer, and adopted a "reform" platform. The Republicans named as their candidate Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, and appealed chiefly to war-time prejudices by a vigorous "waving of the bloody shirt." On the morning after election, papers of both parties announced a Democratic victory. That party had safely carried every doubtful" Northern State (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana), and, on the face of the returns, they had majorities in every Southern State. They claimed 204 electoral votes to 165. But in Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, carpetbagger governments, hedged by Federal bayonets, would have the canvassing of the returns, and they were promptly urged by des 1 James G. Blaine, for many years preceding 1874 the Speaker of the House, had been a leading candidate. Shortly before the convention met, however, he was accused of complicity in the Credit Mobilier scandal. The evidence was supposed to be contained in letters from Blaine to a certain Mulligan. On pretense of examining these letters, Blaine got hold of them and never permitted them to pass again from his hands. He read parts from them in a dramatic "justification" of himself before the House; but the "Mulligan Letters" made this " magnetic" statesman thereafter an impossible candidate for National favor. § 719] ELECTION OF 1876: "EIGHT TO SEVEN" 597 perate Republican politicians in the North to secure a favorable count. The carpetbagger officials proved easily equal to the emergency. On the alleged ground of fraud and of intimidation to Negro voters, they threw out the vote of enough districts to declare the Republican electors chosen. In Oregon one of the Republican electors who had been chosen proved to be a postmaster; but the Constitution declares Federal officials ineligible to such position. In these four States two sets of electors secured credentials from rival State governments or conflicting officials, and double sets of votes were sent to Washington. Twenty votes were in dispute. Hayes could not be elected without every one of them. Any one of them would elect Tilden. 719. How should it be decided which sets were valid? The Constitution was unhappily vague. Congress could not easily agree upon a law, because the lower House was Democratic and the Senate Republican. Injudicious leadership might easily have plunged the Nation again into civil war, which this time would not have been sectional. Finally (January, 1877), Congress created the famous Electoral Commission of fifteen, to pass upon the disputes, five members chosen by the House, five by the Senate, and five justices of the Supreme Court, of which last five three were Republicans. After many painful weeks, by a strict party vote, the Commission decided every disputed point in favor of the Republicans. The end was reached. only two days before the date for the inauguration of the new President. The "eight to seven" decisions became a by-word in politics, and they are generally regarded as proof that even members 1 Louisiana was perhaps the most trying case. There the Democratic ticket had a majority of more than 6000, in spite of the fact that the carpetbagger officials freely employed "perjury, forgery, and shameless manipulation of the returns before publication" (Dunning, Reconstruction, 316). But the canvassing board "threw out returns on vague rumor and unsupported assertion," and "ignored technical irregularities in returns that favored Republicans, but used the same defects as a ground for rejecting returns that favored the Democrats." Such methods manufactured a Republican majority of 3500. But of the Supreme Court were controlled by partisan bias. this discreditable result was more than offset by the notable spectacle of half a nation submitting quietly, even in time of intense party feeling, to a decision that had the form of law. Rarely, in any country, has free government been subjected to such a strain or withstood one so triumphantly. - After all, the South reaped the fruits of victory. President Hayes at once removed the Federal garrisons. Then the State governments to which his election had been due immediately vanished, and the South was left to work out its salvation for itself as best it could. 720. Slavery and the blunders of Reconstruction have left America burdened with a frightful race problem. Southern Whites have continued to agree in the necessity for keeping the Negro from the polls, at least wherever his vote might be a real factor,-and that race remains (1917) practically destitute of political privilege. To keep it so, there has been created and preserved for a third of a century "the Solid South," in close alliance with the Democratic party, without the possibility of natural and wholesome division upon other issues. In 1890 the Republicans in Congress attempted to restore Federal supervision of congressional and presidential elections. The "Lodge Force Bill" failed, partly from the opposition of Northern capital invested now in Southern manufactures (§ 727). But the South took warning, and began to protect its policy by the forms of constitutional right. The States adopted property qualifications and educational tests for the franchise.1 These qualifications, in practice, are invoked only against the Negro, not against the illiterate White. Sometimes the latter is protected further by the notorious "Grandfather 1 Mississippi led off (1890) by prescribing payment of a poll tax and the ability to read or understand the Constitution. Only 37,000 of the 147,000 adult Negro males could read; few of these paid the tax; and White officials decide whether a would-be voter understands the Constitution; only 8615 Negroes registered for the next election. |