Part 146

Four candidates for the Presidency were named and voted for by as many different parties in 1876, although the contest of the election was practically between the Republicans and Democrats, as in previous years. The former, after a prolonged struggle of rival factions, put in nomination ex-Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, with William A. Wheeler, of New York, for Vice President. The candidates of the Democratic party were ex-Governor Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, for President, and Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, for Vice President. Before these nominations were made, the Prohibition Reform party and the party calling itself the Independent, but popularly known as the "Greenback party," had already brought candidates into the field. The first named put Green Clay Smith, of Kentucky and G. T. Stewart, of Ohio, in nomination; the nominees of the last named were Peter Cooper, of New York, and Samuel F. Cary, of Ohio. "Thirty-eight States participated in the election. Colorado had been admitted to the Union in August, 1876, and, in order to save an additional election, the choice of electors for that occasion was conferred upon the legislature. All the other States appointed them by popular vote. The polls had hardly closed on the day of election, the 7th of November, when the Democrats began to claim the presidency. The returns came in so unfavorably for the Republicans that there was hardly a newspaper organ of the party which did not, on the following morning, concede the election of Mr. Tilden. He was believed to have carried every Southern State, as well as New York, Indiana, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The whole number of electoral votes was 369. If the above estimate were correct, the Democratic candidates would have 203 votes, and the Republican candidates 166 votes. But word was sent out on the same day from Republican headquarters at Washington that Hayes and Wheeler were elected by one majority; that the States of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana had chosen Republican electors. Then began the most extraordinary contest that ever took place in the country. The only hope of the Republicans was in the perfect defence of their position. The loss of a single vote would be fatal. An adequate history of the four months between the popular election and the inauguration of Mr. Hayes, would fill volumes. Space can be given here for only a bare reference to some of the most important events. Neither party was over-scrupulous, and no doubt the acts of some members of each party were grossly illegal and corrupt. … In four States, South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon, there were double returns. In South Carolina there were loud complaints that detachments of the army, stationed near the polls, had prevented a fair and free election. Although the board of State canvassers certified to the choice of the Hayes electors, who were chosen on the face of the returns, the Democratic candidates for electors met on the day fixed for the meeting of electors and cast ballots for Tilden and Hendricks. In Florida there were allegations of fraud on both sides. The canvassing board and the governor certified to the election of the Hayes electors, but, fortified by a court decision in their favor, the Democratic electors also met and voted. In Louisiana there was anarchy. There were two governors, two returning boards, two sets of returns showing different results, and two electoral colleges. In Oregon the Democratic governor adjudged one of the Republican electors ineligible, and gave a certificate to the highest candidate on the Democratic list. The Republican electors, having no certificate from the governor, met and voted for Hayes and Wheeler. The Democratic elector, whose appointment was certified to by the governor, appointed two others to fill the vacancies, when the two Republican electors would not meet with him, and the three voted for Tilden and Hendricks. All of these cases were very complicated in their incidents, and a brief account which should convey an intelligible idea of what occurred is impossible. … Thus, for the first and only time in the history of the country, the election ended in such a way as to leave the result in actual doubt, and in two States the number of legal votes given for the electors was in dispute. … As soon as the electoral votes were cast it became a question of the very first importance how they were to be counted. It was evident that the Senate would refuse to be governed by the 22nd joint rule [under which no electoral vote to which any member of either House objected could be counted unless both Houses agreed to the counting of it]—in fact the Senate voted to rescind the rule,—and it was further evident that if the count were to take place in accordance with that rule it would result in throwing out electoral votes on both sides on the most frivolous pretexts. It was asserted by the Republicans that, under the Constitution, the President of the Senate alone had the right to count, in spite of the fact that the joint rule, the work of their party, had assumed the power for the two Houses of Congress. On the other hand, the Democrats, who had always denounced that rule as unconstitutional, now maintained that the right to count was conferred upon Congress. A compromise became necessary, and the moderate men on both sides determined to effect the establishment of a tribunal, as evenly divided politically as might be, which should decide all disputed questions so far as the Constitution gave authority to Congress to decide them. The outcome of their efforts was the Electoral Commission law of 1877," by which a Commission was created, consisting of fifteen members—the Senate appointing five from its own body, the House five, and four Associate-Justices of the Supreme Court, designated in the bill, appointing a fifth from the same court. The Senators selected were Edmunds, Morton, Frelinghuysen (Republicans), and Thurman and Bayard (Democrats). The Representatives were Payne, Hunton, Abbott (Democrats), and Garfield and Hoar (Republicans). The four Supreme Court Justices designated by the Act were Clifford, Field (Democrats), Strong and Miller (Republicans). They selected for the fifth member of the Commission Justice Bradley, who was a Republican. {3578} "The natural choice of the justices would have been their associate, David Davis; but he had been ejected only five days before as senator from Illinois, and it was regarded by him and by others as improper that he should serve. Thus the commission consisted of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. If Judge Davis had been selected, there would have been only seven Republicans, and the result of the operation of the law might have been different. … The count had begun on the first day of February, and the final vote upon Wisconsin was not reached until the early morning of March 2. As question after question was decided uniformly in favor of the Republicans, it became evident to the Democrats that their case was lost. They charged gross partisanship upon the Republican members of the Electoral Commission, in determining every point involved in the dual returns for their own party, though as a matter of fact there does not seem to have been much room for choice between the two parties on the score of partisanship. Each member of the commission favored by his vote that view which would result in adding to the electoral vote of his own party. But as the result of the count became more and more certainly a Republican triumph, the anger of the Democrats arose. Some of them were for discontinuing the count; and the symptoms of a disposition to filibuster so that there should be no declaration of the result gave reason for public disquietude. But the conservative members of the party were too patriotic to allow the failure of a law which they had been instrumental in passing to lead to anarchy or revolution, and they sternly discountenanced all attempts to defeat the conclusion of the count. The summing up of the votes [Hayes, 185; Tilden, 184], was read by Mr. Allison of Iowa, one of the tellers on the part of the Senate, at a little after four o'clock, on the morning of the 2d of March, amid great excitement. … Mr. Ferry thereupon declared Rutherford B. Hayes elected President, and William A. Wheeler Vice-President, of the United States. The decision was acquiesced in peaceably by the whole country, and by men of every party. But the Democrats have never ceased to denounce the whole affair as a fraud. … It is to be hoped that the patriotism of the American people and their love of peace may never again be put to such a severe test as was that of 1876 and 1877." According to the Democratic count, the popular vote stood: Tilden, 4,300,590; Hayes, 4,036,298; Cooper, 81,737; Smith, 9,522. The Republican count gave: Tilden, 4,285,992; Hayes, 4,033,768.

_E. Stanwood, History of Presidential Elections, chapter 24._

ALSO IN: _C. A. O'Neil, The American Electoral System, chapters 20-21._

_A. M. Gibson, A Political Crime._

_Congressional Record, volume 5 (1877), parts 1-2._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1877. Halifax Fishery Award.

See FISHERIES, NORTH AMERICAN: A. D. 1877-1888.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1877-1891. The Farmers' Alliance.

The Farmers' Alliance "is the outcome of a movement which first culminated, shortly after the Civil War had ended, in the formation of the Patrons of Husbandry, or, as they were more commonly called, 'The Grange,' the object of which organization was the mutual protection of farmers against the encroachments of capital. The collapse of the Grange was due to a mistake it had made in not limiting its membership originally to those whose interests were agricultural. The first 'Alliance' was formed in Texas, to oppose the wholesale buying up of the public lands by private individuals. … For about ten years the Alliance remained a Southern organization. In 1887, about ten years after the first local Alliance in Texas was formed, and five after the State Alliance, the 'Farmers' Union' of Louisiana united with it, under the name of the 'Farmers' Alliance and Co-operative Union of America.' Branches were quickly established," in other Southern States. "Later in the same year, the 'Agricultural Wheel,' a similar society operating in the States of Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, was amalgamated with the Alliance, the new organization being called 'The Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America.' The spirit of the movement had simultaneously been embodied in the 'National Farmers' Alliance' of Illinois, which was started in 1877, and quickly extended into Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Dakota. A minor organization, the 'Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association,' was started in 1887, in the southern part of Illinois. Finally, in 1889, at a meeting held in St. Louis, these different bodies were all practically formed into a union for political purposes, aiming at legislation in the interests of farmers and laborers; and the present name of the 'Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union' was chosen. … Its main professed object is the destruction of the money power in public affairs, and the opposition of all forms of monopoly. It demands the substitution of legal tender treasury notes for National bank notes; also an extension of the public currency sufficient for the transaction of all legitimate business; the money to be given to the people on security of their land, at the lowest rates consistent with the cost of making and handling it. It demands government control, not only of money, but of the means of transportation and every other public function."

_Quarterly Register of Current History, volume 1, page 132._

ALSO IN: _F. M. Drew, The Present Farmers' Movement (Political Science Quarterly, June, 1891)._

See, also, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1866-1875.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1878. The Bland Silver Bill.

The act familiarly known as the Bland Bill was passed by Congress in 1878. "Although the silver dollar of which the coinage was resumed in 1878 dates back as a coin to the earlier days of the Republic, its reissue in that year marks a policy so radically new that the experience of previous years throws practically no light on its working. The act of 1878 provided for the purchase by the government, each month, of not less than two million dollars' worth, and not more than four million dollars' worth, of silver bullion, for coinage into silver dollars at the rate of 412½ grains of standard silver (or 371¼ grains of fine silver) for each dollar. The amount of the purchases, within the specified limits, was left to the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury. As every Secretary of the Treasury, throughout the period in which the act was in force, kept to the minimum amount, the practical result was a monthly purchase of two million dollars' worth of silver bullion. The act is sometimes described as having called for a monthly issue of two million silver dollars; but this was not the exact situation. {3579} The amount of silver obtainable with two million dollars obviously varies according to the price of the metal in terms of the dollars with which the purchases are made. In February, 1878, when the first purchases were made, those dollars were the inconvertible United States notes, or greenbacks, worth something less than their face in gold. … When specie payments were resumed, on the first of January, 1879, and the greenbacks became redeemable in gold, the measure of value in the United States became gold, and the extent of the coinage of silver dollars under the act of 1878 became simply a question of how much silver bullion could be bought with two million dollars of gold. The price of silver in 1878 was, in terms of gold, not far from a dollar for an ounce of standard silver. After 1878 it went down almost steadily. … The silver dollar of 412½ grains contains less than an ounce (480 grains) of standard silver. The monthly purchase of two million dollars' worth of silver therefore yielded more than two million silver dollars, the amount being obviously greater as the price of silver went lower. On the average, the monthly yield was not far from two and a half millions of silver dollars. So much each month, therefore, or thirty millions of silver dollars a year, was roughly the addition to the currency of the community from the act of 1878. An important provision of the act of 1878 was that authorizing the issue of silver certificates against the deposit of silver dollars. … The dollars and certificates between them constitute what we may call the silver currency of the act of 1878. The passage of that act was due to causes easily described. It was part of the opposition to the contraction of the currency and the resumption of specie payments, which forms the most important episode of our financial history between 1867 and 1879. … No doubt some additional force was given to the movement in favor of the use of silver from the desire of the silver-mining States and their representatives, that the price of the metal should be kept up through a larger use of it for coinage. But this element, while sometimes prominent in the agitation, was not then, as it has not been in more recent years, of any great importance by itself. The real strength of the agitation for the wider use of silver as money comes from the conviction of large masses of the people that the community has not enough money."

_F. W. Taussig, The Silver Situation in the United States, part 1._

See, also, MONEY AND BANKING: A. D. 1848-1893.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1880. The Twenty-fourth Presidential Election.

For the twenty-fourth Presidential election, in 1880, the Republicans, meeting at Chicago, June 2, named General James A. Garfield, of Ohio, as its candidate for President and Chester A. Arthur, of New York, for Vice President. The so-called Greenback party (which had appeared four years before, in the election of 1876), meeting at Chicago on the 9th of June, put in nomination, for President, James B. Weaver of Iowa, and, for Vice President, B. J. Chambers, of Texas. The main object and principle of the Greenback party was set forth in the following declarations of its platform: "That the right to make and issue money is a sovereign power to be maintained by the people for the common benefit. The delegation of this right to corporations is a surrender of the central attribute of sovereignty. … All money, whether metallic or paper, should be issued and its volume controlled by the government, and not by or through banking corporations, and, when so issued, should be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private. … Legal tender currency [the greenback notes of the civil-war period] should be substituted for the notes of the national banks, the national banking system abolished, and the unlimited coinage of silver, as well as gold, established by law." The Prohibitionists (Temperance), in convention at Cleveland, June 17, nominated Neal Dow, of Maine, for President, and A. M. Thompson, of Ohio, for Vice President. On the 22d of June, at Cincinnati, the Democratic party held its convention and nominated General Winfield S. Hancock, of Pennsylvania, for President, and William H. English, of Indiana, for Vice President. At the election, in November, the popular vote cast was 4,454,416 for Garfield, 4,444,952 for Hancock, 308,578 for Weaver, and 10,305 for Dow. The electoral votes were divided between Garfield and Hancock, being 214 for the former and 155 for the latter. Every former slave-state was carried by the Democratic party, together with New Jersey, California and Nevada.

_E. McPherson, Handbook of Politics for 1880 and 1882._

ALSO IN: _J. C. Ridpath, Life and Work of James A. Garfield, chapters 10-11._

_J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, chapter 29._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1880. The Tenth Census.

Total population, 50,155,783 (exceeding that of 1870 by 11,5117,412), classed and distributed as follows:

North Atlantic division.

White. Black. Maine. 646,852 1,451 New Hampshire. 346,229 685 Vermont. 331,218 1,057 Massachusetts. 1,763,782 18,697 Rhode Island. 269,939 6,488 Connecticut. 610,769 11,547 New York. 5,016,022 65,104 New Jersey. 1,092,017 38,853 Pennsylvania. 4,197,016 85,535

Total 14,273,844 229,417

South Atlantic division. Delaware. 120,160 26,442 Maryland. 724,693 210,230 District of Columbia. 118,006 59,596 Virginia. 880,858 631,616 West Virginia. 592,537 25,886 North Carolina. 867,242 531,277 South Carolina. 391,105 604,332 Georgia. 816,906 725,133 Florida. 142,605 126,690

Total 4,654,112 2,941,202

North Central division. Ohio. 3,117,920 79,900 Indiana. 1,938,798 39,228 Illinois. 3,031,151 46,368 Michigan. 1,614,560 15,100 Wisconsin. 1,309,618 2,702 Minnesota. 776,884 1,564 Iowa. 1,614,600 9,516 Missouri. 2,022,826 145,350 Dakota. 133,147 401 Nebraska. 449,764 2,385 Kansas. 952,155 43,107

Total 16,961,423 385,621

{3580}

South Central division. White. Black. Kentucky. 1,377,179 271,451 Tennessee. 1,138,831 403,151 Alabama. 662,185 600,103 Mississippi. 479,398 650,291 Louisiana. 454,954 483,655 Texas. 1,197,237 393,384 Arkansas. 591,531 210,666

Total 5,901,315 3,012,701

Western division.

Montana. 35,385 346 Wyoming. 19,437 298 Colorado. 191,126 2,435 New Mexico. 108,721 1,015 Arizona. 35,160 155 Utah. 142,423 232 Nevada. 53,556 488 Idaho. 29,013 53 Washington. 67,199 325 Oregon. 163,075 487 California. 767,181 6,018

Total 1,612,276 11,852

Grand total. 43,402,970 6,580,793

In addition the census shows 105,465 Chinese, 148 Japanese, and 66,407 civilized Indians, making a total of 50,155,783, as stated above. The immigrants arriving in the country during the preceding ten years numbered 2,944,695, of whom 989,163 were from the British Islands and 1,357,801 from other parts of Europe.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1881. The brief administration of President Garfield. His assassination.

"President Hayes had left the new administration a heritage of hatred from the Stalwart element of the Republican party. It was President Garfield's chief wish, politically, to heal up the chasm which the past had opened, and not to recognize one faction more than another. … The defeat of the Stalwarts at Chicago, by Garfield, naturally tended to transfer their hostility from the outgoing to the incoming President."

See STALWARTS AND HALF-BREEDS.