We have left behind us the gibbet and the stake. No further need of the Voltaires, the Rousseaus and the Diderots to declaim against kingcraft and priestcraft. We have done something more than mark time. We report progress. Yet despite the miracles of modern invention how far in the arts of government has the world traveled from darkness to light since the old tribal days, and what has it learned except to enlarge the area, to amplify and augment the agencies, to multiply and complicate the forms and processes of corruption? By corruption I mean the dishonest advantage of the few over the many.
The dreams of yesterday, we are told, become the realities of to-morrow.
In these despites I am an optimist. Much truly there needs still to be learned, much to be unlearned. Advanced as we consider ourselves we are yet a long way from the most rudimentary perception of the civilization we are so fond of parading. The eternal verities--where shall we seek them? Little in religious affairs, less still in commercial affairs, hardly any at all in political affairs, that being right which represents each organism. Still we progress. The pulpit begins to turn from the sinister visage of theology and to teach the simple lessons of Christ and Him crucified. The press, which used to be omniscient, is now only indiscriminate--a clear gain, emitting by force of publicity, if not of shine, a kind of light through whose diverse rays and foggy l.u.s.ter we may now and then get a glimpse of truth.
III
The time is coming, if it has not already arrived, when among fair-minded and intelligent Americans there will not be two opinions touching the Hayes-Tilden contest for the presidency in 1876-77--that both by the popular vote and a fair count of the electoral vote Tilden was elected and Hayes was defeated; but the whole truth underlying the determinate incidents which led to the rejection of Tilden and the seating of Hayes will never be known.
"All history is a lie," observed Sir Robert Walpole, the corruptionist, mindful of what was likely to be written about himself; and "What is history," asked Napoleon, the conqueror, "but a fable agreed upon?"
In the first administration of Mr. Cleveland there were present at a dinner table in Washington, the President being of the party, two leading Democrats and two leading Republicans who had sustained confidential relations to the princ.i.p.als and played important parts in the drama of the Disputed Succession. These latter had been long upon terms of personal intimacy. The occasion was informal and joyous, the good fellowship of the heartiest.
Inevitably the conversation drifted to the Electoral Commission, which had counted Tilden out and Hayes in, and of which each of the four had some story to tell. Beginning in banter with interchanges of badinage it presently fell into reminiscence, deepening as the interest of the listeners rose to what under different conditions might have been described as unguarded gayety if not imprudent garrulity. The little audience was rapt.
Finally Mr. Cleveland raised both hands and exclaimed, "What would the people of this country think if the roof could be lifted from this house and they could hear these men?" And then one of the four, a gentleman noted for his wealth both of money and humor, replied, "But the roof is not going to be lifted from this house, and if any one repeats what I have said I will denounce him as a liar."
Once in a while the world is startled by some revelation of the unknown which alters the estimate of a historic event or figure; but it is measurably true, as Metternich declares, that those who make history rarely have time to write it.
It is not my wish in recurring to the events of nearly five-and-forty years ago to invoke and awaken any of the pa.s.sions of that time, nor my purpose to a.s.sail the character or motives of any of the leading actors.
Most of them, including the princ.i.p.als, I knew well; to many of their secrets I was privy. As I was serving, in a sense, as Mr. Tilden"s personal representative in the Lower House of the Forty-fourth Congress, and as a member of the joint Democratic Advisory or Steering Committee of the two Houses, all that pa.s.sed came more or less, if not under my supervision, yet to my knowledge; and long ago I resolved that certain matters should remain a sealed book in my memory.
I make no issue of veracity with the living; the dead should be sacred. The contradictory promptings, not always crooked; the double constructions possible to men"s actions; the intermingling of ambition and patriotism beneath the lash of party spirit; often wrong unconscious of itself; sometimes equivocation deceiving itself--in short, the tangled web of good and ill inseparable from great affairs of loss and gain made debatable ground for every step of the Hayes-Tilden proceeding.
I shall bear sure testimony to the integrity of Mr. Tilden. I directly know that the presidency was offered to him for a price, and that he refused it; and I indirectly know and believe that two other offers came to him, which also he declined. The accusation that he was willing to buy, and through the cipher dispatches and other ways tried to buy, rests upon appearance supporting mistaken surmise. Mr. Tilden knew nothing of the cipher dispatches until they appeared in the New York _Tribune_. Neither did Mr. George W. Smith, his private secretary, and later one of the trustees of his will.
It should be sufficient to say that so far as they involved No. 15 Gramercy Park they were the work solely of Colonel Pelton, acting on his own responsibility, and as Mr. Tilden"s nephew exceeding his authority to act; that it later developed that during this period Colonel Pelton had not been in his perfect mind, but was at least semi-irresponsible; and that on two occasions when the vote or votes sought seemed within reach Mr. Tilden interposed to forbid. Directly and personally I know this to be true.
The price, at least in patronage, which the Republicans actually paid for possession is of public record. Yet I not only do not question the integrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him and most of those immediately about him to have been high-minded men who thought they were doing for the best in a situation unparalleled and beset with perplexity. What they did tends to show that men will do for party and in concert what the same men never would be willing to do each on his own responsibility. In his "Life of Samuel J. Tilden," John Bigelow says:
"Why persons occupying the most exalted positions should have ventured to compromise their reputations by this deliberate consummation of a series of crimes which struck at the very foundations of the republic is a question which still puzzles many of all parties who have no charity for the crimes themselves. I have already referred to the terrors and desperation with which the prospect of Tilden"s election inspired the great army of office-holders at the close of Grant"s administration.
That army, numerous and formidable as it was, was comparatively limited. There was a much larger and justly influential cla.s.s who were apprehensive that the return of the Democratic party to power threatened a reactionary policy at Washington, to the undoing of some or all the important results of the war. These apprehensions were inflamed by the party press until they were confined to no cla.s.s, but more or less pervaded all the Northern States. The Electoral Tribunal, consisting mainly of men appointed to their positions by Republican Presidents or elected from strong Republican States, felt the pressure of this feeling, and from motives compounded in more or less varying proportions of dread of the Democrats, personal ambition, zeal for their party and respect for their const.i.tuents, reached the conclusion that the exclusion of Tilden from the White House was an end which justified whatever means were necessary to accomplish it. They regarded it, like the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves, as a war measure."
IV
The nomination of Horace Greeley in 1872 and the overwhelming defeat that followed left the Democratic party in an abyss of despair. The old Whig party, after the disaster that overtook it in 1852, had been not more demoralized. Yet in the general elections of 1874 the Democrats swept the country, carrying many Northern States and sending a great majority to the Forty-fourth Congress.
Reconstruction was breaking down of its very weight and rottenness. The panic of 1873 reacted against the party in power. Dissatisfaction with Grant, which had not sufficed two years before to displace him, was growing apace. Favoritism bred corruption and corruption grew more and more flagrant. Succeeding scandals cast their shadows before. Chickens of carpetbaggery let loose upon the South were coming home to roost at the North. There appeared everywhere a noticeable subsidence of the sectional spirit. Reform was needed alike in the State Governments and the National Government, and the cry for reform proved something other than an idle word. All things made for Democracy.
Yet there were many and serious handicaps. The light and leading of the historic Democratic party which had issued from the South were in obscurity and abeyance, while most of those surviving who had been distinguished in the party conduct and counsels were disabled by act of Congress. Of the few prominent Democrats left at the North many were tainted by what was called Copperheadism--sympathy with the Confederacy.
To find a chieftain wholly free from this contamination, Democracy, having failed of success in presidential campaigns, not only with Greeley but with McClellan and Seymour, was turning to such Republicans as Chase, Field and Davis. At last heaven seemed to smile from the clouds upon the disordered ranks and to summon thence a man meeting the requirements of the time. This was Samuel Jones Tilden.
To his familiars Mr. Tilden was a dear old bachelor who lived in a fine old mansion in Gramercy Park. Though 60 years old he seemed in the prime of his manhood; a genial and overflowing scholar; a trained and earnest doctrinaire; a public-spirited, patriotic citizen, well known and highly esteemed, who had made fame and fortune at the bar and had always been interested in public affairs. He was a dreamer with a genius for business, a philosopher yet an organizer. He pursued the tenor of his life with measured tread.
His domestic fabric was disfigured by none of the isolation and squalor which so often attend the confirmed celibate. His home life was a model of order and decorum, his home as unchallenged as a bishopric, its hospitality, though select, profuse and untiring. An elder sister presided at his board, as simple, kindly and unostentatious, but as methodical as himself. He was a lover of books rather than music and art, but also of horses and dogs and out-of-door activity.
He was fond of young people, particularly of young girls; he drew them about him, and was a veritable Sir Roger de Coverley in his gallantries toward them and his zeal in amusing them and making them happy. His tastes were frugal and their indulgence was sparing. He took his wine not plenteously, though he enjoyed it--especially his "blue seal" while it lasted--and sipped his whisky-and-water on occasion with a pleased composure redolent of discursive talk, of which, when he cared to lead the conversation, he was a master. He had early come into a great legal practice and held a commanding professional position. His judgment was believed to be infallible; and it is certain that after 1871 he rarely appeared in the courts of law except as counsellor, settling in chambers most of the cases that came to him.
It was such a man whom, in 1874, the Democrats nominated for Governor of New York. To say truth, it was not thought by those making the nomination that he had any chance to win. He was himself so much better advised that months ahead he prefigured very near the exact vote. The afternoon of the day of election one of the group of friends, who even thus early had the Presidency in mind, found him in his library confident and calm.
"What majority will you have?" he asked cheerily.
"Any," replied the friend sententiously.
"How about fifteen thousand?"
"Quite enough."
"Twenty-five thousand?"
"Still better."
"The majority," he said, "will be a little in excess of fifty thousand."
It was 53,315. His estimate was not guesswork. He had organized his campaign by school districts. His canva.s.s system was perfect, his canva.s.sers were as penetrating and careful as census takers. He had before him reports from every voting precinct in the State. They were corroborated by the official returns. He had defeated Gen. John A. Dix, thought to be invincible by a majority very nearly the same as that by which Governor Dix had been elected two years before.
V
The time and the man had met. Though Mr. Tilden had not before held executive office he was ripe and ready for the work. His experience in the pursuit and overthrow of the Tweed Ring in New York, the great metropolis, had prepared and fitted him to deal with the Ca.n.a.l Ring at Albany, the State capital. Administrative reform was now uppermost in the public mind, and here in the Empire State of the Union had come to the head of affairs a Chief Magistrate at once exact and exacting, deeply versed not only in legal lore but in a knowledge of the methods by which political power was being turned to private profit and of the men--Democrats as well as Republicans--who were preying upon the substance of the people.
The story of the two years that followed relates to investigations that investigated, to prosecutions that convicted, to the overhauling of popular censorship, to reduced estimates and lower taxes.
The campaign for the Presidential nomination began as early as the autumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee of Southerners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southern man came to town who was not "seen." If of enough importance he was taken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southern standard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchised Southern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether after their own ideas of what a President ought to be.
The South came to St. Louis, the seat of the National Convention, represented by its foremost citizens, and almost a unit for the Governor of New York. The main opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of which John Kelly was then the chief. Its very extravagance proved an advantage to Tilden.
Two days before the meeting of the convention I sent this message to Mr.
Tilden: "Tell Blackstone"--his favorite riding horse--"that he wins in a walk."
The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S.S.--"Sunset"--c.o.x for temporary chairman. It was a clever move. Mr. c.o.x, though sure for Tammany, was popular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought that with him they could count a majority of the National Committee.
The night before the a.s.sembling Mr. Tilden"s two or three leading friends on the committee came to me and said: "We can elect you chairman over c.o.x, but no one else."
I demurred at once. "I don"t know one rule of parliamentary law from another," I said.
"We will have the best parliamentarian on the continent right by you all the time," they said.
"I can"t see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention," I said.
"We"ll have a dozen men at hand to tell you," they replied. So it was arranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen.