I had barely time to write the required keynote speech, but not enough to commit it to memory; nor sight to read it, even had I been willing to adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust to extemporization. A friend, Col. J. Stoddard Johnston, who was familiar with my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my ma.n.u.script behind his hat he lined the words out to me between the cheering, I having mastered a few opening sentences.
Luck was with me. It went with a bang--not, however, wholly without detection. The Indianans, devoted to Hendricks, were very wroth.
"See that fat man behind the hat telling him what to say," said one to his neighbor, who answered, "Yes, and wrote it for him, too, I"ll be bound!"
One might as well attempt to drive six horses by proxy as preside over a national convention by hearsay. I lost my parliamentarian at once. I just made my parliamentary law as we went. Never before or since did any deliberate body proceed under manual so startling and original. But I delivered each ruling with a resonance--it were better called an impudence--which had an air of authority. There was a good deal of quiet laughter on the floor among the knowing ones, though I knew the ma.s.s was as ignorant as I was myself; but realizing that I meant to be just and was expediting business the convention soon warmed to me, and feeling this I began to be perfectly at home. I never had a better day"s sport in all my life.
One incident was particularly amusing. Much against my will and over my protest I was brought to promise that Miss Phoebe Couzins, who bore a Woman"s Rights Memorial, should at some opportune moment be given the floor to present it. I foresaw what a row it was bound to occasion.
Toward noon, when there was a lull in the proceedings, I said with an emphasis meant to carry conviction: "Gentlemen of the convention, Miss Phoebe Couzins, a representative of the Woman"s a.s.sociation of America, has a memorial from that body, and in the absence of other business the chair will now recognize her."
Instantly and from every part of the hall arose cries of "No!" These put some heart into me. Many a time as a schoolboy I had proudly declaimed the pa.s.sage from John Home"s tragedy, "My Name is Norval." Again I stood upon "the Grampian hills." The committee was escorting Miss Couzins down the aisle. When she came within the radius of my poor vision I saw that she was a beauty and dressed to kill.
That was rea.s.surance. Gaining a little time while the hall fairly rocked with its thunder of negation I laid the gavel down and stepped to the edge of the platform and gave Miss Couzins my hand.
As she appeared above the throng there was a momentary "Ah!" and then a lull, broken by a single voice:
"Mister Chairman. I rise to a point of order."
Leading Miss Couzins to the front of the stage I took up the gavel and gave a gentle rap, saying: "The gentleman will take his seat."
"But, Mister Chairman, I rose to a point of order," he vociferated.
"The gentleman will take his seat instantly," I answered in a tone of one about to throw the gavel at his head. "No point of order is in order when a lady has the floor."
After that Miss Couzins received a positive ovation and having delivered her message retired in a blaze of glory.
VI
Mr. Tilden was nominated on the second ballot. The campaign that followed proved one of the most memorable in our history. When it came to an end the result showed on the face of the returns 196 in the Electoral College, eleven more than a majority; and in the popular vote 4,300,316, a majority of 264,300 for Tilden over Hayes.
How this came to be first contested and then complicated so as ultimately to be set aside has been minutely related by its authors.
The newspapers, both Republican and Democratic, of November 8, 1876, the morning after the election, conceded an overwhelming victory for Tilden and Hendricks. There was, however, a single exception. The New York Times had gone to press with its first edition, leaving the result in doubt but inclining toward the success of the Democrats. In its later editions this tentative att.i.tude was changed to the statement that Mr.
Hayes lacked the vote of Florida--"claimed by the Republicans"--to be sure of the required votes in the Electoral College.
The story of this surprising discrepancy between midnight and daylight reads like a chapter of fiction.
After the early edition of the Times had gone to press certain members of the editorial staff were at supper, very much cast down by the returns, when a messenger brought a telegram from Senator Barnum, of Connecticut, financial head of the Democratic National Committee, asking for the Times" latest news from Oregon, Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina. But for that unlucky telegram Tilden would probably have been inaugurated President of the United States.
The Times people, intense Republican partisans, at once saw an opportunity. If Barnum did not know, why might not a doubt be raised? At once the editorial in the first edition was revised to take a decisive tone and declare the election of Hayes. One of the editorial council, Mr. John C. Reid, hurried to Republican headquarters in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which he found deserted, the triumph of Tilden having long before sent everybody to bed. Mr. Reid then sought the room of Senator Zachariah Chandler, chairman of the National Republican Committee.
While upon this errand he encountered in the hotel corridor "a small man wearing an enormous pair of goggles, his hat drawn over his ears, a greatcoat with a heavy military cloak, and carrying a gripsack and newspaper in his hand. The newspaper was the New York Tribune,"
announcing the election of Tilden and the defeat of Hayes. The newcomer was Mr. William E. Chandler, even then a very prominent Republican politician, just arrived from New Hampshire and very much exasperated by what he had read.
Mr. Reid had another tale to tell. The two found Mr. Zachariah Chandler, who bade them leave him alone and do whatever they thought best. They did so, consumingly, sending telegrams to Columbia, Tallaha.s.see and New Orleans, stating to each of the parties addressed that the result of the election depended upon his State. To these was appended the signature of Zachariah Chandler.
Later in the day Senator Chandler, advised of what had been set on foot and its possibilities, issued from National Republican headquarters this laconic message: "Hayes has 185 electoral votes and is elected."
Thus began and was put in motion the scheme to confuse the returns and make a disputed count of the vote.
VII
The day after the election I wired Mr. Tilden suggesting that as Governor of New York he propose to Mr. Hayes, the Governor of Ohio, that they unite upon a committee of eminent citizens, composed in equal numbers of the friends of each, who should proceed at once to Louisiana, which appeared to be the objective point of greatest moment to the already contested result. Pursuant to a telegraphic correspondence which followed, I left Louisville that night for New Orleans. I was joined en route by Mr. Lamar and General Walthal, of Mississippi, and together we arrived in the Crescent City Friday morning.
It has since transpired that the Republicans were promptly advised by the Western Union Telegraph Company of all that had pa.s.sed over its wires, my dispatches to Mr. Tilden being read in Republican headquarters at least as soon as they reached Gramercy Park.
Mr. Tilden did not adopt the plan of a direct proposal to Mr. Hayes.
Instead he chose a body of Democrats to go to the "seat of war." But before any of them had arrived General Grant, the actual President, antic.i.p.ating what was about to happen, appointed a body of Republicans for the like purpose, and the advance guard of these appeared on the scene the following Monday.
Within a week the St. Charles Hotel might have been mistaken for a caravansary of the national capital. Among the Republicans were John Sherman, Stanley Matthews, Garfield, Evarts, Logan, Kelley, Stoughton, and many others. Among the Democrats, besides Lamar, Walthal and myself, came Lyman Trumbull, Samuel J. Randall, William R. Morrison, McDonald, of Indiana, and many others.
A certain degree of personal intimacy existed between the members of the two groups, and the "entente" was quite as unrestrained as might have existed between rival athletic teams. A Kentucky friend sent me a demijohn of what was represented as very old Bourbon, and I divided it with "our friends the enemy." New Orleans was new to most of the "visiting statesmen," and we attended the places of amus.e.m.e.nt, lived in the restaurants, and saw the sights as if we had been tourists in a foreign land and not partisans charged with the business of adjusting a Presidential election from implacable points of view.
My own relations were especially friendly with John Sherman and James A. Garfield, a colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means, and with Stanley Matthews, a near kinsman by marriage, who had stood as an elder brother to me from my childhood.
Corruption was in the air. That the Returning Board was for sale and could be bought was the universal impression. Every day some one turned up with pretended authority and an offer to sell. Most of these were, of course, the merest adventurers. It was my own belief that the Returning Board was playing for the best price it could get from the Republicans and that the only effect of any offer to buy on our part would be to a.s.sist this scheme of blackmail.
The Returning Board consisted of two white men, Wells and Anderson; and two negroes, Kenner and Casanave. One and all they were without character. I was tempted through sheer curiosity to listen to a proposal which seemed to come direct from the board itself, the messenger being a well-known State Senator. As if he were proposing to dispose of a horse or a dog he stated his errand.
"You think you can deliver the goods?" said I.
"I am authorized to make the offer," he answered.
"And for how much?" I asked.
"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," he replied. "One hundred thousand each for Wells and Anderson, and twenty-five thousand apiece for the n.i.g.g.e.rs."
To my mind it was a joke. "Senator," said I, "the terms are as cheap as dirt. I don"t happen to have the amount about me at the moment, but I will communicate with my princ.i.p.al and see you later."
Having no thought of entertaining the proposal, I had forgotten the incident, when two or three days later my man met me in the lobby of the hotel and pressed for a definite reply. I then told him I had found that I possessed no authority to act and advised him to go elsewhere.
It is a.s.serted that Wells and Anderson did agree to sell and were turned down by Mr. Hewitt; and, being refused their demands for cash by the Democrats, took their final pay, at least in patronage, from their own party.
VIII
I pa.s.sed the Christmas week of 1876 in New York with Mr. Tilden. On Christmas day we dined alone. The outlook, on the whole, was cheering.
With John Bigelow and Manton Marble, Mr. Tilden had been busily engaged compiling the data for a const.i.tutional battle to be fought by the Democrats in Congress, maintaining the right of the House of Representatives to concurrent jurisdiction with the Senate in the counting of the electoral vote, pursuant to an unbroken line of precedents established by that method of proceeding in every presidential election between 1793 and 1872.
There was very great perplexity in the public mind. Both parties appeared to be at sea. The dispute between the Democratic House and the Republican Senate made for thick weather. Contests of the vote of three States--Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida, not to mention single votes in Oregon and Vermont--which presently began to blow a gale, had already spread menacing clouds across the political sky. Except Mr.