Volume III Part 18 (1/2)

The story of these frauds is found in two volumes of testimony submitted by the Ca.n.a.l Investigation Committee to the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1867.]

Republicans offered no defence except that their party, having had the courage to investigate and expose the frauds and the methods of the peculators, could be trusted to continue the reform. To this the _World_ replied that ”a convention of shoddyites might, with as good a face, have lamented the rags hanging about the limbs of our s.h.i.+vering soldiers, or a convention of whisky thieves affect to deplore the falling off of the internal revenue.”[1138] Moreover, Democrats claimed that the worst offender was still in office as an appointee of Governor Fenton,[1139] and that the Republican nominee for ca.n.a.l commissioner had been guilty of similar transactions when superintendent of one of the waterways.[1140] These charges became the more glaring because Republicans refused to renominate senators who had been chiefly instrumental in exposing the frauds. ”They take great credit to themselves for having found out this corruption in the management of the ca.n.a.ls,” said Seymour. ”But how did they exhibit their hatred of corruption? Were the men who made these exposures renominated? Not by the Republicans. One of them is running upon our ticket.”[1141] On another occasion he declared that ”not one of the public officers who are charged and convicted by their own friends of fraud and robbery have ever been brought to the bar of justice.”[1142]

The severity of such statements lost none of its sting by the declaration of Horace Greeley, made over his own signature, that Republican candidates were ”conspicuous for integrity and for resistance to official corruption.”[1143]

[Footnote 1138: New York _World_, September 27, 1867.]

[Footnote 1139: _Ibid._, October 16, 22.]

[Footnote 1140: _Ibid._, October 22.]

[Footnote 1141: _New York World_, October 25.]

[Footnote 1142: _Ibid._, October 4.]

[Footnote 1143: New York _Tribune_, September 26, 1867.]

The practical failure of the const.i.tutional convention to accomplish the purpose for which it a.s.sembled also embarra.s.sed Republicans. By the terms of the Const.i.tution of 1846 the Legislature was required, in each twentieth year thereafter, to submit to the people the question of convening a convention for its revision, and in 1866, an affirmative answer being given, such a convention began its work at Albany on June 4, 1867. Of the one hundred and sixty delegates, ninety-seven were Republicans. Its members.h.i.+p included many men of the highest capacity, whose debates, characterised by good temper and forensic ability, showed an intelligent knowledge of the needs of the State. Their work included the payment of the ca.n.a.l and other State debts, extended the term of senators from two to four years, increased the members of the a.s.sembly, conferred the right of suffrage without distinction of colour, reorganised the Court of Appeals with a chief justice and six a.s.sociate justices, and increased the tenure of supreme and appellate judges to fourteen years, with an age limit of seventy.

Very early in the life of the convention, however, the press, largely influenced by the New York _Tribune_, began to discredit its work.

Horace Greeley, who was a member, talked often and always well, but the more he talked the more he revealed his incapacity for safe leaders.h.i.+p. He seemed to grow restive as he did in Congress over immaterial matters. Long speeches annoyed him, and adjournments from Friday to the following Tuesday sorely vexed him, although this arrangement convenienced men of large business interests. Besides, committees not being ready to report, there was little to occupy the time of delegates. Nevertheless, Greeley, accustomed to work without limit as to hours or thought of rest, insisted that the convention ought to keep busy six days in the week and finish the revision for which it a.s.sembled. When his power to influence colleagues had entirely disappeared, he began using the _Tribune_, whose acrid arguments, accepted by the lesser newspapers, completely undermined all achievement. Finally, on September 24, the convention recessed until November 12.

Democrats charged at once that the adjournment was a skulking subterfuge not only to avoid an open confession of failure, but to evade submitting negro suffrage to a vote in November. The truth of the a.s.sertion seemed manifest. At all events, it proved a most serious handicap to Republicans, who, by an act of Congress, pa.s.sed on March 2, 1867, had forced negro suffrage upon the Southern States. Their platform, adopted at Syracuse, also affirmed it. Moreover, their absolute control of the const.i.tutional convention enabled them, if they had so desired, to finish and submit their work in the early autumn. This action subjected their convention resolve for ”impartial suffrage” to ridicule as well as to the charge of cowardice. If you shrink from giving the ballot to a few thousand negroes at home, it was asked, why do you insist that it should be conferred on millions in the South? If, as you pretend, you wish the blacks of this State to have the ballot, why do you not give it to them? How can you blame the South for hesitating when you hesitate? ”It is manifest,” said the _World_, ”that the Republicans do not desire the negroes of this State to vote. Their refusal to present the question in this election is a confession that the party is forcing on the South a measure too odious to be tolerated at home.”[1144]

[Footnote 1144: New York _World_, September 27, 1867.]

This charge, perhaps, was the most disturbing influence Republicans had to meet in the campaign. Responsibility for ca.n.a.l frauds made them wince, since it appealed strongly and naturally to whatever there was of discontent among the people, but their apparent readiness to force upon the South what they withheld in New York seemed so unreasonable and unjust that it aided materially in swelling the strength of the Democrats.

James T. Brady, Henry C. Murphy, John T. Hoffman, and Samuel J. Tilden made the campaign attractive, speaking with unsparing severity to the great audiences gathered in New York City. Although somewhat capricious in his sympathies, Brady seemed never to care who knew what he thought on any subject, while the people, captivated by his marvellously easy mode of speech, listened with rapture as he exercised his splendid powers. It remained for Seymour, however, to give character to the discussion in one of his most forcible philippics. He endeavoured to show that the ballot, given to a few negroes in New York, could do little harm compared to the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of millions of them in the Southern States. The Radicals, he said, not only propose to put the white men of the South under the blacks, but the white men of the North as well. To allow three millions of negroes, representing ten Southern States, to send twenty senators to Was.h.i.+ngton, while more than half the white population of the country, living in nine Northern States, have but eighteen senators, is a home question. ”Will you sanction it?” he asked. ”Twenty senators, recollect, who are to act in relation to interests deeply affecting you. Can you afford to erect such a government of blacks over the white men of this continent? Will you give them control in the United States Senate and thus in fact disfranchise the North? This to you is a local question. It will search you out just as surely as the tax-gatherer searches you out.”[1145]

[Footnote 1145: New York _World_, October 25, 1867.]

Republicans acknowledged their weakness. An opposition that invited attention to disclosures as sensational and corrupt as they were indefensible had deeper roots than ordinary political rivalry, while the question of manhood suffrage, like a legacy of reciprocal hate, aroused the smouldering prejudices that had found bitter expression during the discussion of emanc.i.p.ation. Moreover, the feeling developed that the narrow and unpatriotic policy which ruled the Syracuse convention had displaced good men for unsatisfactory candidates. This led to the subst.i.tution of Thomas H. Hillhouse for comptroller, whose incorruptibility made him a candidate of unusual strength. But the sacrifice did not change the political situation, aggravated among other things by hard times. The wave of commercial depression which spread over Europe after the London financial panic of May, 1866, extended to this country during the last half of 1867. A reaction from the inflated war prices took place, quick sales and large profits ceased, and a return to the old methods of frugality and good management became necessary. In less than two years the currency had been contracted $140,000,000, decreasing the price of property and enhancing the face value of debts, and although Congress, in the preceding February, had suspended further contraction, business men charged financial conditions to contraction and the people held the party in power responsible.

Indeed, the people had become tired of Republican rule, and their verdict changed a plurality of 13,000, given Fenton in 1866, to a Democratic majority of nearly 48,000, with twenty-two majority on joint ballot in the Legislature. New York City gave the Democrats 60,000 majority. Thousands of immigrants had been illegally naturalised, and a fraudulent registration of 1,500 in one ward indicated the extent of the enormous frauds that had been practised by Boss Tweed and his gang;[1146] but the presence of large Democratic gains in the up-State counties showed that Republican defeat was due to other causes than fraudulent registration and illegal voting.

”Outside the incapables and their miserable subalterns who managed the Syracuse convention,” said one Republican paper, ”a pervading sentiment existed among us, not only that we should be beaten, but that we needed chastis.e.m.e.nt.”[1147] Another placed the responsibility upon ”a host of political adventurers, attracted to the party by selfish aggrandis.e.m.e.nts.”[1148] The _Tribune_ accepted it as a punishment for cowardice on the negro suffrage question. ”To say that we are for manhood suffrage in the South and not in the North is to earn the loathing, contempt, and derision alike of friends and foes.”[1149] Thus had Republican power disappeared like Aladdin's palace, which was ablaze with splendour at night, and could not be seen in the morning.

[Footnote 1146: Gustavus Myers, _History of Tammany Hall_, p. 250.]

[Footnote 1147: Buffalo _Commercial Advertiser_, November 6, 1867.]

[Footnote 1148: Albany _Evening Journal_, November 6.]

[Footnote 1149: New York _Tribune_, November 6.]

CHAPTER XIV

SEYMOUR AND HOFFMAN

1868