Volume III Part 36 (1/2)
[Footnote 1554: Bigelow, _Life of Tilden_, Vol. 2, p. 84.
”Mr. Conkling felt that neither Mr. Tilden nor Mr. Hayes should be inaugurated.”--Conkling, _Life of Conkling_, p. 528.]
CHAPTER XXVIII
CONKLING AND CURTIS AT ROCHESTER
1877
Two State governments in Louisiana, one under Packard, a Republican, the other under Nicholls, a Democrat, confronted Hayes upon the day of his inauguration. The canva.s.sing boards which returned the Hayes electors also declared the election of Packard as governor, and it would impeach his own t.i.tle, it was said, if the President refused recognition to Packard, who had received the larger popular majority.
It was not unknown that the President contemplated adopting a new Southern policy. His letter of acceptance presupposed it, and before the completion of the Electoral Commission's work political and personal friends had given a.s.surance in a published letter that Hayes would not continue military intervention in the South.[1555] Moreover, the President's inaugural address plainly indicated such a purpose. To inform himself of the extent to which the troops intervened, therefore, and to harmonise if possible the opposing governments, he sent a commission to New Orleans,[1556] who reported (April 21) a returning board quorum in both branches of the Nicholls Legislature and recommended the withdrawal of the army from the immediate vicinity of the State House. This was done on April 24 and thenceforward the Nicholls government controlled in State affairs.[1557]
[Footnote 1555: Letter of Stanley Matthews and Charles Foster, dated February 17, 1877.--Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1877, p. 459.]
[Footnote 1556: This commission consisted of Charles B. Lawrence, Joseph B. Hawley, John M. Harlan, John C. Brown, and Wayne McVeigh.--_Ibid._, p. 465.]
[Footnote 1557: _Ibid._, pp. 456-465. Packard became consul to Liverpool.]
The President's policy quickly created discontent within the ranks of the Republican party. Many violently resented his action, declaring his refusal to sustain a governor whose election rested substantially upon the same foundation as his own as a cowardly surrender to the South in fulfillment of a bargain between his friends and some Southern leaders.[1558] Others disclaimed the President's obligation to continue the military, declaring that it fostered hate, drew the colour line more deeply, promoted monstrous local misgovernment, and protected venal adventurers whose system practically amounted to highway robbery. Furthermore, it did not keep the States under Republican control, while it identified the Republican name with vindictive as well as venal power, as ill.u.s.trated by the Louisiana Durrell affair in 1872,[1559] in the elections of 1874, and at the organisation of the Louisiana Legislature early in 1875.[1560]
Notwithstanding these potent reasons for the President's action the judgment of a majority of his party deemed it an unwise and unwarranted act, although Grant spoke approvingly of it.[1561]
[Footnote 1558: The commission reported the Packard government's insistence that the Legislature of 1870 had the power to create a Returning Board with all the authority with which the Act clothed it, and that the Supreme Court of the State had affirmed its const.i.tutionality. On the other hand, the Nichols government admitted the Legislature's right to confide to a Returning Board the appointment of electors for President and Vice-President, but denied its power to modify the const.i.tutional provision for counting the vote for governor without first amending the State Const.i.tution, declaring the Supreme Court's decision to the contrary not to be authoritative.--Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1877, pp. 403-404.]
[Footnote 1559: Durrell, a United States Circuit judge, sustained Kellogg in his contest with McEnery.]
[Footnote 1560: ”The President directs me to say that he does not believe public opinion will longer support the maintenance of the State government in Louisiana by the use of the military, and he must concur in this manifest feeling.” Grant's telegram to Packard, dated Mar. 1, 1877.]
[Footnote 1561: New York _Tribune_, July 10, 1877.]
Similar judgment was p.r.o.nounced upon the President's attempt to reform the civil service by directing compet.i.tive examinations for certain positions and by forbidding office-holders actively to partic.i.p.ate in political campaigns.[1562] ”No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organisations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns,” he wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury. ”Their right to vote and to express their views on public questions, either orally or through the press, is not denied, provided it does not interfere with the discharge of their official duties. No a.s.sessments for political purposes should be allowed.” In a public order dated June 22 he made this rule applicable to all departments of the civil service. ”It should be understood by every officer of the government that he is expected to conform his conduct to its requirements.”[1563] To show his sincerity the President also appointed a new Civil Service Commission, with Dorman B. Eaton at its head, who adopted the rules formulated under Curtis during the Grant administration, and which were applied with a measure of thoroughness, especially in the Interior Department under Carl Schurz, and in the New York post-office, then in charge of Thomas L.
James.
[Footnote 1562: The first step towards a change in the manner of appointments and removals was a bill introduced in Congress on December 20, 1865, by Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island ”to regulate the civil service of the United States.” A few months later Senator B.
Gratz Brown of Missouri submitted a resolution for ”such change in the civil service as shall secure appointments to the same after previous examinations by proper Boards, and as shall provide for promotions on the score of merit or seniority.” On March 3, 1871, Congress appended a section to an appropriation bill, authorising the President to ”prescribe such regulations for the admission of persons into the civil service as may best promote efficiency therein and ascertain the fitness of each candidate in respect to age, health, character, knowledge and ability for the branch of service in which he seeks to enter; and for this purpose he may employ suitable persons to conduct such inquiries, prescribe their duties, and establish regulations for the conduct of persons who may receive appointments.” Under this authority President Grant organised a commission composed of George William Curtis, Joseph Medill, Alexander C. Cattell, Davidson A.
Walker, E.B. Ellicott, Joseph H. Blackfan, and David C. c.o.x. This commission soon found that Congress was indisposed to clothe them with the requisite power, and although in the three years from 1872 to 1875, they had established the entire soundness of the reform, an appropriation to continue the work was refused and the labours of the commission came to an end.]
[Footnote 1563: New York _Tribune_, June 25, 1877.]
This firm and aggressive stand against the so-called spoils system very naturally aroused the fears of many veteran Republicans of sincere and unselfish motives, who had used offices to build up and maintain party organisation, while the order restricting freedom of political action provoked bitter antagonism, especially among members of the New York Republican State Committee, several of whom held important Federal positions. To add to the resentment an official investigation of the New York custom-house was ordered, which disclosed ”irregularities,” said the report, ”that indicate the peril to which government and merchants are exposed by a system of appointments in which political influence dispenses with fitness for the work.”[1564] The President concurred. ”Party leaders should have no more influence in appointments than other equally respectable citizens,” he said. ”It is my wish that the collection of the revenue should be organised on a strictly business basis, with the same guarantees for efficiency and fidelity in the selection of the chief and subordinate officers that would be required by a prudent merchant.”[1565]
[Footnote 1564: New York _Tribune_, July 28, 1877.]
[Footnote 1565: _Ibid._]
The Republican press, in large part, deplored the President's action, and while managing politicians smothered their real grievance under attacks upon the Southern policy, they generally a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of armed neutrality and observation.[1566] No doubt the President was much to blame for this discontent. He tolerated the abuses disclosed by the investigation in New York, continued a disreputable regime in Boston, and installed a faction in Baltimore no better than the one turned out. Besides, the appointment to lucrative offices of the Republican politicians who took active part in the Louisiana Returning Board had closely a.s.sociated him with the spoils system.[1567]
Moreover, his failure to remove offending officials discredited his own rule and created an unfavourable sentiment, because after provoking the animosity of office-holders and arousing the public he left the order to execute itself. Yet the people plainly believed in the President's policy of conciliation, sympathised with his desire to reform abuses in the civil service, and honoured him for his frankness, his patriotism, and his integrity. During the months of August and September several Republican State conventions, notably those in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ma.s.sachusetts, and New Jersey commended him, while Maine, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Blaine, although refusing to indorse unqualifiedly the policy and acts of the Administration, refrained from giving any expression of disapproval.[1568]
[Footnote 1566: In his speech at Woodstock, Conn., on July 4, Blaine disapproved the President's action; a gathering of Republicans in New Jersey, celebrating the return of Robeson from a foreign tour, indicated an unfriendly disposition; the Camerons of Pennsylvania, father and son, exhibited dissent; one branch of the New Hamps.h.i.+re Legislature tabled a resolution approving the President's course; and an early Republican State convention in Iowa indirectly condemned it.]