A Warning (1876) – by Dan

Thomas Nast’s caricature of the forces rooted against Reconstruction. Atop a black Union veteran reaching for a ballot box: the New York City Irish, Confederate and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest, and big-money Democratic Party chairman August Belmont, with a burning freedmen’s school in the background.

Horatio Seymour was a New York Governor and Democratic Presidential candidate (he lost to Ulysses Grant in 1868). In 1876 he made a speech before the New York electoral commission and warned that “partisan prejudice” and falsified returns were leading to a decision of the Electoral College that would nullify the popular vote in the presidential race. In language that sounds strangely contemporary, he said, “To elect men to govern the Union against the will of the people by unfair methods is Revolution.”

Primary Source Passage:

At this moment of general congratulation the people were startled by the assertion that there had been discovered in remote Southern States the exact number of electoral votes which would be given to and would elect the presidential candidate who was not the choice of the majority of the American people. This surprise was greater because it was one of the charges made by the Republicans in the canvasses to excite the minds of the men of the North, that the solid South would support the Democratic ticket. It was also urged that every Southern State had a deep interest in doing this because they meant to make demands upon the national treasury. While this charge was unjust, no reason can be given why South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana should not act in accordance with the overwhelming majorities of the adjoining States. The public excitement reached the highest point when it was learned that the men who proposed to give these electoral votes to the candidate of the minority had been for years past charged with serious crimes and that their personal security against legal punishment depended upon their success in falsifying the returns of their States. To them an honest count meant just punishment. I cannot be charged with partisan prejudice for any terms of reproach I may use in regard to the officials of Louisiana. I have no words strong enough to describe their unworthiness as set forth in official reports made by their political friends. I cannot if I would paint the aversion shown in the halls of the capitol by honest Republicans, who shunned them as leprous men whose touch and presence was polluting. Yet a few such men, acting solely in reference to their personal interests and who believe that the blackness of their crimes strengthens their claims upon the gratitude of their party, have thus put in peril the interests, the honor, and the safety of the American people.

We have not the poor satisfaction of feeling that the dangers that threaten us are even invested with the ordinary dignity of danger. The pride of our citizens is humiliated and their feelings of security under our laws and Constitution are lessened when they see that the solemn verdict of eight million voters may be reversed by less than eight infamous men – men who have been branded by the leading orators, statesmen, and newspapers of their own political party as vile and corrupt in terms more vigorous than I can repeat. If under our Constitution the majority of the electoral votes of the States had been fairly given to the Republican candidates although the popular majority is against them, all would have acquiesced in their election. Such results are to be regretted, as they do not give administrations the moral power they should have for their own dignity and the good of the country. To elect men to govern the Union against the will of the people by unfair methods is Revolution. Such plots involve anarchy, distress, and dishonor. Those who engage in them, when they have taken the first steps, must go on at all hazards. They have staked their political fortunes – it may be their lives or liberties upon success. Fear guides them on to darker acts of treason. The first false steps forced a reluctant South into rebellion. In the same way they now impel desperate politicians who upheld usurpation in Louisiana in the past to stand by them now, regardless of the honor and safety of the American Union. Will a free people trust such men with the reins of power? Will they consent to be dragged into danger and dishonor by men who are plagued by fears which always haunt the guilty?

The glory of this centennial year thus fades away and darkens into this national shame and reproach. Aroused patriotism can crush resistance to law, but corruption kills honor, virtue, and patriotism, saps the foundations of society, and brings down the structure of states and nations in ruin and dishonor.

We also appeal to the Republicans to see if it is not true that during the late election the officials at Washington overlooked the fact that they were the government of a country and acted throughout merely as the administration of a party. Has one step been taken or the army moved, save at the instance of their political friends? Has there been a recognition of or a consultation with a single citizen who was not allied to them in interest and feeling?

There is a darker phase of the last election. The administration sent out a cabinet officer to take charge of the canvases on behalf of the Republican party. His very position at the head of his managing committee made a forced loan upon nearly one hundred thousand official dependents. It proclaimed to them in louder tones than words, “You must work. You must vote. “You must pay to aid the election of a candidate who declares himself in favor of civil service reform.” It told them that if, believing and acting upon his assurance of him, they followed their own convictions and voted for his opponents of him, they would be punished by the loss of their positions. They were forced in thousands of cases to submit to extortion with smiling faces but with heavy hearts. If a like intimidation had been used in a Southern State, it would have been seized upon by the administration as a reason for declaring martial law, for arresting and imprisoning every suspected citizen.

I have too much respect for the characters of Messrs. Hayes and Wheeler think that they wish to be put at the head of this Union against the declared wishes of a majority of the American people. I do not doubt that if this is to be done by men in Louisiana of whom they think as ill as we do, that they would feel that the highest offices of state would be for them not positions of honor and dignity but political pillories in which they would stand to be pointed out at, now and hereafter, as the representatives of a foul fraud. One thing all men see: The Republican party cannot decide its own case in its own favor against the majority of the American people upon the certificate of branded men in Louisiana, without making the body of our citizens and the world at large feel that it is a corrupt and partisan decision. Such judgment will not only destroy our honor and credit for the day but will be a precedent for wrongdoing in the future. We cannot have Mexican politics without Mexican finances and Mexican disorders. The businessmen in all civilized countries have been taught by recent bankruptcies and disorders in governments made unstable by agitations, to be watchful and distrustful when they see the slightest deviation from political honor, without which there can be no financial honor. On the other hand, let the party now in power yield to the popular will, demand honest returns in accordance with the Constitution, bow to the majesty of the law and then every citizen will feel a renewed confidence in our institutions and the whole world will hold us in higher respect and honor.

Source: Speech of Horatio Seymour to New York Electoral Commission (1876) quoted in John Bigelow, The Life of Samuel J. Tilden (1895), 84-9. https://archive.org/details/lifesamtilden02bigerich/page/84/mode/2up