1876 (49 page)

“These curious last-minute changes in the voting of the two states caused the Electoral College on December sixth to elect Hayes—by one vote—president. But since Hayes has clearly lost the election by more than a quarter-million votes to Tilden, the Congress must now decide which of the two sets of disputed returns from the contested four states are valid: the first set that elected Tilden in November or the second set that elected Hayes in December.”

Just below me, in the first row, an angry Frenchman was now on his feet. He is one of a group of workmen sent to observe the ways of Democracy, their passage paid for by a popular subscription. As the party of workmen left France they were blessed by none other than Victor Hugo himself, whose prose style is even more emptily splendid than the one I resort to in French.

Hugo had roared, “The future is already dawning, and it clearly belongs to Democracy, which is purely pacific.” Apparently the great man has not yet been told of America’s attack on Mexico in the forties or on Canada in 1812. Hugo spoke confidently of the coming United States of
Europe
and bade the good workmen to go forth, bearing a torch (how rhetoricians love that torch!), “the torch of civilization from the land where Christ was born to the land which beheld the birth of John Brown.” It would seem that the master’s genius stops short of elementary geography.

“Explain to me, sir,” said the workman, “in what way this election differs from that infamous election where Louis Napoleon destroyed the French republic, and made himself emperor.”

Much cheering and applause. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Belmont nodding his head in a most demagogic way at the audience.

“The difference,” I said, when the audience had again grown quiet, “is that General Grant will leave office in March—”

“But Grant’s party ...”

“But Grant’s heir ...”

“But Hayes ...”

From various parts of the Hall the discouraged—no, the enraged—lovers of democracy started to shout their slogans and their maledictions.

In a last desperate effort to maintain control, I shouted back: “In February the Congress will declare that Samuel Tilden—already elected president by a majority of a quarter million votes—is indeed our president. And the American republic will continue, and will flourish!” I managed to create a sufficient ovation at that point to get myself offstage. I was soaked with sweat, and shaking as if from fever.

Emma and I went back with the Belmonts to their house—no, palace—where supper had been prepared for half a hundred people, of whom a number had been at Chickering Hall. I was complimented on my performance. But I was not allowed to bask for very long in much-needed praise. Before I could do more than drink a glass of champagne, Belmont had led me into his library, where beneath acres of fine morocco bindings, he delivered himself of an impassioned speech, his guttural accent every bit as reminiscent of Bismarck’s as was his startling theme. “That workman was correct. What’s happening now
is
like what Louis Napoleon did when he made himself Napoleon III. But I want Tilden to play the part of Louis Napoleon. I want him to take the crown. Because it’s his, by every right. So let him seize it. And let him use force if necessary!”

“But he has no force.
They
have the troops.” I settled back in a leather-covered chair of the new deep sort. My clothes were clinging to me most disagreeably as the sweat began to dry. All I need now is to contract pneumonia.

“They are worse than Jacobins!” Belmont inveighed against the Republican leadership, shifting the historic analogy to yet an earlier epoch.

“Everything,” I said soothingly, “will be resolved by some sort of electoral commission.”

“But we don’t know
what
the commission will be. Or who will be on it. But we do know that every day that passes, our position weakens. For a month the country has thought of Tilden as the next president. But now they begin to doubt. They read the
Times
...”

“
And
the
Herald
,” I added softly; ours is the larger circulation.

“I want Tilden in Washington. Now!”

“Taking the oath of office?”

“No. He’ll do that in March, as the Constitution prescribes. But I want him directing our party in the Congress. He can’t leave anything so important to Hewitt, who’s a good man but ... well, Tilden is a master of politics. He also has legitimacy. And the combination ...” And so on.

Finally, I was released; and had my supper. Just as I was leaving the Belmont house, I was stopped by a plainly dressed middle-aged woman who had been waiting for me in the street. “I am a cousin of your late wife, Mr. Schuyler.” And so she was (her grandmother was a Traxler; she, too, is called Emma). She lives in Wisconsin where she has supported herself and five children by writing for the foreign press ever since her Austrian husband left home one day. I promised to give her an interview.

“My oldest daughter is very like yours,” she said wistfully. Emma was kind to her unfortunate cousin and namesake.

Emma dropped me off at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on her way to the Sanford house, where she dwells in lonely state. Denise is in South Carolina. Sanford is in Washington, meddling in the electoral process. Most genially he invited me to stay in the house during his absence but I said that I prefer living at my hotel with its private telegraph office and its milling throngs of Republican politicians. I am able to learn more during a half-hour in the Amen Corner than I can from a reading of all the newspapers.

“You were superb, Papa!” Emma was comforting.

“I was adequate, which is superb given that audience and all that I could
not
say.”

“You must spend Christmas with us, in the South. Denise insists. So do I.”

“I know she does.” Denise writes me nearly every day to report that her spirits and health are both good.

“I must stay here with the Governor.”

“But all this could take a very long time.”

“Not too long. By March fourth, there must be a new president. That is the law.”

“So that means there will be two months of—disturbance, doesn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Will there be revolution?” The question on Emma’s lips was very real. We have lived through so many desperate bloody times at Paris.

“No one knows,” was my wise response. “It depends on the Governor. At the moment there are supposed to be more than a hundred thousand men at the South, ready to fight.”

“Now I know why one visits but does not actually
live
in Africa.”

Emma goes South tomorrow.
I
assume she will be safe enough on the Sanford plantation, where Denise plans to stay until her child is born in February.

In a letter waiting for me when I got back to my room just now, Denise writes, “Emma thinks it safer here. Certainly it’s comfortable. And she has sent me Madame Restell’s most comforting and certainly most expensive ‘assistant’ ... is that the word? to see me through the
accouchement
.
But you’ll be here long before then. By New Year’s Day at the latest, or I shall be furious and deprive you of your godfatherdom!”

I WRITE THIS on the cars from Albany to New York. The parlour car is nearly empty. In the seat next to me is Governor Tilden, as of this morning governor no longer. At the moment Tilden is sleeping in an upright position, the expression on his face politely expectant. Bigelow is across the aisle from us. Nearby, the detective is reading a novel with a yellow cover. Our several fellow travellers stare with some interest at the president-elect. It is New Year’s Day, 1877.

I must say that I have never been so tired in my life. In fact, all three of us are beginning to succumb to the never-ceasing strain.

Our day began when the outgoing governor of New York, Samuel Tilden, escorted his successor, one Lucius Robinson, into the Assembly chamber of the state capitol to take the oath of office.

Bigelow and I sat in the back of the chamber, and I fear that Bigelow slept through most of Tilden’s graceful speech. But then Bigelow had helped write it.

I was on hand in my capacity as official Tilden-watcher for the
Herald
.
The national press was represented hardly at all.

Bigelow remarked that the number of journalists in attendance was about average for the inaugural of a New York governor. This is ominous, considering that today Tilden gave his first major address since being elected president.

With altogether too much delicacy Tilden referred to the current “subject of controversy,” making the point that, in the twenty-two previous presidential elections, the Congress had simply recorded the votes sent them by the Electoral College. But now the Congress must choose between two absolutely conflicting sets of votes sent them by four states.

Tilden reminded the audience that three years ago the Congress had declared illegal the present government of Louisiana, whose Returning Board has just seen fit to reverse the state’s popular vote. Tilden also spelled out the illegality of the South Carolina and Florida boards. But where he ought to have thundered his contempt for the most corrupt and now tyrannous Administration in our history and unfurled his banner as our rightful lord, he was throughout his address very much the dry constitutional lawyer and in no way the outraged tribune of a cheated people.

Tilden made no reference to the two congressional committees (one from the Senate, the other from the House) whose task it is to create a solution. The House Committee on Privileges has already declared that the election must be resolved
within
the Congress. Tilden concurs on the ground that the Constitution requires disputed presidential elections to be decided in the House of Representatives, as was done in 1800, when Colonel Burr and Thomas Jefferson each received the same number of votes for the presidency. The House chose between them, and in my prejudiced view chose unwisely.

Another solution is to form some sort of special agency
outside
the Congress, and let it decide. Tilden thinks such an agency would be contrary to both Constitution and custom. Well, we shall know soon enough, for there will be a joint session of the two committees on January 12. Jamie insists I go to Washington.

After the inaugural of the new governor, Bigelow and I accompanied Tilden to the house in Eagle Street where some trunks were assembled, as well as half a dozen well-wishers (
not
including the new governor), and a representative of the New York Central Railroad.

“We shall go back to the city in the five p.m. cars,” said Tilden.

“Then we’ll check these trunks straight on through for you, Governor.”

“Straight through to Washington City. To the White House,” I heard myself say. There was general if strained laughter, and even Tilden smiled, though he said nothing.

Just before 5:00 p.m. of this grey, freezing day, we arrived at the depot. To my astonishment no one had come to say good-bye. Awkwardly we stood by the potbellied stove in the nearly empty station, trying to make conversation.

I found it suddenly hard to believe that this lonely small figure was the president of a great nation and the center of a national crisis. “Tilden or Blood!” Well, beside me in the parlour car at this very moment dozes the first part of that rallying cry. When comes the second?

There are, I suppose, explanations for the lack of a crowd. Today is New Year’s Day and everyone is home or paying calls. Certainly the cars are nearly empty but ...

We are rattling through the town of Hudson. Between red-brick houses I can see the river, frozen solid. A single iceboat with a blue sail skims swiftly over the ice, close to where boys have built a bonfire. Smoke from the chimneys of Catskill downriver gives an infernal aspect to a frozen landscape that lacks only the slow unfurling of the great cold leathern wings of Dante’s Satan to match my mood.

I have just moved across the aisle. I sit next to Bigelow, who is now wide-awake. “What do you make of it?”

Bigelow knew exactly what I meant. He spoke in a low voice in order not to disturb Tilden. “The Governor was never popular at Albany. They just didn’t care for him.”

“But he is the president.”

“I know. Strange, isn’t it? To win such a victory and watch it all leak away.”

“Except it hasn’t.”

“We’re in the hands of Congress now.” Bigelow looked forlorn. “And of Hewitt. I have no idea what he’ll do when the House meets tomorrow.”

“Can’t you persuade the Governor to take charge, directly?”

“He won’t. ‘Separation of powers,’ he says.”

“Are the Southern Democrats in Congress apt to defect?”

“Not yet. Not until Hayes and Grant make them an irresistible offer.”

Across the aisle Tilden’s eyes are now open. Neutrally, he watches us. The three of us look at one another as the cars hurtle south through the icy evening. For some time now not one of us has had anything to say.

JANUARY 14, 1877. A Sunday. I am still in New York. Jamie was much put out that I did not go to Washington City but I think that now he sees the wisdom of my having stayed close to Tilden.

I ought to note that in the midst of all this high political drama there has been some comedy. On New Year’s Day, while I was at Albany, Jamie made the rounds of those houses that still receive him.

By the time he got to the house of his fiancée, Miss May, he was so drunk that he pissed in the front parlour fireplace. Last week a male relative of the now former fiancée accosted Jamie in front of the Union Club and horsewhipped him.

I found Jamie still bruised, and very grim. He has said nothing to me about the matter, but then he does not have to, since New York talks of nothing else.

Until two days ago, when the committees met in joint session, there was no news at all out of Washington City. The members of the two committees had conducted their affairs in absolute secrecy. This uncharacteristic continence has alarmed us all.

Last night Hewitt came up from Washington bringing with him a draft of the joint resolution which the two committees will submit to the whole Congress. Apparently Tilden and Hewitt sat up most of last night, going over the various articles of the bill.