1876 (51 page)

“But Davis can still serve on the commission.” Hewitt was emphatic. “He won’t be obliged to take his seat in the Senate until March.”

“But will he serve?” That urgent question spread through the cloakrooms, the lobbies, the city, the nation.

I dined this evening with the Garfields, and a dozen Republican leaders. The only lady present was the noble Lucretia who seemed not at all distressed by her singularity.

Needless to say, the talk was of the commission and of Davis’s sudden election.

“Mr. Schuyler is a Tilden spy.” Garfield genially warned his friends. “We must not plot too openly.” Garfield waved a damp handkerchief in my direction. He has been suffering from a bad cold.

“We don’t plot at all. We’re too stupid,” was the sour observation of an elderly Stalwart. “That Tilden of yours has just gone and put Judge Davis in his pocket, by making him a senator like that.”

After dinner Garfield puffed on his cigar and Lucretia did needlepoint. From time to time she thrust the needle of her own analysis into the glum stuff of the evening’s mood. Defeat was palpable in that company.

Garfield and I, momentarily excluded from the general conversation, sat in a corner of the family parlour. In a low voice Garfield told me, “We’re going to lose tomorrow in the House. That’ll be the end of Hayes.”

“But doesn’t Tilden deserve to be elected? I mean, isn’t it usual to grant the office to the man who gets the most votes?” Possibilities of a play on the verb “grant” in this particular context occurred to me, but I let them swiftly go. We are all of us so trapped by the desperate struggle for power that any sort of wit is a kind of blasphemy.

“I don’t think he
is
the winner. Not truly.” The beautiful blue eyes glittered with their usual sincerity; as always, I was captivated.

“But what about Louisiana? Tilden won the state by a large majority?”

Garfield shook his head. “I don’t think he did. Not really. After all, I was there. The President sent me. And I am truly convinced that in a
fair
election Hayes would have won Louisiana.”

“The first returns were twenty thousand for Tilden.”

“I admit there were errors on both sides.”

“Errors or crimes?”

Garfield looked unhappy; he never likes to hear or say the hard accurate word if he can find a soft euphemistic replacement. “Crimes, too. Yes. After all, the state in question
is
Louisiana, and I’ve never seen anything like those people. Did you know that the head of the Returning Board ...” But he stopped himself. “I mustn’t go into that since I’m apt to be a member of the electoral commission.”

“You don’t have to go into it. I already know the man’s price. He wanted a quarter-million dollars, which I assume your party paid him, since he gave you the vote.”

“What I find unfair,” said Garfield, moving with his usual quick grace from the dangerous to the anodyne, “is the way that the press ignores real issues. For instance, in almost every parish of Louisiana the Democrats kept the Negroes from the polls. They threatened them. Beat them. Terrified them. So even if the first vote in Louisiana had been accurate, it would not have been honest or representative, since the Negroes were almost entirely excluded from the canvass.”

I must say that Garfield was as plausible and as charming as ever. There is no crime that his party can commit that he will not find some way of ...

I AM IN THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE at the Capitol, where Nordhoff is transmitting the news to the New York
Herald
.

The Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. David Davis (on whom, Jamie said, to keep an eye), has just announced that he will
not
serve on the electoral commission, even though he intends to stay on the Court until March 4. According to his statement, “I can say without the least reserve” that the mysterious translation to the Senate was “entirely unsought and unexpected.”

Nordhoff is much amused by that last word. “Davis has known for at least two weeks that he would be elected to the Senate. And he certainly wanted it.”

“But did Tilden know it two weeks ago? Did Tilden arrange it?”

“You tell me. He’s your friend. I do know that Hewitt was kept in the dark until yesterday.”

Davis went on to say that he has been “anxious for two years to retire.” I am writing this in a corner of the crowded telegraph office, waiting for Nordhoff to finish with the telegrapher. I shall begin my own story tonight.

As Garfield predicted, the electoral commission bill passed the house on January 26. One hundred and ninety-one voted in favour of the bill and eighty-six voted against it, amongst them Garfield.

On January 29 President Grant signed the bill, and the electoral commission now exists. Until yesterday’s bombshell, the Democrats were euphoric. They had counted on Davis to be the deciding vote in their favour. Now he is (mysteriously?) gone. Piously, Davis tells everyone that he could not bear the responsibility of deciding a presidential election. For one thing he is sensitive about having been born at the South; for another, he has taken positions on the Court displeasing to many Republicans; finally, he is somewhat embarrassed at having been so “unexpectedly” made a senator not so much by his friends the Greenbackers but by the Democratic party of Illinois.

The defection of Davis has created perfect confusion. After all, the only reason the Democrats in Congress supported the electoral commission was because they believed that Davis would have the decisive vote.

Nordhoff thinks that the Republicans have known all along that Davis would not serve; and that Hewitt and the Democrats in Congress fell crashing into a trap which Tilden helped contrive by arranging a Senate seat for the Machiavellian Davis.

If this is true, was Garfield—of the luminous, honest, loving blue eyes—once again lying to me?

January 29. At Willard’s.

This morning I had a few minutes with Hewitt in the cloakroom of the House. He has every reason to look as harassed as he does.

We stood trapped between two desks by a crush of lobbyists and representatives who made it suddenly possible for me to have him to myself: there were so many who wanted to take my place that none did or could in that mass of black-coated tobacco (and worse) -smelling political flesh.

“Did you ever ask Davis—before all this—if he would serve?”

“Certainly not.” Hewitt was emphatic. “That would have been unethical. Besides, it never occurred to us that he would
not
go on the commission.” I believe Hewitt.

Yet Nordhoff tells me that Tilden knew as early as January 13 that Davis would go to the Senate. Why then did Tilden not tell Hewitt? Is it possible that Tilden secretly prefers not Davis but one of the four remaining Justices available for appointment?

From the beginning the leading Democratic senators have favoured, officially, the commission because they believe in the essential impartiality of any and all Supreme Court Justices on the ground that when faced with fraud, these noble men will say it is fraud. I think this naive and see no reason to exempt these high jurists from the universal corruption, since theirs, too, is an African provenance. Nordhoff thinks that the Democratic senators, secretly, dislike Tilden and would like to see him defeated.

The remaining four Justices are all Republican, at least nominally. Currently, the Democrats would like the crucial fifth Justice to be one Joseph P. Bradley, of New Jersey. Bradley was appointed to the Court by Grant after a long and somewhat shady career as a railroad attorney and Western judge. Originally a radical Republican, Bradley has lately presided over the Southern Circuit for the Court and has given satisfactory “justice” to the Southern whites.

Apparently Tilden and Hewitt have confidence in Bradley. At least, that is the word going around.

January 29. At Willard’s.

Justice Bradley is the fifteenth member of the commission, and his vote will decide the election, since the votes of the other fourteen members (amongst them Garfield) are already known to be split seven to seven no matter what evidence is presented them in their lofty capacity as keepers of the national conscience, as duly sworn detectors of fraudulent election returns, as sole electors of the nineteenth president.

I am so nervous that I sleep soundly, dream not at all, and enjoy perfect health, or its appearance.

FEBRUARY 8. 2:00 a.m. At Willard’s Hotel.

I have just got back from Hewitt’s house. We have won!

I feel like a boy again—though why it is always assumed that any boy, by definition, feels good I do not know. I certainly never did.

On January 31 the electoral commission met in more or less solemn state in the Supreme Court’s chamber at the Capitol, a small, elegant, rather ominous-looking room.

On a high dais sit the empty thrones of the Justices. Overlooking this dais is a small gallery where the press and interested parties normally sit. The small well of the chamber contains a large table at which sit the fifteen members of the electoral commission, chaired by the most ancient of the Justices, Mr. Clifford. Solemnly he receives the various lawyers representing Tilden and Hayes, and accepts their lengthy learned briefs.

The principal objective of Tilden’s lawyers has been to determine whether or not the commission has the power “to go behind the returns.” In other words, to produce witnesses and evidence proving Republican fraud. Tilden’s lawyers maintain that he was plainly elected in the disputed states but that later “jugglery” denied him the election.

The Republicans deny any “jugglery” and declare piously that to “go behind the returns” would be an invasion of states’ rights! So much for the party that fought one of the bloodiest wars in all history to prove the absolute primacy of the Federal government over any of its component states.

Nordhoff and I sat in the crowded gallery looking down on the commission, neither able to follow any of the first day’s proceedings. But Nordhoff did tell me that “From the beginning the entire joint committee was in favour of going behind the returns. That was the whole point to having an electoral commission.

Unfortunately, Friend Hewitt never got the Republicans to agree publicly to what they had agreed to in secret session.”

“Hewitt is not the greatest party manager, is he?”

“I think,” said Nordhoff, as if translating at sight from an old German text, “that this man is a wanting fool.”

From the well of the chamber Garfield waved at us. He looked more cheerful than he did the other night. I take this to be a very bad sign indeed.

Nordhoff pointed out Bradley to me. The arbiter of a nation’s (and my) destiny is a nondescript creature, with a perpetual half-smile. I take this to be another bad sign, too. But then I was collecting ill-omens all that day.

The next day, as well.

On February 1, the two houses of Congress met
in
the chamber of the House of Representatives. Since the press gallery was overfull, Garfield got me a place in the Distinguished Visitors gallery, where I was surrounded by what looked to be the entire diplomatic corps, including Baron Jacobi, who was squeezed between me and the British minister Sid Edwin Thornton.

“What nation do you represent, dear Schuyler?” The Baron whispered in his
boulevardier
French.

“The kingdom of good government,” I whispered back.

“Then I fear that, presently, your small state will be annexed by this gorgeous, this unique democracy.”

I feared as much, too. Yet I found myself admiring the unexpectedly dignified way in which the republic’s rulers were now confronting the constitutional crisis.

Before the anxious gaze of the entire world ... at last I am beginning to sound like a true journalist! Let me be precise. Before the anxious gaze of those of us who will benefit directly from the election of Tilden or Hayes, the solemn drama began to unfold at one o’clock when the doorkeeper of the House of Representatives announced in a loud, trembling voice the approach of the United States Senate.

Through the chamber’s central entrance the senators walked and marched, strolled and strutted. Most eyes were upon the two continuing antagonists, Blaine and Conkling; yet each is now peripheral to the last act of that high drama whose early acts they dominated. Conkling looked, as ever, superb. It is sad that Kate Sprague is in the city, but I have not seen her. Conkling wants a Tilden victory, so that he can then take over the Republican party and either be the candidate himself in four years’ time or, it is murmured, create yet another administration for General Grant.

Blaine is very much the loyal party man today, plainly on excellent terms with everyone save Conkling. Should Hayes be elected, it is said that Blaine will be given a high place in the Cabinet.

A number of
very
distinguished visitors have been allowed the courtesy of the floor. Amongst them, I saw General Sherman—fortunately, in civilian clothes (people still speak seriously of a military coup d’
é
tat by General Grant should Tilden be elected). I also recognized the celebrated New York jurist Charles O’Conor, a handsome old man, who is Tilden’s chief spokesman before the commission. Baron Jacobi pointed out to me the historian” George Bancroft; the sage was listening gravely to a long disquisition from Garfield—no doubt on the ease with which
true
history can at last be written in this marvellous candid age of telegraph and newspaper.

Once the senators and the guests were seated on the extra chairs that had been set up in the aisles, the President of the Senate, Thomas W. Ferry, climbed to the high throne where usually sits the Speaker of the House of Representatives. But today the Speaker is secondary, and occupies a chair at the President’s left. Incidentally, the Speaker is no longer the alleged West Point-cadet salesman of last summer but one S.J. Randall, a Democrat from Pennsylvania and a friend of Tilden. Mr. Randall’s face is decorated with nothing more than a discreet moustache—unlike the President of the Senate, who wears attached to his lower lip an inordinately long beard that halfway down his chest divides in two; it seems to be made of grey tweed.