A Political History of the State of New York Volume III Part 21

[Footnote 1200: John Bigelow, _Life of Samuel J. Tilden_, Vol. 1, p.

217.]

[Footnote 1201: New York _Tribune_, November 14, 1868.]

[Footnote 1202: New York _Evening Post_, November 4, 1868; _Harper's Weekly_, September 30, 1876.]

Forewarned by the returns of 1867 Griswold's supporters, fearing fraud in the metropolis, invoked the aid of the United States Court to prevent the use of forged naturalisation papers, which resulted in the indictment of several men and the publication of fraudulent registry lists. Against such action John T. Hoffman, as mayor, violently protested. "We are on the eve of an important election," said his proclamation. "Intense excitement pervades the whole community.

Unscrupulous, designing, and dangerous men, political partisans, are resorting to extraordinary means to increase it. Gross and unfounded charges of fraud are made by them against those high in authority.

Threats are made against naturalised citizens, and a federal grand jury has been induced to find, in great haste and secrecy, bills of indictment for the purpose, openly avowed, of intimidating them in the discharge of their public duties.... Let no citizen, however, be deterred by any threats or fears, but let him a.s.sert his rights boldly and resolutely, and he will find his perfect protection under the laws and the lawfully const.i.tuted authorities of the State. By virtue of authority invested in me I hereby offer a reward of $100 to be paid on the arrest and conviction of any person charged ... with intimidating, obstructing or defrauding any voter in the exercise of his right as an elector."[1203] Thus did the Tweed Ring strike back.

[Footnote 1203: New York _Times_, November 2, 1868.]

The result of the election in the country at large deeply disappointed the Democrats. Grant obtained 214 electoral votes in twenty-six States, while Seymour secured 80 in eight States. In New York, however, the conspirators did their word well. Although the Republicans won a majority in both branches of the Legislature and elected eighteen of the thirty-one congressmen, Seymour carried the State by 10,000 and Hoffman by 27,946.

After the election the Union League Club charged that in New York City false naturalisation and fraudulent voting had been practised upon a gigantic scale. It appeared from its report that one man sold seven thousand fraudulent naturalisation certificates; that thousands of fict.i.tious names, with false residences attached, were enrolled, and that gangs of repeaters marched from poll to poll, voting many times in succession. The _Tribune_ showed that in twenty election districts the vote cast for Hoffman largely exceeded the registry lists, already heavily padded with fict.i.tious names, and that by comparison with other years the aggregate State vote clearly revealed the work of the conspirators.[1204] Instead of being the choice of the people, it said, "Hoffman was 'elected' by the most infamous system of fraud."[1205]

Andrew D. White wrote that "the gigantic frauds perpetrated in the sinks and dens of the great city have overborne the truthful vote and voice of the Empire State. The country knows this, and the Democratic party, flushed with a victory which fraud has won, hardly cares to deny it."[1206] A few months later Conkling spoke of it as a well known fact that John T. Hoffman was counted in. "The election was a barbarous burlesque," he continued. "Many thousand forged naturalisation papers were issued; some of them were white and some were coffee-coloured. The same witnesses purported to attest hundreds and thousands of naturalisation affidavits, and the stupendous fraud of the whole thing was and is an open secret.... Repeating, ballot-box stuffing, ruffianism, and false counting decided everything. Tweed made the election officers, and the election officers were corrupt.

Thirty thousand votes were falsely added to the Democratic majority in New York and Brooklyn alone. Taxes and elections were the mere spoil and booty of a corrupt junta in Tammany. Usurpation and fraud inaugurated a carnival of corrupt disorder; and obscene birds without number swooped down to the harvest and gorged themselves on every side in plunder and spoliation."[1207]

[Footnote 1204: New York _Tribune_, November 6, 1868.]

[Footnote 1205: _Ibid._, November 7.]

[Footnote 1206: _Ibid._, November 23.]

[Footnote 1207: From speech of Conkling delivered in the U.S. Senate, April 24, 1879.--Thomas V. Cooper, _American Politics_, Book 3, p.

180.]

When Congress convened a committee, appointed to investigate naturalisation frauds in the city of New York, reported that prior to 1868 the Common Pleas and Superior Courts, controlling matters of naturalisation, annually averaged, from 1856 to 1867, 9,000 new voters, but that after the Supreme Court began making citizens on October 6, 1868, the number rapidly increased to 41,112. Several revelations added interest to this statement. Judge Daly served in the Common Pleas, while McCunn, Barnard, Cardozo, and others whom Tweed controlled, sat in the Supreme and Superior Courts. Daly required from three to five minutes to examine an applicant, but McCunn boasted that he could do it in thirty seconds, with the result that the Supreme Court naturalised from 1,800 to 2,100 per day, whereas the Common Pleas during the entire year acted upon only 3,140. On the other hand, the Supreme and Superior Courts turned out 37,967. "One day last week one of our 'upright judges,'" said the _Nation_, "invited a friend to sit by him while he played a little joke. Then he left off calling from the list before him and proceeded to call purely imaginary names invented by himself on the spur of the moment: John Smith, James Snooks, Thomas Noakes, and the like. For every name a man instantly answered and took a certificate. Finally, seeing a person scratching his head, the judge called out, 'George Scratchem!' 'Here,' responded a voice. 'Take that man outside to scratch,' said his honour to an usher, and resumed the more regular manufacture of voters."[1208]

[Footnote 1208: The _Nation_, October 29, 1868.]

To show that a conspiracy existed to commit fraud, the committee submitted valuable evidence contributed by the clerks of these courts.

Instead of printing the usual number of blank certificates based on the annual average of 9,000, they ordered, between September 16 and October 23, more than seven times as many, or 69,000, of which 39,000 went to the Supreme Court. As this court had just gone into the naturalisation business the order seemed suspiciously large. At the time of the investigation 27,068 of these certificates were unaccounted for, and the court refused an examination of its records.

However, by showing that the vote cast in 1868, estimated upon the average rate of the increase of voters, should have been 131,000 instead of 156,000, the committee practically accounted for them. The _Nation_ unwittingly strengthened this measured extent of the fraud, declaring on the day the courts finished their work, that of "the 35,000 voters naturalised in this city alone, 10,000 are perhaps rightly admitted, 10,000 have pa.s.sed through the machine without having been here five years, and the other 15,000 have never been near the courtroom."[1209] A table also published by the committee showed the ratio of votes to the population at each of the five preceding presidential elections to have been 1 to 8, while in 1868 it was 1 to 4.65. "The only fair conclusion from these facts would be," said the _Nation_, "that enormous frauds were perpetrated."[1210]

[Footnote 1209: The _Nation_, October 29, 1868.]

[Footnote 1210: _Ibid._, March 4, 1869.]

On the other hand, the Democratic minority of the committee, after examining Hoffman and Tweed, who disclaimed any knowledge of the transactions and affected to disbelieve the truth of the charges, p.r.o.nounced the facts cited "stale slanders," and most of the witnesses "notorious swindlers, liars, and thieves," declaring that the fraudulent vote did not exceed 2,000, divided equally between the two parties. Moreover, it p.r.o.nounced the investigation a shameful effort to convict the Democracy of crimes that were really the result of the long-continued misgovernment of the Republicans. If that party controlled the city, declared one critic, it would become as adept in "repeating" as it was in "gerrymandering" the State, whose Legislature could not be carried by the Democrats when their popular majority exceeded 48,000 as in 1867. This sarcastic thrust emphasised the notorious gerrymander which, in spite of the Tammany frauds, gave the Republicans a legislative majority of twenty-four on joint-ballot.

CHAPTER XVI

INFLUENCE OF MONEY IN SENATORIAL ELECTIONS

1869

The election of a legislative majority in 1868 plunged the Republicans into a fierce contest over the choice of a successor to Edwin D.

Morgan, whose term in the United States Senate ended on March 4. In bitterness it resembled the historic battle between Weed and Greeley in 1861. Morgan had made several mistakes. His support of Johnson during the first year of the latter's Administration discredited him, and although he diligently laboured to avoid all remembrance of it, the patronage which the President freely gave had continued to identify him with the Johnsonised federal officials. To overcome this distrust he presented letters from Sumner and Wade, testifying to his loyalty to the more radical element of the party.[1211] A revival of the story of his opposition to Wadsworth in 1862 also embarra.s.sed him.

He had overcome it when first elected to the Senate by the sustaining hand of Thurlow Weed, whose position in the management of the party was strengthened by Wadsworth's defeat; but now Weed was absent, and to aid in meeting the ugly charges which rendered his way devious and difficult, Morgan had recourse to Edwin M. Stanton, who wrote that Wadsworth, distinguishing the Senator from his betrayers, repeatedly spoke of him as a true friend and faithful supporter.[1212]

[Footnote 1211: New York _Tribune_, January 13 and 18, 1869.]

[Footnote 1212: New York _Times_, January 12, 1869.]

Morgan's strength, though of a negative kind, had its head concealed under the coils of Conkling's position. It was manifest that the latter's admirers were combining to depose Reuben E. Fenton, Morgan's chief compet.i.tor for the senatorial toga. Chester A. Arthur, looking into the future, had already recognised the need of a new alignment, and the young Senator evidenced the qualities that appealed to him.

There was a common impression that if Morgan were re-elected, he would yield to the greater gifts of Conkling and the purpose, now so apparent, was to crush Fenton and make Conkling the head of an organisation which should include both Senators. John A. Griswold understood this and declined to embarra.s.s Morgan by entering the race.

Fenton at this time was at the height of his power. His lieutenants, headed by Waldo M. Hutchins, the distributor of his patronage, excelled in the gifts of strategy, which had been ill.u.s.trated in the election of Truman G. Younglove for speaker. They were dominated, also, by the favourite doctrine of political leaders that organisation must be maintained and victory won at any cost save by a revolution in party policy, and they entered the senatorial contest with a courage as sublime as it was relentless. Their chief, too, possessed the confidence of the party. His radicalism needed no sponsors. Besides, his four years' service as governor, strengthened by the veto of several bills calculated to increase the public burdens, had received the unmistakable approval of the people.

Nevertheless he was heavily handicapped. Greeley, still smarting under Fenton's failure to support him for governor in 1868, declared for Marshall O. Roberts, while Noah Davis, surprised at his insincerity, aided Morgan. If Greeley's grievance had merit, Davis' resentment was certainly justified. The latter claimed that after Conkling's election in 1867, Fenton promised to support him in 1869, and that upon the Governor's advice, to avoid the prejudice against a judge who engaged in politics, he had resigned from the Supreme Court and made a winning race for Congress.[1213]

[Footnote 1213: New York _World_, January 6, 1869.]

But the _Commercial Advertiser_, a journal then conducted by Conservatives, placed the most serious obstacle in Fenton's pathway, charging that an intimate friend of the Governor had received $10,000 on two occasions after the latter had approved bills for the New York Dry Dock and the Erie Railroad Companies.[1214] Although the _Sun_ promptly p.r.o.nounced it "a remarkable piece of vituperation,"[1215] and the _Tribune_, declaring "its source of no account," called it "a most scurrilous diatribe,"[1216] the leading Democratic journal of the State accepted it as "true."[1217] The story was not new. In the preceding summer, during an investigation into the alleged bribery of members of the Legislature of 1868, Henry Thompson, an Erie director, was asked if his company paid Governor Fenton any money for approving the bill legalising the acts of its directors in the famous "Erie war."

Thompson refused to answer as the question fell without the scope of the committee's jurisdiction. Thereupon Thomas Murphy testified that Thompson told him that he saw two checks of $10,000 each paid to Hamilton Harris, the Governor's legal adviser, under an agreement that Fenton should sign the bill. Murphy added that afterwards, as chairman of a Republican political committee, he asked Jay Gould, president of the Erie company, for a campaign contribution, and was refused for the reason that he had already given $20,000 for Fenton. Harris and Gould knew nothing of the transaction.[1218]

[Footnote 1214: New York _Commercial Advertiser_, January 2, 1869.]

[Footnote 1215: New York _Sun_, January 4.]

[Footnote 1216: New York _Tribune_, January 9.]

[Footnote 1217: New York _World_, January 6.]

[Footnote 1218: The _Nation_, March 18.]

Matthew Hale, chairman of the Senate investigating committee, did not include this testimony in his report, and the startling and improbable publication in the _Commercial Advertiser_ must have withered as the sensation of a day, had not the belief obtained that the use of money in senatorial contests played a prominent and important part. This scandalous practice was modern. Until 1863 nothing had been heard of the use of money in such contests. But what was then whispered, and openly talked about in 1867 as Conkling testified, now became a common topic of conversation. "It is conceded on all hands," said the _Times_, editorially, "that money will decide the contest."[1219]

[Footnote 1219: New York _Times_, January 9, 1869.]

Talk of this kind appealed to the pessimist who believes a legislator is always for sale, but Speaker Younglove, an a.s.semblyman of long experience, knowing that good committee appointments were more potent than other influences, tactfully withheld the announcement of his committees. Such a proceeding had never before occurred in the history of the State, and twelve years later, when George H. Sharpe resorted to the same tactics, William B. Woodin declared that it made Younglove "a political corpse."[1220] Nevertheless, Morgan soon understood that chairmanships and a.s.signments on great committees were vastly more attractive than anything he had to offer, and on January 16 (1869) the first ballot of the caucus gave Fenton 52 votes to 40 for Morgan. A month later, Richard M. Blatchford, then a justice of the United States Supreme Court, wrote Thurlow Weed: "Morgan loses his election because, you being sick, his backbone was missing."[1221]

[Footnote 1220: New York _Tribune_, January 13, 1881.]

[Footnote 1221: T.W. Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p. 462.]

CHAPTER XVII

TWEED CONTROLS THE STATE

1869-70