leading Democrats of the House.

In the Senate Mr. Morton of Indiana submitted a resolution, declaring
that "while there is reason to believe from common report and
information that the late Presidential election in Louisiana was
carried by force and fraud, still there being no legal evidence before
the Senate on that subject the electoral vote of Louisiana ought to be
counted." No debate being allowed under the rule regulating the
proceedings of the Senate in regard to the count of the electoral vote,
the resolution was defeated. It received however the support of
twenty-four Republican senators, some of them among the most prominent
members of the body. Mr. Sumner, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Conkling, Mr.
Cameron, Mr. Morton, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Morrill of Vermont were among
those who thought some record should be made of the Senate's knowledge
of the frauds in Louisiana, even if they were unable on strictly legal
grounds to reject her electoral vote. Other Republican senators
evidently thought, as they were unable legally to reject the vote,
it was not wise to make any record on the question.

Subsequent investigation abundantly established the fact (of which at
the time Congress did not possess legal knowledge) that the State of
Louisiana had been carried for Mr. Seymour by shameless fraud, by
cruel intimidation, by shocking violence. As incidental and
unmistakable proof of fraud, it was afterwards shown from the records
that in the spring election of 1868, in the parish of Orleans 29,910
votes had been cast, and that the Republicans had a majority of 13,973;
whereas in the ensuing autumn, at the Presidential election, the
returns for the same parish gave General Grant but 1,178 votes, while
Mr. Seymour was declared to have received 24,668. In the parish of
Caddo, where in the spring election the Republicans had shown a decided
majority, General Grant received but one vote. In the parish of Saint
Landry, where the Republicans had prevailed in the spring election by
a majority of 678, not a single vote was counted for General Grant,
the returns giving to Mr. Seymour the entire registered vote--4,787.
In other parishes the results, if less aggravated and less startling,
were of like character, and the State, which the Republicans had
carried, at an entirely peaceful election in the spring, by a majority
of more than 12,000, was now declared to have given Mr. Seymour a
majority of 47,000.

There was no pretense that