ve Tariff in
winning the industrial element of the country to Republican support,
the Democratic managers concocted one of the most detestable and
wicked devices ever conceived in political warfare. A letter,
purporting to have been written by General Garfield, and designed to
represent him as approving Chinese immigration to compete with home
labor, was cunningly forged. This so-called "Morey letter," in which
the handwriting and signature of the Republican candidate were imitated
with some skill, was lithographed and spread broadcast about two weeks
before the election.

General Garfield promptly branded the letter as a forgery and the
evidences of its character were speedily made clear. Nevertheless
active Democratic leaders continued to assert its genuineness, and
Mr. Abram S. Hewitt was conspicuous in giving the weight of his name to
this calumny, until the force of the accumulating proof constrained
him to admit in a public speech, that the text of the letter was
spurious, while still maintaining, against General Garfield's solemn
denial, that the signature was genuine. The prompt action of General
Garfield and his friends did much to render this crafty and dangerous
trick abortive, but there was not sufficient time to destroy altogether
the effect of its instant and wide dissemination. The forgery cost
General Garfield the electoral votes of New Jersey and Nevada and five
of the six votes of California. He carried every other Northern State,
while General Hancock carried every Southern State. The final result
gave to Garfield 214 electoral votes against 155 for Hancock.

The salient and most serious fact of the Presidential election was the
absolute consolidation of the Electoral vote of the South; not merely
of the eleven States that composed the Confederacy, but of the five
others in which slaves were held at the beginning of the civil
struggle. The leading Democrats of the South had been steadily
aiming at this result from the moment that they found themselves
compelled by the fortunes of war to remain citizens of the United
States. The Reconstruction laws had held them in check in 1868; the
re-action against Mr. Greeley had destroyed Southern unity in 1872;
it had been assumed with boastful confidence, but at the last
miscarried, in 1876; and now, in 1880, it was finally and fully
accomplished. The result betokened thenceforth a struggle within the
Union far more radical than that which had been c