oard deliberately threw out some thousands of
votes for no other reason than to change the State's vote, and the
Presidency. The commission refused to correct or even investigate the
wrong, on the plea of scrupulous respect for State rights. A great
victory for the principle of local rights, argues Senator Hoar in his
autobiography. Possibly. But it is also open to say, that the general
government having tolerated and supported an iniquitous local oligarchy,
a special and supreme tribunal of the nation allowed that oligarchy to
decide the Presidency by a fraud.

The popular judgment of the matter at the North was largely affected by
the belief that the frauds of the Republicans were offset by
intimidation on the part of the Democrats. In various parts of the
South, notably in Mississippi and South Carolina, and probably in
Louisiana, there was a wide terrorizing of the negro Republicans. "One
side was about as bad as the other," was a common feeling. A year or two
later, the New York _Tribune_ unearthed and translated a number of
cipher telegrams, which disclosed that while the dispute over the result
was going on, agents high in the confidence of the Democratic leaders
made efforts to buy up a returning board or a presidential elector. So
both parties were badly smirched, and the election and its sequel
furnished one of the most desperate and disreputable passages in
American politics.

Yet the better sentiment of the country, triumphant in the creation of
the commission, but baffled by its partisan action, shone clear again
when the decision was deliberately and calmly accepted by the beaten
party. Congress had reserved to itself the power to reverse by a
concurrent vote of both Houses the commission's decision upon any State.
But each decision was accepted by a party vote, except that in the case
of Louisiana two Massachusetts Republicans, Julius H. Seelye and Henry
L. Pierce, spoke and voted against their party. But when the final count
gave a majority to Hayes, the formal declaration of the result was
supported by all save about eighty irreconcilables, chiefly Northern
Democrats, who were overborne in a stormy night session. It had become
simply a question between order and anarchy, and the party of order, by
a strange chance, was led for the occasion by Fernando Wood, the
"copperhead" of earlier days. For the body of the Southern Democrats,
Henry Watterson spoke manly words, accepting the inevitable with
resolut