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that Republican defeat was due to other causes than fraudulent registration and illegal voting. "Outside the incapables and their miserable subalterns who managed the Syracuse convention," said one Republican paper, "a pervading sentiment existed among us, not only that we should be beaten, but that we needed chastisement."[1147] Another placed the responsibility upon "a host of political adventurers, attracted to the party by selfish aggrandisements."[1148] The _Tribune_ accepted it as a punishment for cowardice on the negro suffrage question. "To say that we are for manhood suffrage in the South and not in the North is to earn the loathing, contempt, and derision alike of friends and foes."[1149] Thus had Republican power disappeared like Aladdin's palace, which was ablaze with splendour at night, and could not be seen in the morning. [Footnote 1146: Gustavus Myers, _History of Tammany Hall_, p. 250.] [Footnote 1147: Buffalo _Commercial Advertiser_, November 6, 1867.] [Footnote 1148: Albany _Evening Journal_, November 6.] [Footnote 1149: New York _Tribune_, November 6.] CHAPTER XIV SEYMOUR AND HOFFMAN 1868 The fall elections of 1867 made a profound impression in the Empire State. Pennsylvania gave a small Democratic majority, Ohio defeated a negro suffrage amendment by 50,000, besides electing a Democratic legislature, and New York, leading the Democratic column, surprised the nation with a majority of nearly 48,000. In every county the Republican vote had fallen off. It was plain that reconstruction and negro suffrage had seriously disgruntled the country. The policy of the Republicans, therefore, which had hitherto been one of delay in admitting Southern States to representation in Congress, now changed to one of haste to get them in, the party believing that with negro enfranchisement and white disfranchisement it could control the South. This sudden change had alarmed conservatives of all parties, and the Democratic strength shown at the preceding election encouraged the belief that the radical work of Congress might be overthrown. "The danger now is," wrote John Sherman, "that the mistakes of the Republicans may drift the Democratic party into power."[1150] [Footnote 1150: Sherman's Letters, p. 299.] The action of Congress after the removal of Edwin M. Stanton, then secretary of war, did not weaken this prediction. The Senate had already refused its assent to the Secretary's suspen
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