erritt had made an excellent
collector, and a feeling existed, which had crystallised into a strong
public sentiment, that it was unwise to force into his place an
official unsatisfactory to the Secretary of the Treasury.

CHAPTER XXXII

JOHN KELLY ELECTS CORNELL

1879

If threatened danger had bred an artificial harmony among the
Republican factions of the State in 1878, the presence of a real
peril, growing out of the control of both branches of Congress by the
Democrats, tended to bring them closer together in 1879. During a
special session of the Forty-sixth Congress the Democratic majority
had sought, by a political rider attached to the army appropriation
bill, to repeal objectionable election laws, which provided among
other things for the appointment of supervisors and deputy marshals at
congressional elections. This law had materially lessened cheating in
New York City, and no one doubted that its repeal would be followed in
1880 by scenes similar to those which had disgraced the metropolis
prior to its enactment in 1870.

But the attempt to get rid of the objectionable Act by a rider on a
supply bill meant more than repeal. It implied a threat. In effect the
Democrats declared that if the Executive did not yield his veto power
to a bare majority, the needed appropriations for carrying on the
government would be stopped. This practically amounted to revolution,
and the debate that followed reawakened bitter partisan and sectional
animosities. "Suppose in a separate bill," said Conkling, "the
majority had, in advance of appropriations, repealed the national bank
act and the resumption act, and had declared that unless the Executive
surrendered his convictions and yielded up his approval of the
repealing act, no appropriations should be made; would the separation
of the bills have palliated or condoned the revolutionary purpose?
When it is intended that, unless another species of legislation is
agreed to, the money of the people, paid for that purpose, shall not
be used to maintain their government, the threat is revolution and its
execution is treasonable." Then he gave the mortal stab. Of the
ninety-three senators and representatives from the eleven disloyal
States, he said, eighty-five were soldiers in the armies of the
rebellion, and their support of these "revolutionary measures is a
fight for empire. It is a contrivance to clutch the national
government. That we believe; that I believe."[1639