of legal authority. It was at one time asserted that the Supreme Court of the State had held it constitutional and valid, which, if true, would prove that the court was no better than the Board; but the case cited shows that no such point was raised, debated, or determined.

The Board consisted of five persons. They were originally appointed by a carpet-bag Senate, without end of their tenure and with power to fill vacancies, which made them a close corporation and gave them perpetual succession. To put on some show of fairness, the law required that all parties should be represented. This was at first thought to be met by the appointment of one Democrat, but when a deed of more than common baseness was to be done, the Democrat was got rid of, and the other four, desiring to work in secret, refused to fill his place.

This suppressing Board did its work thoroughly from the start. It was never known to falter. Since its first organization in 1870 the majority of the whole people has been decidedly against the carpet-baggers at every election. But the Board always intercepted the returns, and so altered them as to make a majority the other way. Kellogg was a candidate for governor; he was largely defeated, but the Board certified him elected. The certificate was so glaringly false that carpet-baggers themselves would not help to install him, and Democrats determined to assert their rights. It was then that General Grant, to the unspeakable shame of the nation, lifted him into office on the bayonets of the army. Afterwards the outraged people rose in revolutionary wrath, drove him to shelter in the Custom House, and inaugurated the man they had lawfully elected. Again the President made war on the State, and restored the usurper to the place which did not belong to him. The Democrats regularly elected a majority of the Legislature; as regularly the Returning Board certified a majority of their seats to carpet-baggers or scalawags or negroes not chosen; and when the true members met to organize for business the army was punctually on hand to tumble them out of their hall.

Such was the condition of things when the parties took the field in 1876. The Democrats girded up their loins for a combat more important to them and their children than any they had yet been engaged in. They were not only to choose a governor, legislature, and State officers, but a President and Vice-President who would

respect their rights, and not set aside their election by brute force. Messrs. Hayes and Wheeler were not believed to be evil-minded men, but they belonged to the anti-constitutional party, and their platform pledged them to walk in the footsteps of Grant, while, on the other hand, the just support of the people against the lawless outrages of the carpet-bag usurpers was written down among the first of the many reforms which Messrs. Tilden and Hendricks would be sure to introduce. The Democrats were without doubt a great majority over the carpet-baggers and the negroes who still adhered to them. False voting or cheating in the registration could not defeat the true men of the State. If they could only get their votes honestly counted, added up, and credited to their candidates, they would certainly be free in the future from the tyrannical domination which held them in durance for so many years. They felt that under these circumstances the electoral franchise was a possession inestimably precious;

"To lose 't or give 't away

Were such perdition as nothing else could match."

They were, therefore, uncommonly cautious not to impair this great right, or endanger the success of its exercise, by any act which could bring them under the denunciation of even the Returning Board law. All the clubs were earnestly and constantly exhorted in circulars and otherwise to "be careful to say and do nothing which could be construed into a threat or intimidation of any character," and advised to take affidavits on the day of election at each polling place that no disturbance had occurred there.

The election came off on the proper day, supervised and controlled at every polling place by officers of the carpet-bag interest. According to their own count the result was a majority of 7,639 for the Tilden electors. It has never yet been denied that this majority was made up of ballots cast by citizens legally qualified. The vote was regularly taken and properly counted, and a true record of it made in perpetuam rei memoriam. These facts being undisputed, it follows that the Tilden electors were duly appointed, if the people of the State have the appointing power, which they certainly have, unless the Constitution and the statute-book are not to be relied on.

But the opponents of Tilden and Hendricks determined that the record of the appointment made by the people should be mutilated

and changed so as to make it appear as if electors for Hayes and Wheeler had been chosen. They pretended to believe that violence and intimidation had frightened the African Hayes men from the polls, and that their cowardice ought to be visited in the form of disfranchisement on the heads of others who had intrepidity enough to perform their political duty. The allegation was utterly false. It was made, not only without evidence to sustain it, but in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. All the places of registration and voting were guarded by the creatures of the Federal and State administrations, superintendents, commissioners, deputy marshals, and soldiers, and all of these with one voice said that the elections were peaceable and free. Indeed, it is literally impossible that any intimidation or violence could have been practised. No sensible person ever gave credit to it for a moment. Notwithstanding much mental anxiety about the result, various reasons combined to make the election in Louisiana probably the most quiet and undisturbed in the Union.

The charge of actual intimidation at the polls having been exploded almost as soon as it was made, another was tried which stood a little longer. The intimidation, it was said, occurred, not at the election, but, at other times and elsewhere, somebody unnamed and unknown had breathed out threatenings and slaughter so violent that many thousands absented themselves. This was vague enough to excite a superstitious belief in the existence of a "bulldozer" whom nobody had ever seen except as the goblin is seen which the imagination bodies forth from the evening mist. But it vanished into thin air when the truth appeared that this was the largest vote ever given in Louisiana, larger in proportion to the whole population than the average of all the States in the Union.

Lastly, they fell back on the naked fact that a considerable number of negroes had voted the Democratic ticket, and insisted that this was in itself sufficient evidence of intimidation. They built this theory on the assumption that no negro could ever be moved against a carpet-bagger except by his personal fears, and that all appeals to his other passions, or to his reason and conscience, must necessarily be in vain. In fact and in truth, a large percentage of the African population were from the beginning very strongly impressed against the strangers who had come into the State to rob the natives. Most of them were very stupid, but

many had sense enough to see that this would come to no good. They had one cause of complaint which influenced them strongly. Much of the ponderous taxation under which the people suffered had been imposed on the pretence of schools for the elevation of the negro: when the fund came into the hands of carpet-bag officers, they stole it of course, and left the negro to his aboriginal ignorance. The negroes, not liking this kind of elevation, became excited, and in some places large bodies of them together broke away from the carpet-baggers. Their revolt was perfectly natural; and it would have been universal if their stupidity had been only a little less dense. Yet it is persistently asserted in effect that the carpet-bagger owns the negro by a title so incontestable that the vote of the latter is never withheld from the former except because of bulldozing, whereby the white Democrat ought to lose not only the vote given him by the negro, but his own vote in the bargain. This preposterous view pervades all the discussions on that side, insomuch that the foremost Republicans of the country have thought themselves making an argument for disfranchisement of Democrats by merely showing that the vote for the carpet-bag candidates fell below the aggregate number of black electors in a particular parish, or was less than that given at some former election.

One curious case of bulldozing is given by Mr. Morrison's committee. The negroes of East Feliciana fell away in large numbers from the carpet-baggers, and so many expressed their intention to vote on the other side that a considerable majority for the Democratic candidates was plainly foreseen. The chiefs of the carpetbaggers at New Orleans, being informed of this, instructed the local leaders of the parish not to vote; no ticket was put forth on their part; not a single Republican vote was cast even by the parish officers. This was done on purpose to lay the groundwork for a charge of intimidation. East Feliciana was declared a bulldozed parish, and all the people in it were disfranchised.

Even if we assume the righteousness of the principle embodied in the Louisiana election law, that one man may be disfranchised because another has intimidated a third, there was no show of ground upon which the Democratic majority could be questioned. The minority therefore left the case to the Returning Board, in full confidence that it was corrupt enough to act as desired

without evidence, against law, and in defiance of the known truth.

The personnel of the Board justified the faith of the carpetbaggers and their allies. If the evidence concerning its members be rightly reported by the investigating committee, they were marked out by the history of their previous lives, noted and signed to do any deed of shame which might be required at their hands.* Wells was a custom-house officer at New Orleans, and one of the worst of that bad lot; a defaulter to the State of long standing, without character for integrity or veracity, and for thirty years regarded as unworthy to be trusted. Anderson's character for honesty was equally bad; he had earned it in part by aiding while he was a Senator to put up a fraudulent job upon the State, and taking the iniquitous proceeds to himself. Of the two mulattoes, one was indicted for larceny, and, after admitting his guilt, was allowed to escape punishment, and promptly taken into the Board. The other was too ignorant to know his duty, but his testimony showed such indifference to the obligations of an oath that he was deemed as safe for the carpet-baggers as either of his colleagues.

They comprehended the situation, saw the difficulty of the work before them, and resolved to make it pay in something better than mere promises of "recognition," however "generous and ample." Wells, who was their spokesman in private as in public, wrote in strict confidence to a carpet-bag Senator then at Washington a letter which, being condensed into plain English, means this: t "There's millions in it. See our friends and act promptly. Buy us immediately or we will sell out to the other side. Talk freely to the gentleman who presents this; he knows the moves." To the bearer of the letter he explained that it was very hard work to count in the Republican candidate, the Democratic majority was too large to handle, he wanted to serve his party, but he would not take this job without compensation, he must have "two hundred thousand dollars apiece for himself and Anderson, and a smaller sum for the niggers." On this basis he authorized his ambassador at Washington to negotiate with the Republican managers. At the same time he was offering himself at New Orleans

* Report of Mr. Morrison's Louisiana Committee, February 1, 1877, p. 7. + See the letter in Rep. Select Com. on Powers and Priv., Feb. 1, 1877, p. 180. Rep. Com. Priv. Powers, pp. 144, 145.