Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1877-09-07
The Ohio Implaoables Answered,

minded men. His statement Of the case
has more weight because Gen. Garfield
is one Of those who, like Senator Morton,
would probably have taken different
view of the constitutional rights of the
General Government to interfere to sus-
tain the Republican contestants in Louis
lana and South Carolina At the same
time he admits that the Presidents ac-
tion has been unquestionably conforma-
BILE to the constitutional exigencies, and
that II Is in perfect harmony with the
declaration of the National Republican
I platform which President Hayes was
pledged to carry out. This view of the
matter, as advanced and sustained by
Gen. Garfield, will not fail to influence
the thinking men of Ohio to treat the i'm
placable schemers with the contempt
they merit.
The first point made by him is that it
is unfair and untrue to say that If Gov.
Hayes was elected President then Pack
ard was elected Governor, and, oice
oersa, that if Packard was not elected
Governor of Louisiana then Hayes was
not elected President The answer he
makes to this is the same that the T'ri6-
une insisted upon when the Implacables
first suggested the sophism. Gov. Hayes
was elected President of the United
States by means of the electoral vote of
Louisiana, it is true, since without that
vote he would not have been elected.
But that electoral vote was given to him
by the Returning Board, which by the
law of the State is made the final.-judge
of the count. 1t was subsequently con-
firmed to him by the national tribunal
upon which both houses of Congress
agreed in the nature of a compromise
when the conflict over the Dational count
of the electoral vote became alarming
The vote for Governor of the State was
subject by law to very different condi
tions. The Returning Board was not the
final judge in this case. 1t was the
province of the Louisiana Legislature to
determine the vote of Governor. But
there were two Legislatures, each claim
ing to be the genuine, at the time Mr..
Hayes was inaugurated. He chose to
abandon the old policy of the preceding
Administration, which would have rec
ognized one or the other and sustained
by the force of national troops the Gov
ernor it might name; he awaited the for
nation of a single Legislature with a
quorum of lawfully-elected members,
who would then have an unquestioned
right to determine who had been elected
Governor. This is precisely what oc.
CURED subsequently, and when single
Legislature had been formed with con-
stitutional quorum it declared that Mich
oils had been elected Governor, and the
President had no choice but to recognize
him.
Gen. Garfield equally denounced the
charge that President Hayes has aban.
doned the negroes to the mercies of the
men who held them in slavery, and who
now propose to deprive them of their
political rights, The peculiar injustice
of this charge is found in the fact that,
thus far, under the new policy of Presi-
dent Hayes, there has not been single
event to indicate that the negroes will be
harassed, prosecuted, threatened, or in
timidated as much as they were under
the old order of things. Aside from the
constitutional objection TO the employ
ment of the army and navy to sustain
contestants for the possession of South
ern States, the chief practical objection
to that policy was that it failed utterly
to guarantee to the negroes the protec-
tion of their political rights, though this
was professedly its main purpose. 1t
did not prevent bulldozing in Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama, or South Carolina
during the last campaigns; it had pre-
viously failed in those and other South
ern States; and, indeed, the only South
ern States in which the negroes were
permitted to exercise their political
rights without personal danger were the
States in which the carpet-baggers had
failed in spite of the support of the Ma
tional Government. The charge of
abandoning the negroes could at the
most be made in the single State of
Louisiana, all the other Southern States
having passed out of the control of the
Republicans before President Hayes was
inaugurated, and in that State there is
political peace for the first time since
the war. Whenever there shall be re.
vival of political violence or an invasion
of the political rights of the blacks in
Louisiana, or any other Southern State,
there is no reasonable doubt that Presi-
dent Hayes will enforce strictly all the
laws that Congress has provided for the
protection of the negroes and the pres
ervation of peace; and, until he shall
fail to do this, it will continue to be un-
fair and malicious to charge that he has
abandoned the eolored race.
Gen. Garfield, who was in a position
to be familiar with all the events of the
exciting period Immediately preceding
the agreement upon the Electoral Com
mission and during the session of that
tribunal, denies emphatically that Presi-
dent Hayes was in any way party to
any understanding that he would turn
Louisiana over to the Democrats in case
the Democrats would acquiesce in the
declaration of his election. Gen. Gar
field goes further than this, and declares
it as his belief that the acquiescence of
the Southern members in the verdict of
the Electoral Commission did not origi.
nate in any assurance from any quarter
that President Hayes would take the
course he subsequently adopted, but that
1t was because the Southern members
who refused to defeat the count by fill
clustering felt in honor bound to abide
by the verdict of tribunal to which
they had previously agreed to refer the
dispute. 1t is not easy to conceive that
there should have been any arrangement
of this kind, whether authorized or un-
authorized, by President Hayes, with
which Gen. Garfield was unacquainted,
and this imaginary version of the matter,
which the Southern people were at first
willing to admit as q means for inducing
the adoption of a policy of pacifcation,
and which the Implacables have since
encouraged as a means for bringing that
policy into disrepute, may now be def.
nitely abandoned on al sides. The Pres.
ident's treatment Of the Southern States
has been precisely what the Republican
platform promised, and the only policy
that could have been adopted under the
circumstances with safety to the party