Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1878-06-11
sTARTL1NG DI.oLOsUREs,

Private letters from Washington-some of
them from those who have opposed the Pot
ter stigation-announce that the dis
closures already made have produced a pro-
found sensation in Washington. These let
ters also assure us that the revelations yet to
be made will sink in disgrace the adminlstra-
ton and many Republican leaders. The New
York World, in commenting on the dis
closures of last week, says: '.In their be-
wildering stories OF general rascality, as well
as in their successive revelations of specific
vlllainy, the Louisiana Republican politicians
strongly resemble the ingenious Titus Oates
and his companions. The plots and counter
plots, torgeries and conspiracies, which they
unfold, make up such a hotch- potch and hur-
ly-burly of political iniquIty that in the heat
of the business people will be apt to seek re-
lief from the process of weighing the conflict
ing testimony of knaves IN hasty and sweep
ing denunciation of the whole set of ad
venturers into whose possession, thanks
to the policy of reconstruction, the power of
disposing of the Presidency of the United
States actually fell in November. 1875. One
thing at least the Potter investigation has
done. 1t has made 1t plain to all men
that the Republican party under Presi
dent Grant created for US system of poll
tics IN which a set of utterly worthless
knaves, used at first as tools and conven-
fences, finally acquired practical control of
the destinies of the government. To study
their intriRues is like watching the writhing
and knotting of a nest of snakes. The testi-
mony of Levisse, who was one of the Republi-
| can Pres dential electors in Louisiana, brought
out the story of an. attempt to
bride him, as he AYERS, in behalf of Mr.
Tllden. If the story had been corroborated
by an offer to prove that he took the bride
| offered him and voted the other way, it
would not have been out of keeping with
the general tone of Louisiana Republican
ism. As it is, his credibility is sorely I'M
peached by the claim of incorruptibility made
for him. To the MANY shameful Irregular
ties of the electoral business in Louisiana the
evidence of Levisse adds some new and start
ling illegal eccentricities. He testi6es that
the two sets of certificates originally forward
ed from Louisiana by the electors were both
| irregular, and that a new set was made out
to supply the lapses and slips discovered in
them. In these certificates it is said the
name of Lev1sse was forged. He was !absent
at Shreveport at the time they were drawn
up, and as the emergency was pressing, and
| Louisiana officials were not inclined to stand
upon trifes, somebody signed for him instead
of taking the trouble to send for him to sign
for himself. In any other case this might be
a matter of everything importance, but
except as an artistic touch going
to highten the general effect Of
the grand tableau of Republican
infamy in Louisiana, it can hardly be of any
avail now. The constitution of the United
States in express terms forbade Levisse, as q
Federal ofice-holder, from acting as an
elector at all. When such an irregularity a:
his appointment was passed over, 1t is rather
idle to talk of defects in the original certi6.
Gates, or of forgeries in the supplementary
ones. 1t would doubtless have been aliund.
to ask who signed his name then. 1t is de-
cidedly aliunde and superhuous to inquir,
who signed 1t now, except as a study In the
mysteries of carpetbag politics"