Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1880-07-15
Why Hancock was Nominated.

complicated and tangled, but it is not
impossible to unravel them and to find
out the logic and the meaning of it.
The Democratic cry for the past three
years has been that they were defrauded
in the election of 1876. That charge
has this foundation. In those Southern
States in which they allege the frauds to
have been committed, the White Demo-
Gratis succeeded, by means of Ku-kluX
and White leagues and other bulldozing
organizations, in suppressing the cOlored
vote in many parishes, so that they
were able to show an apparent majority
| in their favor. No one denies that, had
the majorities thus secured by intimida-
tion and fraud been canvassed as return
ed, their plans would have succeeded.
| But the foresight of those who had given
the blacks the ballot for their own pro-
lection had provided against just this
sort of suppression, by enactments re-
quiring the votes of the precincts where
iileltuludlIOu anu flOlCliOO Hesu OCOA IL
sorted to be thrown out by the canvass
ing or returning boards. They were
| thrown out under this lawful authority.
The consequence was that the policy of
intimidation and fraud was defeated in
these States, and thus the constituted
authorities declared, by strictly legal
methods, the election of the Republican
Electoral tickets. 1t was simple .en-
forcement of laws that had been enacted
to meet an emergency, when that emer-
gency arose. The law anticipated the
purpose to suppress the colored vote,
and was intended to prevent those who
were engaged ir suppressing it from
profting by their crimes. The suppress
sion was undertaken, and the law was
executed. This is the fraud case In a
nutshell.
The stupendous system of intimila-
tion and fraud by which the Confederate
Democracy hoped to gain control of the
Government being thus defeated, the
party began to threaten another rebel
lion, and to say that the lower branch of
Congress, in which there was Demo-
cratic majority, would not submit to
have the result of the election declared
in the ordinary way as provided by the
Constitution. Out of this threatening
state of affairs came the Electoral Com
mission; tribunal of their own crea-
ton, accepted by Republicans in full
confidence in the justice of their cause,
and for the sake of peace. That tribunal
ratified the proceedings of the Boards of
State Canvassers which had given GER
tiicates to the Republican Presidential
Electors, and upon the formal counting
of the votes the Republican candidates
were declared elected and took their
seats. But even then the Confederate
Democracy, baffled in their design of Sc
curing possession of the Government,
were not content to submit. There was
talk of inaugurating Tilden by force,
and of setting civil war on foot anew;
and the Democratic majority in the
House went so far as to pass resOlu-
tion declaring, in spite of the finding of
the Commission, that Tilden had been
lawfully elected. They did submit at
last, but sullenly and with i'll grace; and,
if they tell the truth themselves, only
because their candidate was too coward
ly to take the oath of Office and lead
them in revolt
From that time to this, as is well
known, they have kept up the constant
cry that they have been defrauded. This
has been pretty much their own capital;
they have made it almost the sole issue.
Some of them have denounced Mr.. Til
den roundly for not taking the oath and
assuming the Office; others have, after
fashion, praised him fer his self-sacri
fcing patriotism in submitting to wrong
rather than inaugurate civil war. All
of them have said, and with the en-
phasis of clenched teeth, that the next
time they would seat their candidate at
any and all hazards. Everybody is fa-
miliar with the threats and buster with
which their newspapers have been filled
and their orators have filled the air for
months past. 1t is the same kind of
bullying that they gave us so much of
prior to 1851; the same that they tried
in 1877. 'This time," they say, and keep
saying-"this time we shall seat our
candidate" And now, after three years
of this fraud talk, whom have they NOM
mated? Is it the man who they claim
was defrauded ?-the man who alone is
entitled to a denomination, upon their
showing2 Not at all. Their candidate
is the senior Major-General of the Ar
my, the officer who, had Mr.. Tilden con-
sented to set a revolt on foot in 1877,
would have been called upon to put him
and his followers down.
At first blush it seems Inconsistent
and illogical. But it is not. 1t seems
they know their man. For it turns out
that this Army officer upon whom the
Government was in great measure de-
pendent for the preservation of peace in
1877, had the Democratic revolt been
started, was all the time in sympathy
with the men who threatened insurrec-
tion, and only waited Mr.. Tilden's action
to put himself at the head, not of the
Government forces, but of the revolu
tionists. Here is an Army officer ready
to go behind the orders of his superiors,
the action of the constituted authorities,
the official declaration, the acts of the
Returning Boards and the returns them
selves, and, setting up his individual
iudment i'm the matter, decide the whole