The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1880-08-31

ters. They had q count in 1875. MY
little State figured in 1t, as everybody
knows, to very considerable extent. On
the morning after the election the chair
man of the Republican Committee whose
headquarters are in New York, proclaimed
to the civilized world that Rutherford b.
Hayes had 165 electoral votes, and was
elected. That was the departed Zacha-
riah Chandler. They SAID that was ls5
electoral votes, and he was elected. 1t is
well known to the American public, and
to the whole world, that he did not have
Within nineteen electoral votes of the
number requisite to elect . President of
the United States, and it is also well
known that Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas
A. Hendricks had received not only ma
jority Of all the votes of the States in
the Electoral College, but in addition to
that had received q popular majority of
the people of 266, 900 votes. Great APP
plause. But still, in the face of this great
fact staring every American citizen in the
face, they, with the great anxiety of pre-
serving
THE INvIOLABILTTY OF THE BALLoT-Box
and those principles which regulate Pres
idential elections, fell to work immedi-
ately to reverse, to destroy, to nullify the
voices of the people in South Carolina,
Florida and Louisiana in order to count
Hayes in. 1t is not necessary for me to
pass beyond my own little State, of whose
transactions / have the most intimate
personal knowledge, to show how they
accomplished their designs. The Repub-
licans agreed upon all hands that Mr.. Til
den had 1884, That they
AGREED TO LEAVE OUT
Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana,
and only one vote was necessary to Sc
cure him the Presidency, but they went
to work first to reverse that election in
Florida and secondly in Louisiana. And
how did they accomplish it in Florida
There is popular idea prevailing in the
minds of intelligent people that we had
returning board in Florida. We never
did have one constituted by law. The
powers of the canvassing board then were
the same as those in Indiana and all the
other States of the Union, and they had
no authority under our laws or our con-
stitution to do anything more than to add
together the figures sent to them by the
local canvassers showing the nrmber of
votesS cast and the persons for whom they
were given, These returns were all given
in from the thirty-nine counties In my
State showed that Tilden and Hendricks
on the face of the returns after the most
honest election it was possible to hold, held
majority of votes over and above every
thing that could be claimed for Hayes and
Wheeler. That record stands to-day en-
rolled in the capital of my State, and it
will 60 down to pos;erity to prove to the
satisfaction of future ages that there was
one political party in this country that
captured the Presidency through fraud.
[Applause.] How did they
GET RID OF THAT MAJORITY?
say to you in all candor, that refer
to this subject more with humiliation and
regret than with spirit of party pride,
for would much rather be able to say
that the Republican party had attempted
to defend the great trust which was re-
posed in it than to say, as / must, that it
perverted the voice of the people of
America Well, they found a majority
there and determined to get rid of it and
they sent down there a band of visiting
statesmen, a lot of political " dead beats"
Voice, That's the name for them +" os-
tensibly for the purpose of seeing fair
count, but in reality to swindle the peo-
pie of my State out of an expression of
their honest will. Applause. o yes,
saw all there with their white
KID GLOVES AND WHITE NECKTIEs
shining, walking around the Capitol
grounds, studying villainy by night and
eating fine dinners by day. The power
of the decision of those votes rested with
two men-three composed the board
There were two Republicans and one
Democrat, and these three Raen actually
held in their hands the power of deciding
who should be the President over 5O,OOO,-
600 of people. Well, they were virtuous
hope they were, for one of them since
has gone to his last account, aughter,]
and he has had to render to an account
at the eternal bar of Justice for the trans
actions of the 9th of December of 1876.
Be it said to their credit, however, these
men never would have done what they
did had it not been for the pressure from
the outside. Everybody saw that we car
ried the State. There was one honest
man among the visiting statesmen, and
that was Gen. Barlow, of New York, and
/ never hear his name mentioned but to
honor it, for he came out and told his
comrades that he would have
NOTHING TO DO WITH THEIR SCHEMES,
for Tlden and Hendricks had carried the
State. They had the celebrated William
Chandler there, and Mr.. Noyes, who
earned his foreign post by his Florida
service. He got his reward, and hope
his conscience is at ease. But the vote
was thrown out / cannot go into the
particulars Of that Infamous transaction,
but / viii give you single illustration of
the way they exercised their power. In
order to elect Hayes and Wheeler they
had to put their hands down into the bot
tom of the ballot-box and take out 1900
votes, and that after they had been de-
posted there as honestly as any 1900
votes ever cast in Indiana. They then
had to have an excuse for it, and what
was it? In one county in my State, and
il is the leading precinct there, two Re
publican inspectors and one Democrat
conducted the election, and there was no
pretense whatever for saying that the bal
lots had not been honestly cast. But they
had to get rid of it, and what do you