Year: 1877

4


didate for Vice President, and has, there
fore, strong motive for gaining correct
knowledge of the facts but also because he
was personally and conspicuously con-
nected with Louisiana affairs in the win
ter and spring of 1875. 1t be-
| gins to look as if the decision OF
the Presidential contest will finally
hinge on the votes of Louisiana, and Mr..
Wheeler's former acquaintance with the
politics and politicians of that State should
enable him to form better judgment Of the
immediate situation than any other Northern
man who has not been on the ground
| to investigate the recent election. A
great deal Of the democratic argument
rests ON the former conduct OF the
| noted, not to say notorious, Return
| ing Board, but the action OF that
Board on former occasions is a subject which
Mr. Wheeler has examined In an official Ca
pacity, and on which he was called to form
definite opinion. His present judgment
is. therefore, likely to be respected by men Of
his own political party. And, after all, it is
what the republican party thinks of the re-





the action of the Senate upon the question
in dispute.


Mr.. Wheeler has no doubt that the repub-
lican candidates for President and Vice
President are elected. He thinks that if the
election had been fairly conducted in Lou
isiana Mr.. Hayes would have carried the
State by q majority Of fifteen thousand.
'In the five bull-dozed parishes" he says,
''the very registration shows that these
parishes belonged to the republicans"
the evidence, as he explains it, con-
sisting in the large preponderance OF negro
voters. Whether his premises support his
conclusion is question on which opinions
will! widely differ but the important point
practically is less whether his view is sound
than whether his own political party will
accept it and stand by it. IT the majority of
the Senate should act on it with unyielding
tenacty Mr.. Tilden will not be the next
President, since there is no possibil-
ity of any man exercising that Office
whose title the Senate refuses to recognize.
Mr.. Wheeler is doubtless correct in saying
that "the main fight will be over Louisiana"
and, accordingly, everything which throws
light either on the merits Of that cardinal
feature of the case, or on the view Of it
which the republican Senators will finally
adopt and persist in, is of deep public con-
sequence.


Mr.. Wheeler expresses himself with vigor-
Gus emphasis in opposition to all talk or
proposals of compromise" meaning by
that word such shaping of the controversy
as would make Mr. Tilden President and
himself Vice President. We suppose he
thinks it point of personal honor and
fidelity to his associate on the ticket
to express himself in this way
but there is nothing in his own
history which binds him to take
this ground. He is himself the author Of
the most noted political compromise in this
generation; indeed "the Wheeler compro-
mise" is his chief title to distinction. The
compromise he brought about in Louisiana,
by which the Governor was conceded to the
republicans and the Legislature to the dem
ocrats as the wisest way to settle the dis
puted result of on election, is in singular
contrast to Mr.. Wheeler's present
vehement denunciation of such mode
of settlement. 81 do not believe" he now
says, 'that the suffrages of the American
people can be made the subject Of dicker or
barter. What right have any men to fore
stall the constitutional settlement of the
question by bargain, arrangement or COM
promise-call it what you will ?" We
Il, Inv 1or ic
not precisely as applicable to the COM
promise which he effected in Louisiana
in 1875 as to any other. Were not "the
suffrages Of the people" the subject Of the
bargain, arrangement, or compromise "
which the State of Louisiana accepted from
him and which the country at large warmly
indorsed? OF all the public men in the
country Mr. Wheeler is the last whom we
should have expected to find bitterly stig-
matizing an attempt to settle IN election
difficulty by compromise


Mr.. Wheeler's Louisiana adjustment was
real compromise, &c dicker or barter" to
borrow his own words, relating to "the
suffrages of the people," But a result
which should make Mr.. Tilden President
and Mr.. Wheeler Vice President could not,
in strict propriety Of language, be called a
compromise. 1t would be the neces-
sary legal consequence of q failure of
choice by the electoral colleges
It is the constitution which de-
clares that the House shall choose the
President and the Senate the Vice President
when there is failure to elect in the ordi-
nary way. Both houses may yet become
convinced that there was no legal election
in Louisiana in November last, as the
President declared in message to
Congress that he believed there was
no legal election in that State
in 1874. If there was no legal