Year: 1872

body could 60 in and vote.


Fellow citizens, in atOwnship where
you may say everybody knows every
body, where no man can come up to
vote without several persons of each
party knowing whether he is voter
or not, il may be safe, though l don't
think it is, to allow men to vote with
out any kind of registration; but in a
great city like ours, where very few
men know those who have lived on
either side of them for ten years.
have lived without knowing who was
my neighbOr for ten years. could
not tell at the polls any one man in
twenty of those who were entitled to
vote, and one hundred might vote
illegally without bringing the fraud
home to them. And 1 say that the
men who insist that all safeguards
shall be intermitted, all barriers
thrown down, they are the men that
are respOsible before God and man
for the polling of illegal votes.


For forty years l have known the
Democratic party to resist steadily
and constantly every effort to deter
mine who are entitled to vote before
hand. / was in the last Constitution
al Convention of the State of New
York, and was their chairman on
Elections and the right of Suffrge.-
drew up the article as it exists in the
present Constitution 1 made a new
one, without the least thought of bene-
fitting or injuring any party. whatev-
er, my whole object was to establish
system under which every legal voter
should surely vote, and no illegal vo-
ter could possibly vote. One of the
provisions whereon was most tena-
cious, was that the registration should
be completed and published, a list
made oui, so that every one could see
it, six days before the election. But
every Democrat in that Convention,
including the present Chief Justice of
the State, half dozen ex-GOvernoTs,
the candidate for Governor, all the
leaders Of the party were there, and
they all voted against any and every
effort could make to prevent illegal
voting. They would have no barrier
that they could possibly avoid or de-
feat and when at last 1 had carried
through the article giving six days be-
tween the closing of the registry and
the opening of the polls, after l had
left they succeeding in cutting it down
to four days; they could not get it quite
out. In every respect We had the
whole strength of the Democratic
party doing every thing in its power
to prevent and obstruct any barrier
being set up against voting illegally.


Now then, when at the next year
we came to the polls and found them
polling in the city alone not less than
: Ia fI1ao-oT -nOrr1n Il
blame only these men, or the men
who engineered the fraud? Could l
fail to see that the men who left the
door open to the fraud were as culpa-
BILE as they who voted? The men
who through years steadily and every
where in the Conventions and the
Legislature had done their utmost to
leave the gate wide open through
which illegal voters marched in bri-
gade front, could L doubt that they
were responsible?


When we commenced to prepare
| for the election of 1868, in the first
place, men were rushed through and
/ natrralized by the hundred together,
three hundred or four hundred in one
evening, in a room like this; men
swore, forty at a time, that they came
here five years ago they were rushed
| through faster than a Chicago pork
merchant can stick hogs, they put
these men through. They are very
dexterous in Cincinnati and Chicago,


in the pork business, but they can't
kill hogs as fast as the New York
people made votes. Then they got


out forty or fifty thousand fraudulent,
illegal naturalization papers, leaving
a place for the name, AL the signatures
and seals perfectly correct, and these


were peddled out at the rate of two


dollars per hundred. The State was


flooded with them. a good faithful


Irishman, who worked for me, and


his son, who had not been long
enough in the country to be citizens,


were supplied with papers proving
that they were naturalized, and that
they were entitled to vote. but they


did not.


To begin with. it was certain they
would cheat; they were prepared to
cheat. William NJ. Tweed, the mas
ter-spirit now, as then, sent out to all
I his confidential fellows in the cOun
try: 1.-THE instant the polls close,
send US an estimate by telegraph,
showing how the votes stand at your
pOlID ~ so that before our votes were
counted they could tell pretty well
how many were needed to beat Gen
eral Grant. And they did beat him


for President; they were sixty thOus-
and majority against him, whereas
there were not thirty thousand; and
the proportion in Brooklyn was about
the same, some of it made by fraudu
lent naturalization, and the rest by
| fraudulent counting-largely where
| they could control. They would get
/ two men of their own party, and
another whom they could buy, and
make the result just what they
pleased. OF that sixty thousand
majority in the city for Seymour over
Grant, not over thirty thousand was
honest. They had planned, and con-
| trived, and prepared for months to
be ready to make that vote just what
ever should be necessary to beat
/ Grant in the State. Our State was
clearly for him. and the result was
only perfected by this fraud, whole
sale, deliberate, prepared, cOnspiredi
/ intended from the first to be.


The instruments were few cOmpara-
| lively; five thousand men will poll
fifty thousand votes in New York II
well led. They have their names
prepared. And we proved that the
| leading Democratic politicians Of the
city had fifteen or twenty men set
down as lodging in their houses when
there were no such men theTe-nOt
merely at the grOg shops, where they
would put fifteen, twenty or thirty IN
a place where they did not live, but
at the houses of the leading Demo
cratic politicians, men were put down.
Then a man goes round and gives
them the names they are voting on
each one gets his name and residence;
they 90 and vote, and then on to the
next poll, at which tLey have another
residence, and so they are sent round
from poll to poll until they vote per-
haps twenty times. And suppose we
arrest them and take them before a
Judge, they are not away twenty min
utes before they are released by wit
of hGbeds corpus, and at the polls
again.


Now complain not that individu-
ais have done this great wrong to the
nation and the people, but that tue
| Democratic party IS whole has sus-
/ tanned and countenanced this fraud,
and by doing their utmost by having
the polls so prepared and arranged


that the fraud could take place. Men


like Belmont, and Others who figured
as their great men, -are now very
anxious that the money fraud should