Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1880 — GARFIELD & THE GREAT FRAUD [ARTICLE]

GARFIELD & THE GREAT FRAUD

Mr. Hendricks’ Terrible Indictment Against Garfield : New York Siui.j We have published Mr. Hendricks’ speech at Indianapolis uuon Garfield'*, connection with the Great Fraud. No indictment so terrible was ever framed against a man in Garfieid.s position, and yet every count in it was sustained by testimony out of the mouth of the accused himself. The local Republican newspaper had peremptorily denied the facts as they had been stated iu a previous speech of Mr. Hendricks, and admitted that, if they could be proved, Garfield “ wo’d be disgraced.” They are now proved —proved easily aud overwhelmingly by citations from the official record ol Garfield’s testimony, revised and signed by himseif, and put beyond contradiction by the most reckless or the most ingenious of partisans. And wlnit are the facts? When it became known in IS7G that the people ot Louisiana lmd chosen fie Tilden electors by ,8,0.10 majority. Garfield was selected with others, to go to Now Orleans, and induce the Returning Board to throw out the Tilden majority, and falsely certify the election of the Hayes licket. The work

was divided among lliom. West Feliciana was assigned to Gallied. It wws the most difficult job of all. For eighteen days he sat in an “inner room” of the Custom House manipulating evidence, tampering with negro witnesses aud writing "out interrogatories to be propounded to them by Madison Wells of the Returning Board. The other visiting siatestnen were engaged at the same business, and when the mass of perjuries and forgeries was completed they left Louisiana assured that the Board would complete the crime, aud certify tho election of the defeated candidates. Atßellaire, Ohio, on their way to Washington, they recaived a dispatch that tho worn was done, and that so far us that State was concerned the conspiracy against the Presidency was successful. .When the electoral bill was under

discus»|on in the House, Garfield freely declared his opinion that under its provisions the judges would be comi polled by their oaths lo go behind the certificates of the Returning Hoards to ascertain and declare the truth. Yet when, as a member of the Commission, he had taken a special and solemn oath to render a ‘‘true judgment,” he voted every time with the infamous eight, not to examine, not to look at the evidence of fraud, not to go behind the false certificates, not to disturb the work or his own hands daring those eighteen davs of secret labor with witnesses in Packard’s inner room of the New Orleans Custom House. Here was the manufacturer of the evidence sitting as a judge in-the very case he bad himself made up, and repudiating his own interpretation of the law to save the fraud which lie had himself fabricated. This is the true account of Garfield as a visiting statesman and member of the Commission, which Mr. Hendricks draws from the record, and substantiates by Gaifield’s own testimony. He might have added that, when the decisions of the Commission wore imperiled by the refusal ot the SouthBin Representatives to goon with the fraudulent count, this honorable Judge crawled down from the bench ihto midnight conferences,as the spe- ! cial agent of one of the parties be- I fore his Court, and there made a corrupt compact, by which Packard, the man who lent him the “inner room.”, and the whole Republican party of j Louisiana were basely betrayed and 1 surrendered to their enemies. Such was his judicial honor, and such his I personal gratitude!