Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1883 — YOUNG MEN. [ARTICLE]

YOUNG MEN.

THE EXPERIENCE OF A GENUINE AMERICAN. How Political Truth Reached One Honest Heart. (New York Sun.) To the Editor of the Sun: Sir —A s a y° man, and one beginning to take interest and part in the politics of our day, I have an open confession to make. Not a confession of sin, nor of stubbornness, nor of deception by myself, but of how I have for several years allowed myself to be deceived by others. My father was a soldier and a Republican. Republican newspapers only entered our home, and Republican voters only naturally ’ were reared therein. I have grown up to manhood with faith strong, and I have hitherto thought unassailable, in the uprightness and superiority of the Republican party, and while, generally speaking, that conviction still remains, though in a shaken condition, a revelation has recently come to me upon one important and exciting phase of our recent politics —a revelation that has successively amazed, horrified and angered me. It is the manner in which Mr. Hayes was found and decided to be elected President of the United States. Until within a few weeks my convictions in regard to the Electoral Commission and its proceedings were similar to hose of most Republicans. I thought the Commission was created by the wise statesmanship of both parties; that it executed its commission honestly and thoroughly; that its conclusions were based upon justice and law, and that the final result was creditable to our public men and our couht, and the only just and proper one possible. Indeed, I had so fully relied upon the statements of the Republican press, ahd had such entire confidence in the integ- , rity of the Republican members of the Electoral Commission that it was impossible for me to entertain, even for a moment, a doubt that their unanimous action was dictated by firm conviction and honesty of purpose. Garfield, Hoar, Edmunds, Morton, Frelinghuysen and the Supreme Court Judges, Miller, Strong and Bradley, and especially Garfield, seemed to me the incarnation of high-minded statesmanship, loyalty to duty and firmness in defending the right, no matter at what personal or party sacrifice. I have always entertained and expressed the warmest admiration for their good work, as I had understood it, in defeating a wicked attempt to seize the Government.

On the other hand, the unanimity and persistencygof the Democratic members of that Commission in voting upon every point presented favorably to the scheme to count Mr. Tilden in, 1 have always regretted as a sad exhibition of the sinking of the man in the politician —a painful obscuration of the statesman and Judge bv the S artisan. Believing, as I did, fiat the eight were surely right, it seemed some of the able seven must have known they were wrong; and by voting again and again for their party when they knew justice demanded other action, they earned distrust and condemnation. Therefore it was that Mr. Tilden, in my efes. was little better than a plotter, a false claimant and a dangerous man. Every gibe at him in the Republican press, every pretended disclosure as to his connection with the alleged bribery schemes in the disputed States was eagerly read and enjoyed by me. Andtherefore, also, during the whole of the Hayes Ad-

ministration, my impatience was great at the manner in which the opposition press persistently fanned fires of discontent'which burned within the Democratic party on account of the previous Presidential election. To me their violent language, their use of unfriendly adjectives and expletives in speaking of Mr. Hayes, and of others who aided m placing him in the Exececutive Chair,or profited thereby, seemed little less than criminal. Thus have I grown up, a zealous young Republican of the Western Reserve, loving my party, making tearful pilgrimages to the sepulchre of Garfield, and confident and happy in the worship of my idols. But now my eyes see with a different light. »Vho was black before is now white, and, alas! the spotless white of old is now stained and discolored. It is with shame that I confess that, until within a fortnight, I, a young man of fair education,average intelligence and enjoying exceptional opportunities for getting information, have been ignorant that Samuel J. Tilden was really elected President of the United States, in November, 1876, and that Rutherford B. Hayes was declared electud to that high place only through a most shameful conspiracy to suppress the truth and seize the Government.

A few weeks ago my curiosity by chance became aroused as to the precise methods employed by the Electoral Commission in reaching its momentous conclusion, and I procured and read the full official record of that body—not a partisan record, but, as I have said, an impartial, thorough, j and official history of its de- i liberations and actions. At near the beginning of my | reading, and little dreaming of what was to follow. I was dis-| pleased with the decision of the Commissian to refuse to 1 hear evidence or to go further ' back than the formal certificates of tho Governors of the several States. It was my immediate impression that such a complete abandonment of all pretense to investigation was a confession of prejudice on the part of the Commission, and of wicked intention to procure a certain result regardless of impending facts and reasons; and when, a little later, the several opposing counsel made it plain that the safety of the Hayes case rest ed upon such abandonment of inquiry .and, on the other hand, I saw that the Tilden hopes were based upon the most thorough and impartial investigation, this impression deepened and took firm hold upon my almost unwilling reasoning faculties. Still later, when it appeared that this decision was such as would make the error of a State Governor a national calamity, or magnify his corruption in the small matter of signing | false certificates of electiorjc r a few obscui e men into a crime against the NaI tion and civilization itself. I ■ could not regard such decision as well based, either in equity or constitutional law. When it was pointed out that this decision virtually placed the election of President of the United States within the power of the State Governors, or a few of them, to be by them manipulated wickedlv or corruptly,. the Federal Government being powerless against any conspiracy that might be entered into against it; when it became clear tla. mis decision placed with one or two or three States the power to inflict great and lasting wrong upon the whole Union. When I had comprehended this, I felt sure that the decision under consideration was not the enunciation of a constitutional principle to secure thefgreat and final end of public safety, but j a legal technicality upheld by partisan Judges to cover great

wrong to persons and greater outrages upon the almost sanctified government of the people. The evidence ready to be offered, but shut out by the Comm won’s decision not to investigate, and to allow the formal returns from the State to decide the election —no matter whether the formality was an ornament to honesty or a cloak to robbery beneath it —was of such a character as to confirm all the natural inferences from the Commission’s refusal to admit it. It was such evidence as must have led to the declaration of Mr. Tilden’s election - such evidence as could only incite such men to such a mon strous subversion of constitutional law by an over-conve-nient technicality. But if the cases of the States of Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina, in which the above decision was final and overwhelming aroused the indignation of a thinker who once crawled out of his shell of prejudice, launches headlong into the tide of inquiry, what shall be said of the State of Oregon, where it was found necessary to temporarily suspend the operation of the decision in order to prevent Mr. Tilden receiving the one vote necessary to his election? What words can express the horror an honest citizen must feel upon reviewing this lamentable fact in the history of our country? On February 9,1877,the Commission reported:

That it is not competent under the Constitution and tho law to go into evidence to prove that other persons than those regularly certified by the Governor of the State of Florida had been appointed electors, or by counter proof to show that they had not. This is the decision which first gave Florida and then Louisiana to Hayes. There were grave doubts whether the persons ‘regularly certified by the Governor’ as being electors had really been appointed electors by the people of the State, but the Commission decided that “under the Constitution and the law” no evidence as to that could be received, the only thing to do was to receive the votes of those electors holding the Governor’s certificate. But when, in alphabetical progress, Oregon was reached, it was here found that a Presidential elector, holding the regular certificate of the Governor of Oregon, had cast his vote for Tilden tor President. This vote would elect the Democratic candidates. Did this great Commission, composed of the greatest statesmen in a great Republic, apply the same and law” to Oregon” that it applied to Florida and Louisiana? Did it do what itself had declared was the only thing lawful and Constitutional —accept the votes of those electors holding the certificates of the Governor of the State? No! It declared that the man holding the Governor’s certificate was not entitled to it, that the Governor had no right to issue it to him, and that another person, who did not hold the Governor’s certificate, v as entitled to vote for Preside! il. This other person’s vote was accepted, and counted for Hayes. Thus, the Commission declared a person who had not the Governor’s certificate to be a competent elector. To make such a declaration, to even know the name of this person, the Commission must have heard evidence; it could not have decided a regularly certified person to he an im-noster, and a non-cerliiied one ih< only true elector, without testimony. And yet this same Commission had just declared: It is not competent und?r the Constitution and law to go into evidence to prove that other persons than thus* regularly certified to by the Govern nor had been appointed electors. The disgusting cup is not yet quite full. When South Carolina was reached a condition

of affairs similar to those in Florida and Louisiana was found. Here it became convenient to again use the original of Florida decision. It was resurrected from its festering grave and made to do duty once more in preserving “the Constitution and the law” and in seating Hayes and Wheeler. To you, sir, and to most citizens, this is an old story. You have told it, and listened to it, and deplored its circumstances again and again. But to me and to many thousands of other young men who became voters since the Electoral Commission, it is fearfully new and strange. This is my only excuse for requesting the publication of this letter: that young men may have their curiosity excited to the end that they will read the history of the Electoral Commission, as I have read it, with eyes open. In behalf of the truth of history, the brightly shining Sun, which I know has ever looked with kindly glances upon young men. might throw a portion of one of its day’s world of light upon this wonderful buried, but yet living subject. While I am a Republican by birth and habit, and shall undoubtedly remain one from convictions upon the tariff and other questions, I shall never again vote so a member of the Electoral Commission who aided in the application to the Presidential election of 1876 of those two sets of “Constitution and law.” It is with regret I recall that |I voted for Garfield, and have for years idealized him in my heart; and if Samuel J. Tilden, the noble man who, in behalf of his country’s peace and prosperity, silentlv saw one of earth’s greatest prizes, fairly his, wrested from him by robbery, should once more become a candidate for the Presidency, with associations not absolutely dangerous to the country or its institutions, I should deem it an honor to be one of his supporters. Twenty-three. Akron, O. Philadelphia Record: Jonathan S. Brinton left this state for lowa many years ago and accumulated considerable properl y. In 1875 he became convinced that he was inspired by God to open an inn or tavern near Jerusalem, to prepare for the restoration of the Holy City, and, although remonstrated with by his friends and by his family, he determined to make the journey to Palestine and do as he had been ed. He first divided his property equally between himself and wife, and sailed for the Holy City. Upon arriving there he purchased several acres of land near the city and erected a hotel. Strange to relate, the scheme proved a great financial success, and the old gentleman is now making a fortune from his inn. Recently he sent over for his family, and they are now with him ana highly delighted with their new home and the golden prospects. Hundreds of Englishmen and Americans stop at the hotel 2 and it has become one of the institutions of Jerusalem.