Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1879 — SOME POINTS ESTABLISHED. [ARTICLE]

SOME POINTS ESTABLISHED.

There are a few points which have been con clusively established liy proof that the Potter Committee would gladly have ignored entirely. It is well to notice these : I. It is conclusively proved, by the admissions of Smith Weed in bis secret dispatches to Gramercy Park, that the actual majority of the votes in f?6uth Carolina was for the Hayes electors. Yet it is admitted that Mr. Weed, the favorite lieutenant and right-hand man of Mr. Tihlen in New-York politics, tned to secure the votes of South Carolina for Tilden by bribery. It is conclusively proved that the Board in that State was at no time for sale, that Mr. Weed was fooled by the reports brought to him by a person who was anxious to get the $.",000 for his services as intermediary, aud that W. T. Pelton, Mr. Tilden’s nephew and confidential secretary, went to “Baltimore expecting, as he admits, to receive and to pay over the money for the purchase. The vote of Sonth Carolina, then, was cast exactly as the majority of voters intended aud desired. Democrats tried to buy its vote aqd failed. 11. It is conclusively proved by the admissions of Manton Marble, in his secret telegrams to Gramercy Park, that the actual result in Florida depended upon the decision made os to one precinct in Alachua County aud the returns from Manatee County, there being only about one hundred majority either way. It was secretly telegraphed by Marble that “it would not strain Board much to throw out ” the disputed Democratic votes in Manatee. His opinion of the worthless character of Democratic claims in that case was confirmed by the Board, which also threw out the disputed Republican votes in Alachua. There is not a particle of proof that either of the members of the Board ever was for salo. The two Republicans were strongly convinced of the justice of their case from the beginning, and in every decisive action they were sustained bv the Democratic member. Marble and Woolley both transmitted to New-York propositions designed to sway the decision by bribery, but failed. Evidence taken in the Congressional contest in that State has proved beyond dispute that the Republicans were right in their claims, and that the votes believed by them to have been cast were actually and legally cast for Republican electors. But the essential qnestiou is not whether the Board may have been mistaken in judgment: the vital fact is that it decided according to the law as laid down by the Democratic member, the Attorney-General, and its honest convictions, and was not for sale, althongh the Democratic leaders tried to buy its decision. 111. It is conclusively proved, in respect to Louisiana, that a reign of terror and violence in several parishes, caused by Democratic crimes, had made lit dangerous, if not impossible, for active Republicans to bring out theirrote, Such was the terrorism that the proper oflicejs did not dare, for their lives, to make formal pflptcsts until they had escaped from the reach of Democratic assassins. Some of them were afterward murdered because, having thus escaped, they told the truth. For the express purpose of preventing the success of a party bv such means, a State law bad intrusted extraordinary and arbitrary powers to the Canvassing Board—powers which would neither be needed nor conferred in a civilized State. Those powers were exercised by strong Republican partisans, and there is not the faintest shadow of a reason for believing that they required or had any other inducement than a sense of justice and an intense hostility to the party of assassination aud iv- « :tcre. The Democrats insist that their assassins should have triumphed, and that there was “ Grout Fraud,” because massacre was defeated by the exercise of extreme and arbitrary powers conferred by law. The Republicans, on the other hand, rejoice that for once the revolver and shot-gun failed to elect a Prcsidfint* IV. It is conclusively proved that the Democrats, being defeated elsewhere, tried to obtain by bribery in Oregon a vote to which they had no shadow of claim. The offer of money went from Mr. Tiiden’s own house, aud the money itself afterward went from banks and bankers with whom he has close and confidential relations, at the request of his impecunious nephew. That attempt to swindle the country failed, as similar attempts had failed in South Carolina and Florida. Aud now the thwarted assassins are yelling “ Fraud ” because they could neither get the power by murder nor by bribery.