7H 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



torney-General of Ohio. Francis C. Barlow, who de- 

 clared his honest conviction that Tilden was elected, 

 and William E. Chandler, who attacked Mr. Hayes 

 in a pamphlet, were not appointed to office. The 

 persons who \\ ere active in obtaining the wrongful 

 count and implicated in the election frauds were all 

 appointed to positions in the Government service. 



II. Louisiana. The Keturning Board of Louisiana 

 possessed by statute, though contrary to both the 

 State and Federal Constitutions, it is thought, dis- 

 jeretionary power over the returns in some cases, and 

 'in the election of 1876 usurped such power in cases 

 where none was given them, fraudulently rejecting 

 10,000 Democratic votes and reversing the choice of 

 the people. 



The supervisors of registration, appointed by the 

 Governor for each parish, had in effect the power of 

 deciding upon the right of any citizen to vote, and 

 could also influence elections by virtue of their power 

 to appoint the number and locality of the polling 

 places. They were to pronounce upon the freedom 

 and fairness of the election, and any protest made by 

 them and attested by three citizens, which accompa- 

 nied the returns, should be considered by the Ke- 

 turning Board ; and after taking evidence upon the 

 allegations, the Returning Board might at their dis- 

 cretion cast out the whole vote of the polls reflected 

 upon, but could not revise or purge the returns. 

 Among the modes in which the registrars could in- 

 fluence the event of an election was that of withhold- 

 ing the public announcement of the polls till the last 

 day, to the confusion of the opposition party ; also 

 that of fixing the polls in such localities that the 

 different parties should not vote at the same polls, 

 and then, by inciting disturbances at the polls where 

 the opposition vote was massed, obtain a pretext for 

 forwarding a protest against the freedom of the elec- 

 tion at those polls, to the end that the hostile vote in 

 the parish might be rejected, and the concentrated 

 vote of their own party retained. The right of voters 

 to vote in any poll of the parish facilitated the mass- 

 ing of the party vote. The registrars might further- 

 more falsely increase the registry of the party, and 

 then allege* intimidation as the reason for the defi- 

 ciency of the vote cast. 



The Republican assertion that the color line divi- 

 ded the politics of the State, which was substantially 

 true in 1870, had been shown to no longer hold good 

 by the examination of the Committee of the Forty- 

 third Congress into the gubernatorial election of 

 1874. The white and black voters in the State are 

 equal in numbers ; and, while the Republican vote is 

 entirely confined to the black race, who are controlled 

 by a few white party managers and office-holders, the 

 witnesses before the said Committee not having been 

 able to name five white Republicans who were not 

 office-holders or family connections of office-holders, 

 the Democratic party had then already been aug- 

 mented by enough of the black population to carry 

 the State for the Conservatives, had the returns been 

 fairly made. This process of defection has been 

 gointr on ever since, owing to the patent abuses of 

 the Kellogtr government, to the disappointment of 

 the blacks in their hopes of material prosperity, and 

 the increasing stringency of the times, which they 

 ignorantly ascribed to misgovernment, and to the 

 active efforts of the Conservatives to conciliate the 

 iolored population and win their votes. The Re- 

 publicans sought to contravene the conclusions of 

 the report to the Forty-third Congress by taking a 

 fictitious census in 1875, in which an excess of 25,000 

 colored adults over the adult white population was 

 :ed. The registration in 1876 was fraudulently 

 -elled to correspond with this census. Registrars 

 were enjoined by the Republican managers to secure 

 as many votes for the party as there were colored 

 9 reported in the false census. Kellogg had ap- 



ointed as supervisors of registration in the most 

 important parishes creatures of his own, non-resi- 

 dents in the parishes, which was contrary to law- 



persons holding positions in the custom-house and 

 post-office, and in the police force of New_ Orleans. 

 The number of colored voters falsely registered at 

 the opening of the campaign amounted to 22,000. 

 Nevertheless, at the close of the election it turned 

 out that the Tilden Electors had received a majority 

 of 6,405 votes. The vote (160,964) was the largest 

 ever cast in the State. The returns were not ac- 

 companied by a single protest, except one from Con- 

 cordia Parish against a Republican fraud. The Re- 

 turning Board had no right to go beyond the returns 

 except in cases of protest. But in this unexpected 

 event it became necessary that something should be 

 done in order to save the State and the Union for 

 Hayes. The Returning Board, contrary to law, re- 

 fused to elect a Democrat into their body. It was 

 understood in the State, and throughout the coun- 

 try at large, that the Returning Board would by 

 whatever means count in the State for Hayes. Such 

 action, it was generally believed abroad, would be 

 sufficiently excusable since the Democratic majority 

 was only rendered possible, it was supposed, by a 

 system of organized terrorism. Reports spread abroad 

 of the intimidation of the blacks, and the assumption 

 that no negroes would vote the Democratic ticket ex- 

 cept through constraint or fear, were not in harmony 

 with a marked change of sentiment which had taken 

 place in the minds of many of the colored voters. The 

 glowing and fallacious promises made them by art- 

 ful politicians had remained unfulfilled. More than 

 this, their indignation had been aroused by the mis- 

 appropriation of their school funds by Republican offi- 

 cials. Meanwhile the Conservatives, their old mas- 

 ters, were endeavoring to propitiate them by prom- 

 ising them equality in theatres, cars, and hotels, by 

 sitting on the same platform at public meetings, by 

 regaling them with barbecues and music, and other 

 flattering manifestations of friendly equality. The 

 accession of the blacks to the Democratic party was 

 very marked in the large parishes of East and West 

 Feliciaua. A plot had been laid before the election 

 to have the vote in these overwhelmingly Conserva- 

 tive parishes cast out on the ground of intimidation. 

 The registrar of East Feliciana, the adventurer James 

 E. Anderson, had a man pretend to shoot at him and 

 precipitately fled as though afraid of his life. It was 

 the intention that he should not return and that no 

 election should be held. But the Democrats sought 

 him put and bribed him to come back ; so that the 

 election did take place, and Anderson sent in the 

 return with his attest that it had been free and fair. 

 In West Feliciana also the registrar, Don Weber, 

 declared the election in his return free and fair in all 

 respects. It was part of the plan that the Republi- 

 cans should not vote in either of these parishes : in 

 East Feliciana they did actually abstain from voting, 

 and no Republican tickets were printed or distribu- 

 ted, nor a single ballot cast ; in West Feliciana a part 

 of the Republicans did cast their ballots. The vote 

 in East Feliciana was 2,246 Democratic, Republi- 

 can ; in West Feliciana, 1,248 Democratic, 778 Re- 

 publican. 



The only way in which the result of the election 

 in the State could be reversed by the Returning 

 Board with any pretense of a cause was by inducing 

 registrars to make protests after the election, assign- 

 ing fear as the reason of their not having been for- 

 warded with the returns, and by collecting testimony 

 of some sort of intimidation in support of the pro- 

 tests. Anderson and Weber were the principal in- 

 struments used for this purpose. They were induced 

 to sign protests by persuasions and promises, and 

 a crowd of ignorant plantation negroes were taken 

 down to New Orleans, and awed and entrapped by 

 leading questions into testifying to various acts of 

 violence which, where they had any foundation, were 

 occurrences long preceding the election, and totally 

 unconnected with politics. Other supervisors were 

 persuaded to make supplemental protests after they 

 had certified in the returns that the elections hud 



