De Alexander

Republicans controlled it, and their insistence upon unrestricted negro suffrage gave colour to the whole document, until the Democrats, demanding its defeat, focused upon it their united opposition.

If corruption had demoralised Republicans, fear of a repetition of the Tweed frauds paralysed them.

The press condemned it, good men mourned over it, and wise men unmasked it.

Men frankly admitted that no reason or economic principle justified the existence of such monstrous levies.

The passage of these vicious appropriations, requiring the help of Republicans, gave rise to numerous charges of bribery and corruption.

Talk of this kind appealed to the pessimist who believes a legislator is always for sale, but Speaker Younglove, an assemblyman of long experience, knowing that good committee appointments were more potent than other influences, tactfully…

Besides, his four years' service as governor, strengthened by the veto of several bills calculated to increase the public burdens, had received the unmistakable approval of the people.

They were dominated, also, by the favourite doctrine of political leaders that organisation must be maintained and victory won at any cost save by a revolution in party policy, and they entered the senatorial contest with a courage as…

Arthur, looking into the future, had already recognised the need of a new alignment, and the young Senator evidenced the qualities that appealed to him.

This sarcastic thrust emphasised the notorious gerrymander which, in spite of the Tammany frauds, gave the Republicans a legislative majority of twenty-four on joint-ballot.

Moreover, it pronounced the investigation a shameful effort to convict the Democracy of crimes that were really the result of the long-continued misgovernment of the Republicans.

Taxes and elections were the mere spoil and booty of a corrupt junta in Tammany.

Thirty thousand votes were falsely added to the Democratic majority in New York and Brooklyn alone.

Tweed made the election officers, and the election officers were corrupt.

Repeating, ballot-box stuffing, ruffianism, and false counting decided everything.

The election was a barbarous burlesque," he continued.

Let no citizen, however, be deterred by any threats or fears, but let him assert his rights boldly and resolutely, and he will find his perfect protection under the laws and the lawfully constituted authorities of the State.

Threats are made against naturalised citizens, and a federal grand jury has been induced to find, in great haste and secrecy, bills of indictment for the purpose, openly avowed, of intimidating them in the discharge of their public…

Gross and unfounded charges of fraud are made by them against those high in authority.

Unscrupulous, designing, and dangerous men, political partisans, are resorting to extraordinary means to increase it.

He made it appear that the South was saved from anarchy by the military, and that the North, to the sincere regret of many Republicans and their ablest journals, was no longer controlled by the sober judgment of the dominant party's safest…

The knowledge, too, that it was in part the work of the Ku-Klux-Klan, a secret organisation pledged to disfranchise the negro by intimidation, intensified the bitterness.

It was the old story--murder without arrests or investigation.

To this criticism Seymour's supporters justly replied that as governor, in 1853, he had boldly championed the great loan of ten and one-half millions for the Erie Canal enlargement.

It was agreed, also, that the purity of Seymour's life, his character for honesty in financial matters, and the high social position which he held, made him an especially dangerous adversary in a State that usually dominated a national…