es it happened that Judge Davis was elected senator from
Illinois on the preceding afternoon, January 25th. Chosen by the
Democratic members of the Legislature, reckoned as a Democratic
senator elect, there was an obvious impropriety, which Judge Davis
saw as quickly as others, in his being selected; and the four judges
unanimously agreed upon Joseph P. Bradley as the fifth judicial member
of the Commission.(2)

The Electoral Commission was organized on the thirty-first day of
January, 1877. Eminent counsel were in attendance on both sides,(3)
and the hearing proceeded with regularity.

The case of Florida was the first adjudicated before the Commission,
and the electors supporting Hayes and Wheeler were declared to have
been regularly chosen. Only eight of the Commission certified the
result--Justices Miller, Strong, and Bradley, Senators Edmunds, Morton,
and Frelinghuysen, Representatives Garfield and Hoar--the eight
Republicans. It was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 44 to 24.
The House voted against confirming it; but, according to the Electoral
law, the decision of the Commission could not be set aside unless both
Houses united in an adverse vote. The cases of the two other States,
Louisiana and South Carolina, were in like manner decided in favor of
the Republican electors.

The complication in Oregon was next decided. As soon as Mr. Tilden's
campaign managers began to fear that the electoral votes of the three
Southern States might be given to Hayes and Wheeler, they turned their
attention to securing an electoral vote elsewhere for Tilden and
Hendricks. The plan devised was to find in some Northern State (with
a Democratic Governor) an elector who might be disqualified under some
technical disability. Oregon seemed to furnish the desired conditions.
One of the Republican electors, John W. Watts, was postmaster in a
small office, and was therefore declared to be ineligible; and Governor
Grover gave the certificate to E. A. Cronin, who had received 1,049
fewer votes than Watts, but who had the largest number of the three
Democratic candidates for electors. On the 6th of December, the day
appointed for the meeting of the Electors, the two Republican Electors
to whom Governor Grover had given certificates (W. H. Odell and J. C.
Cartwright) refused to meet with Cronin or recognize him in any way;
whereupon the officially certified list of votes and certificates of
election were, by Governor Grover's