for the
appointment of a select committee of eleven "to inquire into the
alleged false and fraudulent canvass and return of votes by State,
county, parish, and precinct officers in the States of Louisiana and
Florida, and into all the facts which in the judgment of said committee
are connected with or are pertinent thereto." The resolution was
adopted, and a committee was appointed, with power to sit during the
recess of Congress.(5)

Congress adjourned on the 20th of June, and after a short vacation
Mr. Potter's committee entered upon its extensive inquiries. Perhaps
with the view of stimulating the Democratic members of the committee
to zeal in the performance of their duty, Mr. Manton Marble early in
August published a carefully prepared letter on the electoral counting
of 1876. Mr. Marble was unsparing in his denunciation of the
Republicans for having, as he alleged, obtained the election of Hayes
and Wheeler by corruption in the Southern States. He dealt with
unction upon the fact that the _absolute trust of Mr. Tilden and his
adherents in the Presidential contest had been in moral forces_. As
the accusations put forth were attributed to Mr. Tilden, and only the
remarkable rhetoric of the letter to Mr. Marble, the public interest
was fully aroused, and the threatened exposures impatiently awaited.

The majority of the committee reported, though perhaps with greater
elaboration, substantially the same facts and assumptions that had
been brought against the Republicans in the Southern States directly
after the election, nearly two years before. If any thing new was
produced, it was in detail rather than in substance, and undoubtedly
showed some of the loose practices to which the character of Southern
elections has given rise. Between the violence of the rebel
organizers, and the shifts and evasions to which their opponents, both
white and colored, have been subjected, the elections in many of those
States have undoubtedly been irregular; but the Committee did not
establish any fraudulent voting on the part of Republicans. Freely
analyzed, indeed, the accusations against the colored voters were in
another sense still graver accusations against the white voters.
Duplicity is a weapon often employed against tyranny by its victims,
and there is always danger that a popular election where law is
unfairly administered and violence constantly impending, will bring
into play on both sides the worst elements of soc