that Republican defeat was due
to other causes than fraudulent registration and illegal voting.
"Outside the incapables and their miserable subalterns who managed the
Syracuse convention," said one Republican paper, "a pervading
sentiment existed among us, not only that we should be beaten, but
that we needed chastisement."[1147] Another placed the responsibility
upon "a host of political adventurers, attracted to the party by
selfish aggrandisements."[1148] The _Tribune_ accepted it as a
punishment for cowardice on the negro suffrage question. "To say that
we are for manhood suffrage in the South and not in the North is to
earn the loathing, contempt, and derision alike of friends and
foes."[1149] Thus had Republican power disappeared like Aladdin's
palace, which was ablaze with splendour at night, and could not be
seen in the morning.

[Footnote 1146: Gustavus Myers, _History of Tammany Hall_, p. 250.]

[Footnote 1147: Buffalo _Commercial Advertiser_, November 6, 1867.]

[Footnote 1148: Albany _Evening Journal_, November 6.]

[Footnote 1149: New York _Tribune_, November 6.]

CHAPTER XIV

SEYMOUR AND HOFFMAN

1868

The fall elections of 1867 made a profound impression in the Empire
State. Pennsylvania gave a small Democratic majority, Ohio defeated a
negro suffrage amendment by 50,000, besides electing a Democratic
legislature, and New York, leading the Democratic column, surprised
the nation with a majority of nearly 48,000. In every county the
Republican vote had fallen off. It was plain that reconstruction and
negro suffrage had seriously disgruntled the country. The policy of
the Republicans, therefore, which had hitherto been one of delay in
admitting Southern States to representation in Congress, now changed
to one of haste to get them in, the party believing that with negro
enfranchisement and white disfranchisement it could control the South.
This sudden change had alarmed conservatives of all parties, and the
Democratic strength shown at the preceding election encouraged the
belief that the radical work of Congress might be overthrown. "The
danger now is," wrote John Sherman, "that the mistakes of the
Republicans may drift the Democratic party into power."[1150]

[Footnote 1150: Sherman's Letters, p. 299.]

The action of Congress after the removal of Edwin M. Stanton, then
secretary of war, did not weaken this prediction. The Senate had
already refused its assent to the Secretary's suspen