Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/664

 632 The Southern Republicans. Grant's election. [ises internal dissensions in characteristic fashion. Governor Seymour of New York, a " hard -money " man, was nominated in July after a dramatic " stampede " in the convention, upon a platform which demanded tax- ation of the government bonds and their payment in " lawful money ," that is, greenbacks, and also demanded immediate restoration of all the States, and "regulation of the elective franchise in the States by their citizens." Thus the two issues were fairly joined. But, while the contest appeared not unequal on the surface, a new, and, as it proved, decisive element was brought into the field in the shape of a powerful Republican party in every Southern State. The beginnings of this new organisation are to be found in the process of reconstruction under the Acts of March, 1867. The plan then laid down had been carried out in every State. Registration had been fol- lowed by votes calling Conventions, and these by the election of Con- ventions, the drafting of Constitutions, and their submission to popular suffrage. But those who participated in this procedure were limited to the negroes, guided by army officers, miscellaneous Northern residents, and a very few native whites. The registration of the new electorate was accompanied in 1867 by the active effort to organise a Republican party through " Union Leagues,"" with such success that the State Constitutional Conventions not uncommonly acted also as Republican nominating Con- ventions. The new party and the new State were one. From this second reconstruction, with its return to military rule, its disfranchisement of Confederates and enfranchisement of the negroes, all Southern whites shrank with loathing and despair; but in 1868, with thousands dis- qualified and with the negroes held well in hand by the Republican leaders, they were overmatched. Only in Mississippi did they succeed in rejecting the new Constitution; elsewhere their efforts, whether they abstained from voting or offered open opposition, were fruitless ; and by the summer of 1868 all the States but three Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas had been reconstructed and were under the control of the new Republicans. Congress immediately by an " Omnibus Act " restored seven of them to representation, having already restored Alabama. This accession decided the election. Grant was easily successful, carrying all except four Northern and three Southern States, and receiving 214 electoral votes to Seymour's 80. But without the disfranchisement of thousands of Confederates, and the addition of the negroes, the result might have been exactly what the Republicans feared in 1865. Seymour would have carried all the South, and, with four Northern States in his favour, would have come very close to being elected. It was alleged by Democrats, and not denied by Republicans, that Congress had admitted the eight States in 1868 for the purpose of securing their electoral votes. There can be no doubt that the formation of a Southern Republican party out of the negroes was one of the principal objects of the