Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/118

 that the State had given a majority of 7,876 for the Tilden electors and a majority of 8,010 for Nichols, the Democratic candidate for Governor. There were two Legislatures also claiming to be elected. The Republican Legislature had met and declared Packard elected Governor and the Democratic Legislature had met and recognized Nichols as the legally elected Governor. A consional committee, which had been sent to Louisiana to investigate, had reported on a strictly partisan basis; the Republican members reporting that Packard had been legally elected and the Democrats reporting in favor of Nichols. After Hayes was inaugurated he also sent a commission to investigate the situation. It appeared that during the conflict over the decision of Congress, as to who was the legal President, two influential friends of Hayes and also two friends of Tilden had come to a secret agreement, apparently by authority of Hayes, that if the Democratic House of Representatives would make no determined opposition to the seating of Hayes as President, his administration would in return acknowledge the legality of the election of Nichols the Democratic claimant for Governor and his Legislature, which would elect a Democrat to the United States Senate from Louisiana. In compliance with this understanding President Hayes sent a commission to Louisiana which so manipulated the affair that a sufficient number of the members of the Packard Legislature were persuaded to go over to the Nichols Legislature to give it a quorum. The commission then reported in favor of the Nichols government, President Hayes recognized it and ordered the withdrawal of the United States troops leaving everything in the control of the Nichols party. Great indignation was felt by a vast majority of Republicans throughout the country at this surrender by the Hayes Administration of the rights of his own party in Louisiana through whom he was made President. A member of Grant’s cabinet expressed the prevailing opinion of the mass of the