Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/102



94 H. R. KINCAID

this was going on in Washington the Illinois Legislature was contending over the re-election of Senator John A. Logan. A few Republicans bolted and helped the Democrats to elect Judge Davis as an independent to the Senate in place of Logan. This unexpected and unforseen act upset the commission. He was then a Senator and not a Judge of the Supreme Court. The Senate and the House both had their members on the commission. Justice Bradley, of New Jersey, was then placed on the commission. He gave the casting vote in favor of Hayes and made him President of the United States. No doubt some of the Republicans who forced the act through Congress were disappointed and surprised. At any rate it was generally believed that Conkling and some of the New York members and their friends in other states did not want Hayes. "The best laid schemes of men aft gang aglee." I am not sure if that- is the correct quotation.

One of the clerks who had charge of enrolling the laws on parchment for preservation in the State Department, with whom I worked several years, named Cole C. Sympson, was from Illinois. He had secured his appointment through Presi- dent Lincoln. When Judge Davis came into the Senate as an independent he went into the Democratic caucus, as soon as they had a majority in the Senate two years later, March 4, 1879. This he did to prevent the Democrats from remov- ing the clerk from his state, while all the other Republicans had to go. This was the only time a change, for political reasons to make places, has been made in the Senate below secretary and sergeant-at-arms, except in 1861, in the time of the war of the rebellion. My Democratic successor is there yet under several Republican Senators. So here again a smaller matter controlled a larger one, the same as the election of a Supreme Justice to be a member of the Senate and the defeat of John A. Logan for re-election, had kept Tilden from becom- ing President of the greatest nation of the world and put Hayes in that office.