SENATOR FERRY ANNOUNCES THE VOTE. 665 profit. He was a pension surgeon under the United States, and was, therefore, constitutionally ineligible. It is an objection raised against hope. The House sustains, the Senate overrules. Under the law creating the Commission and regulating the count, this Wisconsin vote is counted for Hayes. But this is not done without a protracted struggle. The House remains in continuous session from twelve o'clock noon to four o'clock the next morning. It is then prepared to notify the Senate of its readiness to proceed with the count. All through the long night the galleries are crowded. The writer recalls the intense feeling, amounting to agony, among members and spectators. The all absorbing interest is manifested by an unusual hush and attention. Dramatic scenes are not infrequent. Friday, March 2, is ushered in. Joseph S. C. Blackburn, now Senator, was then a member from Kentucky, a state where oratory seems to be indigenous to the soil. He rises to pronounce a diatribe appropriate to the act about being completed. ،، Mr. Speaker," said the successor of Henry Clay, “ Mr. Speaker, the end There is no longer a margin for argument, and manhood spurns the plea of mercy, and yet there is a fitness in the hour that should not pass unheeded. To-day is Friday. Upon that day the Saviour of the world suffered crucifixion between two thieves. On this Friday constitutional government, justice, honesty, fair dealing, manhood, and decency suffer crucifixion amid thieves. It was on that day that this Presidential fraud received its nomination at the hands of the Republican party. It was upon that day as it recurred, that every determination reached by the blistered, perjured miscreants that constitute the majority of that Commission has been promulgated to the country. It is on that day that you propose to consummate your iniquity and foist into a place of power him whom the people of the land have spurned, scorned, and rejected at the polls. If it must be, it is well that it should occur here and now; but it is well, also, that before the day is finished the truth should be vindicated and the record should show upon whom the responsibilities rest." has come. The hands of the clock point grimly to four o'clock and five minutes when, on the morning of March 2, 1877, the door-keeper announces the Senate of the United States. That body enters the hall. It is headed by its President pro tempore, and accompanied by its Sergeant-at-Arms, and doorkeeper. The action of each house on the objection to the Wisconsin certificate is reported. President Ferry says: ،، The two houses not having concurred in the affirmative vote to reject, the vote of the State of Wisconsin will now be counted." "Tellers, announce the vote of the State of Wisconsin." This is done. He proceeds : ،، This concludes the count of the thirtyeight states of the Union." "The tellers will now ascertain and deliver the result to the President of the Senate." "In announcing the final result of the electoral vote," added President Ferry by way of caution, conscious of the tension of the popular mind, "the Chair trusts that all present, whether on the floor or in the galleries, will refrain from all demonstrations whatever; that nothing shall transpire on this occasion to mar the dignity and moderation which have characterized these proceedings, in the main so reputable to the American people, and worthy of the respect of the world." The request is observed. In five minutes from the time of entering the hall, the declaration is pronounced that Hayes and Wheeler have been elected President and VicePresident. The Senate now files out of the hall. One minute later, the House refuses Mr. Atkins' request to "take up the army appropriation bill." It adjourns and the weary crowds of nocturnal watchers wend their weary way in the early dawn of that March morning homeward. The stars and stripes, which for thirty days had floated uninterruptedly over the Capitol, denoting a continuous session, are appropriately lowered. Then for the first time in our history sprang into existence, new and peculiar relations in our polity. They are epitomized in two Latin phrases — de facto and de jure. These terms were then more familiar to other nations than to us. Was it not Daniel Webster who, in speaking of the Great Charter, said, "though it was written in a dead language, it was vital with liberty?" De facto and de jure, discordant as they seem in sound and sense, should be one; and both should be concordant with freedom. The genius of good government is in making them interchangeable. By melting fact into right, the actual into the ideal, Practice walks hand in hand with Justice. It is then that we have Utopia. It is then that we have the ne plus ultra of our political hopes. It is then that fact is founded upon undimmed and unchangeable relations. It is then that both are eternal. Right cannot move except in harmony with its omniscient Author. Facts isolated may be transient, temporary and ill-omened. The shifting, treacherous waves symbolize them, but beneath repose the everlasting deeps of Right. What do we mean by de jure and de facto? De jure means by right, by justice, or by law, as distinguished from that which is existent, irregularly, and temporarily. De facto, as the word signifies, is something made-factum. We speak of something manufactured, like a threshing machine, or an electoral return, when distinguished from that which is essential. In one case, the man who uses the machine without the patent right is no less a trespasser than the one who holds an office upon a false, manufactured return, made to order. It is still believed by more than one-half of our people that the fact accomplished in the formal inauguration of a de facto President, and in the repression of the popular choice, was an outrageous wrong. All nations have an abstract right to be free. But the divine order which establishes this right is almost universally violated. Few nations and few men are de facto free. This is because of ignorance, violence, selfishness, treachery, and tyranny. During our Civil War, the Southern States, when out of their Federal relation to the Constitution, were regarded by all as de facto regular states, if not by all, as de jure states. |