"Mr. Zachariah Chandler, chairman of the National Committee, asked the gentleman above alluded to, on the evening of Nov. 8, if it would not be well to send William E. Chandler to Florida. The gentleman thought it would. Mr. William E. Chandler left for Florida on the following day at 6 P.M. Mr. William E. Chandler, therefore, did not initiate the idea of going to Florida. The truth is that Zachariah Chandler wished to send to Florida a gentleman who had been formerly a private secretary to William H. Seward, but the person was not at hand and could not be reached in time. William E. Chandler for this important mission was a second choice.
"The whole scheme of sending what were afterwards called 'visiting statesmen' to the doubtful States originated in the brain of Zachariah Chandler, not William E. Chandler.
"If the New York _Sun_ and Mr. William E. Chandler can find any comfort in the foregoing plain narration of facts they are entirely welcome to it."
Notwithstanding Mr. Tilden's popular majority, the public needs not now be told that he was counted out by the instrumentality of an extemporized tribunal, not only unknown to the Constitution, but in distinct disregard and violation of the provisions of that instrument for counting the electoral votes for Presidents and Vice-Presidents. A detailed account of the processes by which this great national crime was initiated will be found in the first chapter of the second volume of Bigelow's _Life of Tilden_. To that record, however, some important testimony has since been disclosed which appears to have escaped the biographer's notice.
At a meeting held at Chickering Hall on the evening of November 12, 1891, to sympathize with Governor Nichols's war on the Louisiana lottery system, the late Abram S. Hewitt was one of the speakers. In the course of his remarks in denunciation of the lottery gambling in Louisiana, Mr. Hewitt said:
"I can't find words strong enough to express my feelings regarding this brazen fraud.
"This scheme of plunder develops a weak spot in the government of the United States, which I would not mention were it not for the importance of the issue. We all know that a single State frequently determines the result of a Presidential election. _The State of Louisiana has determined the result of a Presidential election. The vote of that State was offered to me for money_, and I declined to buy it. _But the vote of that State was sold for money!_"