John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[445] had hitherto pursued. He did this in an able statement addressed to the Republicans of his own State, but evidently intended for the people of the United States. It was dated December 26, 1877, and was printed in all the leading journals of the country. It recounted all the measures by which Tilden was deprived of the honors to which many believed him entitled, and pointed out with inexorable logic that Packard's right to the governorship of Louisiana was connected with Hayes's right to the presidency “by titles indissolubly connected in law, in morals, and by every rule of honor that prevails among civilized men.” The annals of politics do not contain a fuller or clearer summation of the facts connected with any political episode of American history; and, while it did not directly assail the Electoral Commission, or the justice and wisdom of its action, it was in every essential detail an independent confirmation and indorsement of the contentions put forth in the Sun. It is not germane to the purposes of this narrative to summarize further Chandler's extraordinary letter. It has been mentioned here for the sole purpose of emphasizing the statement that Dana was far from being unsupported in the resolute views which he entertained in regard to the antecedent facts and the political complications connected with the Electoral Commission, and for the additional purpose of pointing out that he printed the letter and persistently kept it before his readers as a Republican vindication of his own position.

In connection with the unsatisfactory state of political affairs prevailing throughout the South, Dana's sympathies were clearly with the white people. He recanted none of his principles in reference to slavery, nor to the essential justice and wisdom of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting discriminations against the freedmen on “account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” but it is certain that he had long since become