Immediately after election, Mr. Stokes and his friends raised the cry of fraud. They lost no time in hurrying to Washington in order to bring pressure to bear upon President Grant to declare the election void. Mr. Stokes set forth his claims in a lengthy interview. He said in part: “Governor Senter being governor or acting-governor had the appointment of the registrars of the election. He put in such men as he thought would do his bidding. They at once opened the flood-gates and let everybody in, the disfranchising clauses of the Constitution were trodden under foot and entirely disregarded, certificates of qualification as voters were issued to disfranchised rebels, and even boys of sixteen and seventeen were allowed to vote. Besides this there was a course of intimidation pursued under the instruction of Senter which prevented hundreds of Republicans from voting. You see Senter was governor. He had militia and intended to use them, if necessary, to elect himself. In many cases where the rebels had the upper hand the Republicans, especially the negroes, could not vote in their precincts for fear of violence. What defeated me was the rebels who were disfranchised under the constitution. I got 56,000, which was Grant’s vote last fall. Seymour’s was 33,000 last fall, but Senter’s vote was this time 119,000. The 86,000 additional which Senter got were rebels and minors.” These charges made by Mr. Stokes were replied to in the daily press by Governor Senter. He claimed that it was unfair to compare the vote in the recent election with the presidential election of the previous fall. In the presidential election the Republicans were sure of the result in the State, so they had made no effort to bring out a full vote. It would be much fairer to take the vote cast in the gubernatorial election of 1867 as the standard by which to measure the result of the recent election. In 1867, Governor Brownlow’s vote was 19,900 more than Mr. Stokes had received, yet the registration of 1867 exceeded the vote cast by over 20,000. The old registration law was still in force, but had been modified by a decision of the Supreme Court which admitted at least 40,000 votes which had been kept out in 1867. In other words, Mr. Senter claimed he could have received a majority of 20,000 had there been no new registration. The newly appointed registrars, referred to in Mr. Stokes’s interview, were, with the exception of three tenths, regularly discharged Federal soldiers.