Governor Curtin and Senator Sherman met face to face at New Orleans in the struggle to win the electoral vote of Louisiana, and at one stage of the battle Tilden could have secured the vote by telegraphing a single word to Curtin; but Tilden seemed to have lost his cunning, and hesitation was exhibited by him at every stage of the conflict when the promptest action was indispensable. I visited him at his home in Gramercy Park when the contest was on at white heat, and was amazed to find his table covered with legal briefs, as though his election depended upon the law that would govern before a competent and impartial judicial tribunal. He permitted himself and his friends to become involved in a compromising way in the Oregon dispute for a single elector, and had the same method been adopted in Louisiana, he would have won. Instead of discussing the situation as it was, he presented to me elaborate arguments to show how it should be, and I could not refrain from reminding him that he was not dealing with judicial tribunals nor with honest men, and that he must either meet them on their own ground and with their own weapons or he must fall in the fight. He seemed to be utterly bewildered, and the man who had organized his nomination and election with consummate skill shrivelled up into pitiable indecision and inaction when he had the power to cast the die for or against himself. The severe strain upon the popular sentiment of the country that had given Tilden 250,000 majority for President was greatly tempered, especially in the South, by a very shrewd movement planned early in the after-election contest to conciliate the leading people of the South. They received positive assurances from men very close to Hayes, and who gave the assurance of Hayes’s approval of the movement, that if Hayes should be inaugurated President without violence the State governments of Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina would be given to the Democrats. That Hayes approved of the plan is evidenced by the fact that after he became President he stood resolutely by the promise made by his friends to give the Democrats control of the governments of those States. There was not serious friction in Florida; the Democratic candidate for Governor was allowed to be inaugurated on a returned majority of 195 as given by the Supreme Court. In South Carolina the face of the returns gave Wade Hampton 1134 majority for Governor, with about a like majority for the Democratic Presidential electors, but the Returning Board threw out Democratic counties and returned Chamberlain, Republican, as elected Governor by a majority of 3433, and gave the Republican electors majorities ranging from 600 to 900.