“How Radicals Carry Wisconsin.” from the November 24, 1876 Expositor
How Radicals Carry Wisconsin.
[Madison Patriot.]
The extent to which election frauds are perpetrated on the people of Wisconsin, is but dimly appreciated outside of the few who make statistics a study. To such, any unusual perturbations in results at once attract attention. That Governor Taylor was forged out of office last fall, we have never seen occasion to doubt, and the same machinery has been more intensely active the present year. Let us briefly explain the process.
Wisconsin is bordered on the north-west by the lake and river St. Croix, and on the north-east by the Menomonee river. There are no considerable villages, few farms, and but small resident population above the mouths of either stream. ——The occupation, generally, of the population is logging and lumbering. The streams are narrow, and camps abound on either side promiscuously. Minnesota, with an enormous surplus radical vote, fronts one side, and Michigan the other. When the people of this state, revolting at the monstrous corruptions of the times, seek relief at the polls, it is noticeable that these states empty their bummers over our border—that lumber camps on our side, with scarce a score of voters, are suddenly swelled to hundreds, that strips of frozen desert, the wild soltitudes of nature, team with enormous voting populations; and that the vote is all for one party and none for the other. By a singular coincidence, too, the vote of Michigan and Minnesota is generously found short just the extent of our excess.
Here, in these sylvan fastness, in the reserve fund of radical calculation. Little or nothing is allowed to be known of the election results until the vote of the balance of the state is known. Drafts are then made to cover shortages, and in such cases prepared blank returns need only to be filled with the necessary figures. It is by such manipulation that our Reform victories are so often nullified.
As far as heard from at this late hour, St. Croix county has been colonized so as to change a reform majority of 400 last year into a Hayes majority this year. Returns higher up the river arc carefully concealed as yet. The same substantially of the east side, where we hear rumors of “great Republican gains,” in sections destitute of population. What the army does in the south, develops on the forger here. On an honest vote we should have a majority of not less than 10,000. A stop must be put to this villainy at all hazards. It represents at least 4,000 ballots in the election just closed, and the practice has by no means been confined to border counties.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[The use of “forged” instead of “forced” expresses the sense of being driven from office by the result of forgery.
The spelling of “soltitudes” was acceptable at the time.
“Radicals” refers to Republicans rejecting the Reform Party. This describes two attorneys in Wisconsin who were Radical Republicans: https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS319
“Reform” and “reform” refers to a defunct political party in Wisconsin: https://www.google.com/books/edition/By_One_Vote/ue4WAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA35
“Governor Taylor” is William Robert Taylor: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Portrait_and_Biographical_Album_of_Rock/NwwrAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA165
The Disputed Election of 1876: https://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/disputed-election-of-1876
Most of Wisconsin’s border counties went for Hayes in 1876: http://geoelections.free.fr/USA/elec_comtes/1876.htm ]
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