PAYNE AS MARSHALL [flashback to the election of 1876 -- How President Grant prepared to arrest Samuel J. Tilden for contesting the election]

Waterbury Democrat ^ | October 18, 1897 | Unknown

[edwinland]

Selected by President Grant as a Man to be Depended Upon in Perilous Times

How for Many Days He Watched Every Movement of Samuel J. Tilden

This is a story about Lou F. Payn, the new Superintendent of Insurance for New York State. The events occurred Just twenty years ago, but. had never been printed until they appeared recently In the New York Sun.

Reference was made to the obituary notices of Mr. Reid, who died recently, to his connection with the determination of the Republican National Committee of 1876 to claim the election of Hayes at sunrise the morning after election day. Mr. Payn's part in that historic time began when President Grant, in the closing days of his administration, nominated him as United States Marshall the Southern District of New York.

But to tell the story in Mr. Payn's own words:

"I received a note from President Grant asking me to call on him at the White House. I obeyed the summons, and ascertained, for the first time, that he contemplated sending my name to the Senate as United States Marshal. He eyed me closely as he began the conversation, and I soon learned that it was proposed to make me United States Marshal. President Grant began:

"Mr. Payn, do yon understand the duties of a United States Marshal?' I told him that I did. 'Do you know, Mr. Payn, that these are troublous times and that there is danger of an outbreak all over the country?' I told the President I was fully aware of the situation. Then he went on to say that the Democrats were in a highly inflammable frame of mind, believing that Mr. Tilden had been cheated out of the election for President, and that there was a likelihood of trouble. He asked me if I would obey the oath of office which I would have to take if I was made United States Marshal. I told him that I certainly would.

"Not once during the conversation did President Grant give me any definite idea of just where the outbreak was likely to come, but he intimated very strongly that if there was one it would be in New York city. President Grant all through the conversation seemed to want to test me as a man of nerve, and finally he was satisfied, apparently, for he said:

'Mr. Payn, I will send your name to the Senate this afternoon.'

"I took possession of my office, and several days later Senator Conkling called on me. 'Mr. Payn,' said he, I want to congratulate you on your appointment as United States Marshal, I want to talk to you about the duties of the place. First, let me ask you if you know where Samuel J. Tilden is at this moment.' '

[Note Tilden was the Democratic candidate for president who likely was cheated out of the election, but then tried to cheat by bribing potentially faithless electors]

I told Senator Conkling that I did not. 'Do you know where Mr. Tilden lives?' Senator Oonkling next asked, and I told him that Mr. Tilden lived somewhere in Gramercy Park. 'Marshal Payn, replied Senator Conkling, 'you should know where he is this instant; you should know where he is every instant in the day. You should know when he leaves his bed in the morning and when he gets into it at night. You evidently are not aware of why you were made United States Marshal.'

"It didn't take me long after that to understand the real meaning of Senator Conkling' visit and the conversation he addressed to me. Within twenty minutes I had twenty assistant deputy marshals in Gramercy Park. They knew every step Mr. Tilden took. I had determined that, on the first and slightest Indication, either on his part or that of his friends, to move on Washington, I would land him inside of Fort Lafayette so quick that it would make his head swim. Nobody at the time knew that these deputy marshals were in Gramercy Park.

[edwinland]

Interesting that when the shoe was on the other foot, the Democrats didn't just complain, but they cheated back, to the point of possibly being arrested and trundled off to a military fort.

[billorites]

Samuel Tilden's house in Lebanon Springs, NY got turned into a Japanese Restaurant a 100 years after his loss.

I think it's closed now, but was a great place to stop when on NY Route 22.

[Larry Lucido]

Interesting facts about this guy. A Van Buren protégé. If some of the Van Buren Boys had his back, things could have gotten heated. Maybe Payne knew the “sign.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_J._Tilden

Tilden was born into a wealthy family in New Lebanon, New York. Attracted to politics at a young age, he became a protégé of Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States.

[Deplorable American1776]

Waterbury Democrat? The newspaper in Waterbury, CT is the Republican-American. Good paper... Better that the Hardly Current (Hartford Courant) 😀

[Verginius Rufus]

Martin Van Buren was the nominee of the Free Soil Party in 1848. He pulled enough votes away from Lewis Cass, the Democrat nominee, to tip the election to the Whig Party.

There was a county in Missouri which had been named for Van Buren (just south of Jackson County). In 1849 the local residents changed the name of their county to Cass County, which it remains.

[Larry Lucido]

Lewis Cass? He was the second governor of Michigan and Secretary of War under Andrew Jackson, and reportedly meaner than Martin Van Buren!

[Robert357]

Thanks for posting.

[Verginius Rufus]

Cass was later Secretary of State in the Buchanan Administration. (Buchanan's first Secretary of War was John B. Floyd, later a Confederate general, most famous perhaps for his role in the unsuccessful defense of Fort Donelson in 1862.)

Jackson County (which includes Independence) and Cass County were later strongly pro-Confederate so the decision to rename Van Buren County must have been because of his support for the "free soil" position (keeping slavery out of the territories where it was not already permitted).