Corruption scandals from Denver to Washington dragged down Republicans as the 1876 election began

Closeup of a United States quarter coin showing "Colorado 1876"

Territorial Governor John Routt, former congressional delegate Jerome Chaffee and Central City attorney Henry Teller were among the dignitaries who traveled in early June 1876 from the Colorado Territory to Cincinnati, where the Republican National Convention gaveled in at the city’s Exposition Hall.

Despite the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the pomp and circumstance of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the summer of 1876 was a fraught and anxious period for the Republican Party.

Two years earlier, Democrats had won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War. With much of the country still reeling from the economic effects of the Panic of 1873, the opposition party now hoped to follow it up with victory in the 1876 presidential election — a grim prospect for Republicans and northerners to whom the Democratic Party still stood as a symbol of rebellion and Confederacy. The fate of Reconstruction, under which the federal government had acted to secure Black civil rights in the South, hung in the balance.

Overhead view of a magnifying glass over the word "history." — © ogichobanov - iStock-1088402018

Colorado’s admission to the union in the Centennial year was little more than a partisan political maneuver by Republicans, who felt assured of the new state’s three electoral votes. In early 1875, the lame-duck GOP Congress had passed a Colorado statehood act even as it defeated a similar measure for Democratic-leaning New Mexico, which wouldn’t be admitted as a state until 1912.

Up until early 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant had given serious consideration to running for an unprecedented third term. But he eventually bowed out as his administration continued to be rocked by one corruption scandal after another, including the Whiskey Ring bribery scheme and similar allegations that led to the resignations of two Cabinet secretaries and the impeachment of another.

Chaffee and Teller were bitter political rivals but had been two of the six delegates to the RNC elected at a territorial GOP convention held in April — and before the year was over, they would both be elected by the inaugural Colorado General Assembly as the Centennial State’s first two U.S. senators.

It was an awkward time to be a member of the Colorado Territory’s fledgling Republican political establishment: Climbing the ranks meant currying favor with party bosses who controlled coveted appointments to territorial offices and civil service positions, but doing so carried the risk of being tainted by the aura of corruption and scandal that plagued Grant’s administration in his second term.

In the early 1870s, Chaffee and Teller led different factions within the party that traded charges of graft and carpetbagging as they battled to install their favored candidates as governor, postmaster, U.S. marshal, surveyor general and other posts, subject to presidential and congressional approval. The departure of Teller-backed Governor Edward McCook in 1875, to be replaced by Routt, had been a victory for Chaffee and the “Denver Ring,” who found themselves ascendant once again in the party’s territorial affairs.

Wooden tiles spelling out the word "politics" — © Pixabay - Wokandapix

Even as Colorado Republicans traveled to Cincinnati to select a new presidential nominee, former U.S. Marshal Mark Shaffenburg remained on trial in Denver, having been indicted for embezzling government funds by overcharging for prisoner expenses and mileage. Shaffenburg also stood accused of aiding a fraudulent land-grab scheme in southern Colorado, a scheme that also ensnared railroad baron David Moffat and other members of the Denver Ring.

On June 14 — the same day the GOP convention opened — the jury in Shaffenburg’s case told a federal judge in Denver that it could not reach a verdict “after nearly ninety hours of enforced retirement and alleged ‘deliberation,’” the Rocky Mountain News reported. Indictments against Moffat and other alleged perpetrators of the land-grab scheme were later dropped.

GOP convention

Among the resolutions adopted into the territorial party’s platform in April 1876 was one professing “unshaken … faith in the principles and policy of the Republican Party” while stating “a disposition to reform the civil service of the country, and to exact from officials charged with the administration of public affairs a rigid honesty and a scrupulous observance of their obligations.”

James Belford, another RNC delegate elected by the Colorado convention, delivered a “ringing speech” to the party faithful gathered at the Denver Theater, the Rocky Mountain News reported.

“He deplored the spots on the face of the Republican sun, but said the party was purging itself of scoundrels,” wrote the News. “The delegates just elected would, in convention at Cincinnati, support the man in favor of reform in the civil service and the development of the mineral resources of the country, the basis of national wealth.”

Meeting for their convention in the crucial swing state of Ohio, Republicans deadlocked on the first six ballots as the favorite for nomination, former House Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine, failed to capture a majority. On the seventh, they instead nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, a dark-horse candidate untainted by the reputation for corruption that threatened to sink the GOP’s electoral chances.

The Rocky Mountain News, ever the loyal mouthpiece of Denver Republicans, rushed to applaud the selection of the man it branded “Honest Hayes.”

“Not a man in public life possesses a purer record and clearer character than Governor Hayes,” the News claimed. “A representative Republican, he also satisfies all the requirements of the reform sentiment now so popular, never having affiliated in the least degree with any of the baser elements of the party.”

The paper also couldn’t help but boast about its own prediction, at the outset of the convention, that Blaine was a weaker candidate than he appeared, and that he would win by the second ballot or not at all.

“Those who thought The News went off wrong, to use a comprehensive conversationalism, when it discounted the chances of Blaine for the nomination of the Cincinnati convention,” wrote the paper’s editors, “have got something to put in their pipes and smoke this morning.”