1 янв 1890 г. - Lodge Bill or Federal Elections Bill of 1890

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Also known as the Federal Elections Bill of 1890, a bill proposing that whenever one hundred citizens in any district appealed for intervention, a bipartisan federal board could investigate and seat the rightful winner. The defeat of the bill was a blow to those seeking to defend African American voting rights and to ensure full participation in politics.

President Benjamin Harrison also sought to protect African American voting rights in the South. Warned during his campaign that the issue was politically risky, Harrison vowed that he would not “purchase the presidency by a compact of silence upon this question.” He found allies in Congress. Massachusetts representative Henry Cabot Lodge drafted the Federal Elections Bill of 1890, or Lodge Bill, proposing that whenever one hundred citizens in any district appealed for intervention, a bipartisan federal board could investigate and seat the rightful winner.

Despite cries of outrage from southern Democrats, who warned that it meant “Negro supremacy,” the House passed the measure. But it met resistance in the Senate. Northern classical liberals, who wanted the “best men” to govern through professional expertise, thought it provided too much democracy, while machine bosses feared the threat of federal interference in the cities. Unexpectedly, many western Republicans also opposed the bill — and with the entry of ten new states since 1863, the West had gained enormous clout. Senator William Stewart of Nevada, who had southern family ties, claimed that federal oversight of elections would bring “monarchy or revolution.” He and his allies killed the bill by a single vote.
The defeat was a devastating blow to those seeking to defend black voting rights. In the verdict of one furious Republican leader who supported Lodge’s proposal, the episode marked the end of the party of emancipation. “Think of it,” he fumed. “Nevada, barely a respectable county, furnished two senators to betray the Republican Party and the rights of citizenship.”

Other Republican initiatives also proved unpopular — at the polls as well as in Congress. In the Midwest, swing voters reacted against local Republican campaigns to prohibit liquor sales and end state funding for Catholic schools. Blaming high consumer prices on protective tariffs, other voters rejected Republican economic policies. In a major shift in the 1890 election, Democrats captured the House of Representatives. Two years later, by the largest margin in twenty years, voters reelected Democrat Grover Cleveland to the presidency for a nonconsecutive second term. Outnumbered, Republican congressmen abandoned any further attempt to enforce fair elections in the South.

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