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1876.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 1283
possession of the polls, can be true. The Reform Party polled
nearly 22,000 votes, but 3,000 less than their vote at the
Mayoralty election, which was an unusually quiet election.
To have polled such a vote—larger by 5,000 than the vote of
the Republican Party at the last Presidential election—in
face of the alleged combination of police and ruffians, to ex-
clude them from the polls, is simply impossible.
But this charge, that the polls were taken possession of by
ruffians, with the connivance of the police, is disproved by
the direct testimony of the witnesses examined on the part of
the contestants in all of the districts, and in all parts of the
city. So far from the fact being as alleged, the proof is uni-
form that the access to the window was kept open for all
voters during the entire day.
For the views of your Committee on the charges against
the Police Board, we refer to our report in the matter of the
investigation of their conduct, herewith submitted.
It was sought by some witnesses to establish a connivance
on the part of the police officers at a general condition of vio-
lence and disorder. In the lew instances where specific neg-
lect of duty by particular officers, was offered in evidence ;
the proof was weak in the extreme, and the charges in each
case fully rebutted by counter testimony. But if every case
had been fully and completely proven, the number is so small
the cases themselves so clearly were individual wrongs, if any
wrong were done; that it would be simply absurd to claim
that any connivance of the police force at a general condition
ot disorder had been shown by the proof.
So far from this, the proof of the contestants shows active
and strenuous effort on the part of the officers in every case
where serious disorder existed, as in certain precincts of the
5th, 15th and 18th wards, where but for their efforts to sup-
press disorder, many lives would have bean lost by collisions
between excited bodies of white men and negroes.
Your Committee cannot avoid the conclusion that so much
of the charge preferred as implicates the police authorities
and officers in encouraging or conniving at the alleged
condition of disorder is not only unsustained by proof, but.is
clearly shown by the testimony to be a cruel slander upon men
faithfully seeking to perform an arduous duty under circum-
stances of difficulty.
Nor does the proof disclose the existence of any general
disorder on the day of election. All of the witnesses agree
that voting continued throughout the day, without inter-
ruption at all of the polling places. No witness pretends
that the police ever lost or abandoned the control of the ac-
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