Mr. Roy Morris Jr.

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  www.booknotes.org/Transcript?ProgramID=1722 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/10/2002    Last Visited: 11/29/2003  

  Roy Morris, Jr.
  ...
  by Roy Morris, Jr.
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  BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Roy Morris, Jr., what was the fraud of the century?
  
  ROY MORRIS, JR., AUTHOR, "FRAUD OF THE CENTURY": The fraud of the century, according to the Democratic Party, was the theft of the 1876 presidential election from Samuel J. Tilden, given to Rutherford B. Hayes.
  
  MORRIS: Who are these pictures of here on the cover?I guess on the left, it`s Rutherford B. Hayes.
  
  MORRIS: Rutherford B. Hayes on the left and Samuel Tilden on the right.
  
  LAMB: And you say "and the Stolen Election of 1876."Who stole it?
  
  MORRIS: The -- well, that`s -- there`s a debate about that.To the Democrats, the Republicans stole the election.The Republicans said then and still -- I mean, historians say today -- were merely stealing back what the Democrats had stolen from them first.
  
  LAMB: Which was what?
  
  MORRIS: Which was the election itself, but primarily the election in the southern states, in which Republicans contended that the black voters were intimidated and kept away from the polls, and so that Tilden had unfairly won an election that he would have lost otherwise.
  
  LAMB: You say on your first page of the introduction of your book, "But if the 2000 election was something of a farce" -- and I want to ask you about that -- "the 1876 election was nothing less than a tragedy."
  
  Explain the farce part of that first.
  
  MORRIS: Well, we all remember the 2000 election, the butterfly ballots and the hanging chads and the election officials looking through microscopes at ballots.The whole media build-up was very much farcical, in a way, not in the outcome but in the transpiring.1876, I think, was more of a tragedy, particularly for the four million-plus black citizens of the South who, as an at least indirect result of this election, were put back into a condition of at least involuntary segregation for the next 90-plus years.
  
  LAMB: How did you get into this topic?
  
  MORRIS: Many people have asked if I started this book after the 2000 election on -- strictly from that point of view, but actually, I had done an article on this election back in the mid-`80s for "American History Illustrated" magazine.
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  MORRIS: 1876 was the last year of Ulysses S. Grant`s second term.It was also the centennial year in American history, and there were celebrations going on throughout the year, particularly in Philadelphia, where the centennial exhibition was based.
  
  LAMB: What kind of shape was the country in in 1876?
  
  MORRIS: The country was not in very good shape.There had been a succession of scandals, especially in Grant`s second term.
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  MORRIS: Reconstruction, of course, was a process that had been under way since the end of the Civil War -- in fact, a little bit before the end of the Civil War it started -- in which the former Confederate states, in order to get back -- admitted into the Union again had to revise their state governments, approve the constitutional amendments, the 13th, 14th and later 15th amendments, giving equal citizenship and voting rights to black citizens.
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  MORRIS: There were 38 states then, Colorado being the 38th -- 38th one admitted.And in fact, it was admitted just prior to the election.At the time, no one thought that -- I think Colorado had three electoral votes -- that it would be an important state one way or the other.In fact, Colorado`s territorial representative had been a Democrat, and he said -- he guaranteed that the state would go Democratic in the election, so the Democrats, who controlled the House of Representatives in 1876, agreed to let Colorado enter the union.Of course, they were badly surprised because on election day, Colorado, in fact, had gone Republican.
  
  LAMB: Where -- before we go any farther with the book itself, where do you live?
  
  MORRIS: I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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  MORRIS: That`s what I do full-time now.
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  MORRIS: Who reads it?
  
  LAMB: Yes.What kind of person reads it?How big a circulation does it have?
  
  MORRIS: It has a circulation of about -- if you count everything, about 80,000 to 100,000 people.
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  MORRIS: Coming from Chattanooga, as I do, I`ve had a lifelong interest in Civil War history.In fact, my -- all four of my books, to one degree or another, deal with elements of the Civil War.
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  MORRIS: Phil Sheridan was a Union general, ended the war a major general, was -- started out as an infantry commander and ended up by being Ulysses S. Grant`s best cavalry commander.
  
  LAMB: And where was he during the 1876 election?
  
  MORRIS: Sheridan in 1876 -- I`m not sure if he had -- if he had gone back -- his headquarters were in Chicago then.A year or so -- a year or two earlier, he had been very much involved in the previous mid-term elections in Louisiana when there was also a dispute over who had won the -- who had won the election between the governors.There were two governors competing.After the election, the Democrats and the Republicans both claimed the House, the statehouse.And so Sheridan went down to Louisiana, to New Orleans, to take charge of the situation, which, being a -- being a cavalry commander, he did in the most forceful way possible, which was to have his troops evict the Democratic members of the Louisiana legislature and replace them with the Republican members in the disputed seats that they were arguing about.
  
  LAMB: Ambrose Bierce you wrote a book about?What`s his claim to fame?
  
  MORRIS: Ambrose Bierce is primarily remembered today for two things.One is a short story he wrote called "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," which many people read either in high school or college or graduate school or all the above.It`s a story in which a man is being -- is being hanged as a Confederate spy during the Civil War, and he`s being hanged from a bridge.And the rope breaks, and he escapes through a series of misadventures, only to find out at the end of the story that it was all a momentary daydream, and he`s then hanged for real.Bierce also, after the Civil War, went to San Francisco, where he was a columnist for many years.And he wrote what is probably his best known work now is "The Devil`s Dictionary," which gives short and ironic definitions to many words.
  
  LAMB: Was he alive during this 1876 election?
  
  MORRIS: He was.He was a columnist in California then.
  
  LAMB: Any impact on the election at all?
  
  MORRIS: He had a couple things to say about it.He -- I think -- I say in the book that he said there was -- there was enough to Lincoln to kill and enough of Grant to kick but that there wasn`t enough of Rutherford B. Hayes to even be a magic lantern image.But he (UNINTELLIGIBLE) extended, I think he said, from the dark side of Senator John Sherman to the confines of space, but you couldn`t find him.
  
  LAMB: And you wrote a book about Walt Whitman.Why?
  
  MORRIS: Walt Whitman has always been an interest of mine.My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in English, so...
  
  LAMB: Where?
  
  MORRIS: University of Tennessee.
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  MORRIS: I think about eight-and-a-half million people voted, maybe.
  
  LAMB: You said there were 38 states.How many electoral votes were there?
  
  MORRIS: Three hundred and sixty-nine total.
  
  LAMB: And after the dust settled -- I know there`s a lot to talk about, how we got there, but after the dust settled, how many electoral votes did Rutherford B. Hayes have and how many did Samuel Tilden have?
  
  MORRIS: At the very end or...
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  MORRIS: At the very end, Rutherford B. Hayes had 185 electoral votes, Samuel Tilden had 184.It`s the only time in American history that an election`s been decided by one electoral vote.
  
  LAMB: Thirty-eight states.How many states, can you remember, went to Hayes and how many went to Tilden?
  
  MORRIS: I believe, off the top of my head, that 20 went to Hayes and 18 went to Tilden.But there again, the -- depends on -- on your interpretation of how the Southern states went.
  
  LAMB: I want to jump in the middle of this, before we get the explanation on how it happened, to the scene on the floor of either the House or the Senate, where members had guns strapped to their sides and they were -- I think you even write they -- some of them were up on their chairs with the guns drawn, at some points.What was that all about?
  
  MORRIS: This was during the last day of debate, after the electoral commission had decided and after the vote -- the electoral votes were all in, and they were waiting to announce the winner of the election.
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  MORRIS: Nobody was shot, but there were a lot of -- a lot of hot tempers that day.
  
  LAMB: Did you research at all how -- why they were allowed to carry guns onto the floor?
  
  MORRIS: No, I didn`t.
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  MORRIS: That`s an early photograph of Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic nominee for president in 1876.
  
  LAMB: Tell us something about him.

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  au55.mjpresse.com/lettertoayoungpoet.html - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/3/2007    Last Visited: 3/3/2007  

  In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest accounting of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War Years and an historically invaluable examination of the capriciously crooked and the wildly wealthy.

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  "'Refran'" by 'Jamie Malanowski' - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/30/2004    Last Visited: 3/30/2004  

  by Roy Morris Jr.Simon & Schuster, $27.00
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  Morris does a fine job describing all these shenanigans, although in the presence of such naked avarice and hypocrisy, one yearns a bit for the touch of a black humorist instead of an evenhanded historian.Morris's tale is hobbled by the absence of a hero.

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  Arts & Humanities-Sample-History-Am - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/1/2000    Last Visited: 6/6/2009  

  ROY MORRIS, Jr.
  ...
  In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest accounting of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War Years and an historically invaluable examination of the Union's treatment of its sick and wounded.

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  Bierce Communication Board Archive - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/13/2002    Last Visited: 6/23/2009  

  This is Roy Morris Jr.
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  I received some emails, including a virulently angry one [from Bierce biographer Roy Morris Jr.] calling me a jackass, questioning the captions.
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  But the bio that focuses most heavily on Bierce's Civil War experiences is also the most recent: ALONE IN BAD COMPANY by Roy Morris, Jr., Crown 1995.
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  And about the Roy Morris biography of Bierce: Morris never concludes that Bierce somehow made his way to the Grand Canyon to commit suicide.
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  Half-heartedly, Roy Morris concludes that Bierce: "...probably did not die in Mexico.
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  As opposed to Morris, I would conclude that Bierce DID die in Mexico -- and more than that no one can say.

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  Bierce Communication Board Archive - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/26/2002    Last Visited: 8/12/2003  

  This is Roy Morris Jr.
  ...
  I received some emails, including a virulently angry one [from Bierce biographer Roy Morris Jr.] calling me a jackass, questioning the captions.
  ...
  But the bio that focuses most heavily on Bierce's Civil War experiences is also the most recent: ALONE IN BAD COMPANY by Roy Morris, Jr., Crown 1995.
  ...
  And about the Roy Morris biography of Bierce: Morris never concludes that Bierce somehow made his way to the Grand Canyon to commit suicide.
  ...
  Half-heartedly, Roy Morris concludes that Bierce: "...probably did not die in Mexico.
  ...
  As opposed to Morris, I would conclude that Bierce DID die in Mexico -- and more than that no one can say.

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  Blacktown RSL • Second Ave, Blacktown NSW - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/10/2007    Last Visited: 4/23/2007  

  A tribute must be made to Secretary-Manager Roy Morris and his staff for their part in this great achievement.

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  Book Review: The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/3/2001    Last Visited: 8/3/2001  

  Book Review : The Better Angel : Walt Whitman in the Civil War ( by Roy Morris , Jr. ) : ACW
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  The Better Angel : Walt Whitman in the Civil War , by Roy Morris , Jr. , Oxford University Press , New York , 2000 , $25
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  In The Better Angel : Walt Whitman in the Civil War ( Oxford University Press , New York , 2000 , $25 ) , biographer Roy Morris , Jr. , has produced a sensitive and well-written work that mirrors both the artistic skill and the sensitivity of America's greatest poet during the years of our nation's darkest conflict.
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  By concentrating on a relatively short period of Whitman's life , Morris allows us to examine in detail a time to which other Whitman biographers have only given cursory attention.Whitman's best years as a writer were already past when the Civil War began , but his best years as a human being had just begun.The first edition of his most famous work , Leaves of Grass , had been published more than half a decade earlier.
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  The Civil War saved Walt Whitman , Morris writes.
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  As Morris eloquently points out , it is not difficult to understand why Whitman felt that way.
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  Morris effectively demonstrates to the reader the many personal crises Whitman faced as he drank away his life among notorious bohemian friends.
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  The Better Angel , like Morris' two previous biographies , matches words to subject with a careful eye.Sheridan : The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan , Morris' first work , was a solid and consistent biography about a solid and consistent soldier.
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  As Morris concludes in his introduction , If [ Whitman ] was not literally an angel--and he never claimed he was--he was a more than passable substitute..
  
  For all his clear admiration of Whitman as a man , however , Morris does not sugarcoat the poet's unenlightened racial views.
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  Morris also does a good job of describing Whitman's other defining characteristic : his homosexuality.

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  Booknotes - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/6/2003    Last Visited: 7/14/2009  

  by Roy Morris, Jr.
  ...
  In this major work of popular history and scholarship, acclaimed historian and biographer Roy Morris, Jr., tells the extraordinary story of how, in America's centennial year, the presidency was stolen, the Civil War was almost reignited, and black Americans were consigned to nearly ninety years of legalized segregation in the South.
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  Morris brings to life all the colorful personalities and high drama of this most remarkable -- and largely forgotten -- election. He presents vivid portraits of the bachelor lawyer Tilden, a wealthy New York sophisticate whose passion for clean government propelled him to the very brink of the presidency, and of Hayes, a family man whose midwestern simplicity masked a cunning political mind. We travel to Philadelphia, where the Centennial Exhibition celebrated America's industrial might and democratic ideals, and to the nation's heartland, where Republicans waged a cynical but effective "bloody shirt" campaign to tar the Demo-crats, once again, as the party of disunion and rebellion.
  
  Morris dramatically recreates the suspenseful events of election night, when both candidates went to bed believing Tilden had won, and a one-legged former Union army general, "Devil Dan" Sickles, stumped into Republican headquarters and hastily improvised a devious plan to subvert the election in the three disputed southern states.

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  Bush, Gore election: We’d been there... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/1/2003    Last Visited: 4/1/2003  

  By Roy Morris Jr.
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  Taking part of that latter line for the title of his new book, Roy Morris, Jr. re-examines the disputed and dishonest presidential election of 1876.There is no doubt that this election and how it was ultimately decided changed the direction of the country, especially in the South.It led to an immense struggle over civil rights, fairness in elections and the meaning of federalism (the latter still largely unresolved).Morris, a Civil War historian who wrote a splendid book on the poet Walt Whitman, tries to unravel this 19th century ball of confusion.
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  Morris concludes it was won by the Democratic leaders of the South, despite the elevation of Republican candidate, Hayes.
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  Morris's description of this sad tale gets into the personalities of the major figures, including the enigmatic Tilden, who according to Morris, "acted nobly and decisively" when it became clear Hayes would ultimately prevail - "an act of supreme patriotism."
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  Unlike most stories of this tumultuous time, Morris does not leave the reader with the feeling that each side, more or less, contributed to a dubious yet ultimately practical conclusion."Many wrongs do not make one right," he notes.

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