Vote Buying Allegations
- When
- 1895
- Where
- Published accusations concerning the 1888 convention
Years after the convention, John Sherman accused Russell A. Alger of purchasing Southern delegate votes; Alger denied the charge in the New York Times.
Nearly a decade after the convention, Ohio candidate John Sherman asserted in his 1895 two-volume book "Recollections" that he had conclusive proof that the friends of Michigan millionaire Russell A. Alger had substantially purchased the votes of many Southern delegates instructed to vote for Sherman. Alger submitted correspondence to the New York Times, which published an 1888 letter written after the convention in which Sherman stated, "if you bought some [votes], according to universal usage, surely I don't blame you." In the same article, Alger insisted that neither he nor his friends bought a single vote. The article also quoted delegate James Lewis, who claimed that "the colored delegates of the South will unite on a Union soldier in preference" to a civilian.
Sources
- 1888 Republican National Convention Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-21
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.