I was joined en route by Mr.Lamar and General Walthal, of Mississippi, and together we arrived in the Crescent City Friday morning.
It has since transpired that the Republicans were promptly advised by the Western Union Telegraph Company of all that had passed over its wires, my dispatches to Mr.Tilden being read in Republican headquarters at least as soon as they reached Gramercy Park.
Mr.Tilden did not adopt the plan of a direct proposal to Mr.Hayes.
Instead he chose a body of Democrats to go to the "seat of war." But before any of them had arrived General Grant, the actual President, anticipating what was about to happen, appointed a body of Republicans for the like purpose, and the advance guard of these appeared on the scene the following Monday.
Within a week the St.Charles Hotel might have been mistaken for a caravansary of the national capital.

Among the Republicans were John Sherman, Stanley Matthews, Garfield, Evarts, Logan, Kelley, Stoughton, and many others.

Among the Democrats, besides Lamar, Walthal and myself, came Lyman Trumbull, Samuel J.Randall, William R.Morrison, McDonald, of Indiana, and many others.
A certain degree of personal intimacy existed between the members of the two groups, and the "entente" was quite as unrestrained as might have existed between rival athletic teams.

A Kentucky friend sent me a demijohn of what was represented as very old Bourbon, and I divided it with "our friends the enemy." New Orleans was new to most of the "visiting statesmen," and we attended the places of amusement, lived in the restaurants, and saw the sights as if we had been tourists in a foreign land and not partisans charged with the business of adjusting a Presidential election from implacable points of view.
My own relations were especially friendly with John Sherman and James A.Garfield, a colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means, and with Stanley Matthews, a near kinsman by marriage, who had stood as an elder brother to me from my childhood.
Corruption was in the air.

That the Returning Board was for sale and could be bought was the universal impression.