Tilden as one of the most bitterly contested presidential elections in history. This week, the events of the presidential race have once again come under scrutiny. As Jason Slotkin reports for NPR , a group of Senate Republicans announced that they will vote to reject electors from states they consider disputed if Congress does not form a commission to investigate their claims of voter fraud.
Though these claims are unfounded , the lawmakers cite the election as precedent for their actions. The comparison drew criticism from scholars, including Penn State University political scientist Mary E. What sets the election of apart from the election of the most is that lawmakers had ample evidence of widespread voter repression against newly enfranchised African Americans in the post-Confederacy South—and therefore good reason to doubt the veracity of election results.
The election also has a fraught legacy: After months of bitter fighting, lawmakers made a fateful compromise that put Hayes in office by effectively ending Reconstruction , leading to a century of intensified racial segregation in the South.
Hayes, a lawyer, businessman and abolitionist, was a war hero who had fought in the U. Army during the Civil War. Johnson writes for the Miller Center of Public Affairs.
In the years since the Civil War ended in , Democrats, whose voter base resided in the former Confederacy, had been partly shut out of the political sphere; now, with Republican Ulysses S. Then he broke up the Canal Ring, a group of crooks and unscrupulous politicians.
This was just what the Democratic Party wanted as a contrast to the Republican Administration. The battle lines were clearly defined. Left to themselves, it is possible that Hayes and Tilden might have kept the election campaign free from distortion of facts and bitter personal invective, but it was not to be.
Tilden was subjected to a number of damaging of charges. There seemed to be no limit to the accusations: that he was a liar, swindler, perjurer, counterfeiter and even an absurd claim that he had been in league with the infamous Tweed.
In line with their basic campaign strategy, the Republicans alleged that Tilden had supported the Confederacy, the right of secession and the continuation of slavery. This all stemmed from his opposition to Lincoln in , but that was because he was a Democrat and feared a Republican victory would bring disaster to the United States. This feeling had no bearing on his fundamental loyalty to the Union, and once the war began he had urged the quick suppression of the Confederacy.
As election day approached, excitement grew with each rally and parade. It was, after all, the centenary of American independence. Even politically apathetic citizens came out for Hayes or Tilden with great enthusiasm. But on polling day, November 7th, calm prevailed as people made their way to voting centres. It was a stillness soon to be shattered. The 19 votes of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were had not yet been declared, but they were in the heartland of the Democratic South.
At the Republican National Headquarters, exhausted and dispirited party workers began to go home. Even the militantly Republican New York Tribune conceded the election. The New York Times , however, would do no more than admit a Democratic lead. Two days after the election, John C. Reid, the newspaper's influential editor, sat in the editorial room with two assistants.
Answer at once. If they urgently needed such information, then the Democrats were not certain of victory. In a matter of minutes he conceived a scheme to wrest the election away from Tilden and put Rutherford B. Hayes into the White House. Tilden had 18 more electoral votes than Hayes, but if the 19 from South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida were secured by the Republicans, Hayes would win by one vote, to Reid, accompanied by a Republican official, hurried into the night and awakened Zachariah Chandler, National Republican Chairman.
Can you hold your state? Answer immediately. The need for absolute honesty by the boards in exercising their power was self evident, but the personnel of some made comedy of that requirement. Of course, all of the boards were Republican and backed by Federal troops.
I am of the opinion that the Democrats have carried the country and elected Tilden. But they had to have Florida or Tilden would win by to During the actual election campaign, all three states witnessed a wide variety of attempts by both sides to cow voters and fraud was rampant. In one shameful tactic, the Democrats tried to distribute ballots with the Republican emblem prominently displayed over the names of Democratic candidates. It was worth the chance in the hope of picking up votes from illiterate voters.
These were tiny Republican tickets inside a regular ballot. A partisan clerk could slip them into the ballot box with little chance of being detected. In Louisiana, Tilden held a comfortable majority over Hayes. And in New Orleans, the Democratic elector with the smallest plurality had more than 6, votes over his Republican opponent. The canvassing board solved the problem in that state by simply throwing out 13, Tilden votes against only 2, for Hayes.
Then the electors for Hayes were certified. The prelude to the election in South Carolina was a bloody affair. Returns from three states Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina were in dispute, with both sides claiming victory. The U. Constitution provided no way of resolving the dispute, and now Congress would have to decide. As Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, and Republicans dominated in the Senate, the two sides compromised by creating a bipartisan electoral commission with five representatives, five senators and five Supreme Court justices.
Though the commission was supposed to be comprised of seven Republicans, seven Democrats and one independent, the independent—Supreme Court Justice David Davis— ended up dropping out when he was offered a Senate seat, and a Republican was named to replace him.
In the end, after a series of votes along strict party lines, the commission awarded Hayes all three of the contested states in early March , making him the winner by a single electoral vote. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast that appeared in the February 17, issue of the American political magazine Harper's Weekly. The cartoon is in response to the Compromise of The Republican-dominated Senate quickly ratified the committee's decision.
The Democrats in the House planned to filibuster, refusing to let the issue come to a vote. To ensure Hayes's election, Republican leaders negotiated an agreement with Southern Democrats in the House. The Republicans agreed to remove federal troops policing the South as soon as Hayes became president. Hayes also agreed to have at least one Southerner appointed to his cabinet. Southern Democrats welcomed this agreement and permitted Hayes to win all of the disputed Electoral votes.
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