Presidentian Transitions: 1876-The Most Controversial Election Ever
When the 2000 election was decided by the Supreme Court, many people believed that this was the most controversial election ever. But in 1876, the election was so close that it wasn't decided until shortly before inauguration day (which took place in March at that time.) The political rancor was so intense that the incoming president was referred to as "Ruther-fraud" or "His Fraudulency".
The election occurred as 16 years of Republican government was coming to an end (two elections won by Abraham Lincoln and two by Ulysses Grant), though Lincoln's second term was completed by Andrew Johnson, who was basically a Democrat. (Johnson had been elected Vice-President as Lincoln's running mate for what was called the "National Union Party", but he had been a Democrat all his life, though a loyal union man.) The Civil War, which ended eleven years earlier, was still on everyone's mind, and resentment was rampant in the south as Grant had used union troops to enforce his reconstruction policies.
When Grant opted not to run for a third term, the Republicans nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford Hayes on the seventh ballot after Maine Senator James G. Blaine failed to gain enough support for the nomination. It took the Democrats only two ballots to choose New York Governor Samuel Tilden as their candidate. Tilden had a reputation for honesty. He had prosecuted machine politicians in New York and sent legendary political boss William M. Tweed to jail. He ran as a reform candidate, contrasting his stellar record with the corruption and scandals of the Grant administration. Hayes was a not well known outside his home state of Ohio, where he had served two terms as a Congressman and then two terms as governor. He had served in the Civil War with distinction as colonel of the 23rd Ohio Regiment and was wounded several times. Republicans hoped that he would help them carry the crucial swing state of Ohio.
Both parties backed civil service reform and an end to Reconstruction. Both sides mounted mud-slinging campaigns, with Democratic attacks on Republican corruption being countered by Republicans raising the Civil War issue, a tactic ridiculed by Democrats who called it "waving the bloody shirt". Republicans chanted, "Not every Democrat was a rebel, but every rebel was a Democrat."
The Democratic Party used paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and the White League in southern states to actively suppress African-American Republican voter turnouts using violence and intimidation. An exception was in South Carolina, where the Democratic Party's gubernatorial candidate, former Confederate General Wade Hampton, said in a campaign speech on 16 September: "If there is a white man in this assembly who believes when I am elected governor that I will stand between him and the law, or grant to him any immunities or privileges that shall not be granted to the colored man, he is mistaken and I tell him so now."
Colorado was admitted to the Union as the 38th state on August 1, 1876. There was insufficient time to organize a presidential election in the new state, so Colorado's state legislature selected the state's electors. These electors gave their three votes to Hayes and the Republican Party. This was the last election in which any state chose electors through its state legislature.
Florida (with 4 electoral votes), Louisiana (with 8), and South Carolina (with 7), reported returns favored Tilden, but the election results in each state were disputed because of accusations of fraud and intimidation or violence against Republican voters. There was also an issue about the design of the ballots. At the time, parties would print ballots or "tickets" to enable voters to support them in the open ballots. To aid illiterate voters the parties would print symbols on the tickets. In this election, many Democratic ballots were printed with the the likeness of Abraham Lincoln on them. The Republican-dominated state electoral commissions subsequently disallowed a sufficient number of Democratic votes to award their electoral votes to Hayes.
In Oregon, the vote of a single elector was disputed. The statewide result clearly favored Hayes, but the state's Democratic governor, La Fayette Grover, claimed that one elector, former postmaster John Watts, was ineligible under Article II, Section 1, of the United States Constitution, since he was a "person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States." Grover substituted a Democratic elector in his place.
If all of the disputed votes were awarded to Hayes, this left him a majority of one in the Electoral College (by a vote of 185 to 184). The Democrats disputed the three states and the one Oregon elector. Anger flooded the country and threats were made that Hayes would never be inaugurated. In Columbus, Ohio, a gunshot was fired at Governor Hayes's residence as he sat down to dinner. Supporters marched to his home, calling for the "president". Hayes told the crowd, "it is impossible, at so early a time, to obtain the result." President Grant strengthened the military force in and around Washington.
The Constitution requires the President of the Senate to open "in presence of the Senate and House of Representatives" the electoral certificates for the formal count of the electoral votes following an election. A dispute arose as to whether this meant that the power to count the votes rested with with the President of the Senate, making the House and Senate being mere spectators (as Republicans claimed) or whether Congress should continue the practice followed since 1865, which was that no vote objected to should be counted except by the concurrence of both houses (as the Democrats claimed). The House had a solid Democratic majority so by throwing out the vote of one state, it could elect Tilden.
The nation faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis. On January 29, 1877, Congress passed a law creating a 15-member Electoral Commission to settle the result. Five members were selected from each house of Congress, and they were joined by five members of the Supreme Court. The majority party in each house named three members and the minority party two. As the Republicans controlled the Senate and the Democrats the House of Representatives, this yielded five Democratic and five Republican members of the Commission. Of the Supreme Court justices, two Republicans and two Democrats were chosen, with the fifth to be selected by these four.
The justices selected Justice David Davis, who was regarded to be an independent. But just as the Electoral Commission Bill was passing Congress, the legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the Senate. Democrats in the Illinois legislature believed that they had purchased Davis's support by voting for him. However, they had really messed things up. Instead of staying on the Supreme Court so that he could serve on the Commission, Davis promptly resigned as a Justice in order to take his Senate seat. All of the remaining available justices were Republicans, so the four justices on the commission chose Justice Joseph P. Bradley, who was considered the most impartial remaining member of the court.
The commission met on January 31, 1877. The cases of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina were considered. Justice Bradley joined the other seven Republican committee members in a series of 8–7 votes that gave all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving Hayes a 185–184 electoral vote victory. The commission adjourned on March 2.
Two days later, on March 4, 1976, Hayes was inaugurated as the 19th President of the United States. Democratic leaders had met and agreed to accept Hayes as president. But in return, they demanded the withdrawal of Federal troops from the southern states. A number of lesser concessions were also made.
Tilden accepted his defeat, stating: "I can retire to public life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office."
The election of 1876 was the last one held before the end of the Reconstruction era, and an end to the federal government seeking to protect the rights of African Americans in the South. It also put the southern states once again solidly in the column of the Democratic Party. None of the Southern states that experienced long periods of occupation by Federal troops was carried by a Republican again until the election of 1928 when Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia voted for Herbert Hoover rather than Democrat Al Smith, the first Roman Catholic to run for president.
The election occurred as 16 years of Republican government was coming to an end (two elections won by Abraham Lincoln and two by Ulysses Grant), though Lincoln's second term was completed by Andrew Johnson, who was basically a Democrat. (Johnson had been elected Vice-President as Lincoln's running mate for what was called the "National Union Party", but he had been a Democrat all his life, though a loyal union man.) The Civil War, which ended eleven years earlier, was still on everyone's mind, and resentment was rampant in the south as Grant had used union troops to enforce his reconstruction policies.
When Grant opted not to run for a third term, the Republicans nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford Hayes on the seventh ballot after Maine Senator James G. Blaine failed to gain enough support for the nomination. It took the Democrats only two ballots to choose New York Governor Samuel Tilden as their candidate. Tilden had a reputation for honesty. He had prosecuted machine politicians in New York and sent legendary political boss William M. Tweed to jail. He ran as a reform candidate, contrasting his stellar record with the corruption and scandals of the Grant administration. Hayes was a not well known outside his home state of Ohio, where he had served two terms as a Congressman and then two terms as governor. He had served in the Civil War with distinction as colonel of the 23rd Ohio Regiment and was wounded several times. Republicans hoped that he would help them carry the crucial swing state of Ohio.
Both parties backed civil service reform and an end to Reconstruction. Both sides mounted mud-slinging campaigns, with Democratic attacks on Republican corruption being countered by Republicans raising the Civil War issue, a tactic ridiculed by Democrats who called it "waving the bloody shirt". Republicans chanted, "Not every Democrat was a rebel, but every rebel was a Democrat."
The Democratic Party used paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and the White League in southern states to actively suppress African-American Republican voter turnouts using violence and intimidation. An exception was in South Carolina, where the Democratic Party's gubernatorial candidate, former Confederate General Wade Hampton, said in a campaign speech on 16 September: "If there is a white man in this assembly who believes when I am elected governor that I will stand between him and the law, or grant to him any immunities or privileges that shall not be granted to the colored man, he is mistaken and I tell him so now."
Colorado was admitted to the Union as the 38th state on August 1, 1876. There was insufficient time to organize a presidential election in the new state, so Colorado's state legislature selected the state's electors. These electors gave their three votes to Hayes and the Republican Party. This was the last election in which any state chose electors through its state legislature.
Florida (with 4 electoral votes), Louisiana (with 8), and South Carolina (with 7), reported returns favored Tilden, but the election results in each state were disputed because of accusations of fraud and intimidation or violence against Republican voters. There was also an issue about the design of the ballots. At the time, parties would print ballots or "tickets" to enable voters to support them in the open ballots. To aid illiterate voters the parties would print symbols on the tickets. In this election, many Democratic ballots were printed with the the likeness of Abraham Lincoln on them. The Republican-dominated state electoral commissions subsequently disallowed a sufficient number of Democratic votes to award their electoral votes to Hayes.
In Oregon, the vote of a single elector was disputed. The statewide result clearly favored Hayes, but the state's Democratic governor, La Fayette Grover, claimed that one elector, former postmaster John Watts, was ineligible under Article II, Section 1, of the United States Constitution, since he was a "person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States." Grover substituted a Democratic elector in his place.
If all of the disputed votes were awarded to Hayes, this left him a majority of one in the Electoral College (by a vote of 185 to 184). The Democrats disputed the three states and the one Oregon elector. Anger flooded the country and threats were made that Hayes would never be inaugurated. In Columbus, Ohio, a gunshot was fired at Governor Hayes's residence as he sat down to dinner. Supporters marched to his home, calling for the "president". Hayes told the crowd, "it is impossible, at so early a time, to obtain the result." President Grant strengthened the military force in and around Washington.
The Constitution requires the President of the Senate to open "in presence of the Senate and House of Representatives" the electoral certificates for the formal count of the electoral votes following an election. A dispute arose as to whether this meant that the power to count the votes rested with with the President of the Senate, making the House and Senate being mere spectators (as Republicans claimed) or whether Congress should continue the practice followed since 1865, which was that no vote objected to should be counted except by the concurrence of both houses (as the Democrats claimed). The House had a solid Democratic majority so by throwing out the vote of one state, it could elect Tilden.
The nation faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis. On January 29, 1877, Congress passed a law creating a 15-member Electoral Commission to settle the result. Five members were selected from each house of Congress, and they were joined by five members of the Supreme Court. The majority party in each house named three members and the minority party two. As the Republicans controlled the Senate and the Democrats the House of Representatives, this yielded five Democratic and five Republican members of the Commission. Of the Supreme Court justices, two Republicans and two Democrats were chosen, with the fifth to be selected by these four.
The justices selected Justice David Davis, who was regarded to be an independent. But just as the Electoral Commission Bill was passing Congress, the legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the Senate. Democrats in the Illinois legislature believed that they had purchased Davis's support by voting for him. However, they had really messed things up. Instead of staying on the Supreme Court so that he could serve on the Commission, Davis promptly resigned as a Justice in order to take his Senate seat. All of the remaining available justices were Republicans, so the four justices on the commission chose Justice Joseph P. Bradley, who was considered the most impartial remaining member of the court.
The commission met on January 31, 1877. The cases of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina were considered. Justice Bradley joined the other seven Republican committee members in a series of 8–7 votes that gave all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving Hayes a 185–184 electoral vote victory. The commission adjourned on March 2.
Two days later, on March 4, 1976, Hayes was inaugurated as the 19th President of the United States. Democratic leaders had met and agreed to accept Hayes as president. But in return, they demanded the withdrawal of Federal troops from the southern states. A number of lesser concessions were also made.
Tilden accepted his defeat, stating: "I can retire to public life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office."
The election of 1876 was the last one held before the end of the Reconstruction era, and an end to the federal government seeking to protect the rights of African Americans in the South. It also put the southern states once again solidly in the column of the Democratic Party. None of the Southern states that experienced long periods of occupation by Federal troops was carried by a Republican again until the election of 1928 when Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia voted for Herbert Hoover rather than Democrat Al Smith, the first Roman Catholic to run for president.