Its resolution involved negotiations between the Republicans and Democrats, resulting in the Compromise of . Following Lincoln's murder a month into his second term, his vice president, Andrew Johnson took office. 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 1877, making him the winner by a single electoral vote. Still, voter turnout on November 7, 1876, remains the highest ever for a presidential election 82% of eligible citizens cast a ballot. On Nov. 7, 1876, Tilden received over 250,000 more votes than Hayes . This stone has a mysterious past beyond British coronations, Ultimate Italy: 14 ways to see the country in a new light, 6 unforgettable Italy hotels, from Lake Como to Rome, A taste of Rioja, from crispy croquettas to piquillo peppers, Trek through this stunning European wilderness, Land of the lemurs: the race to save Madagascar's sacred forests, Photograph courtesy the Library of Congress. Republicans chanted, "Not every Democrat was a rebel, but every rebel was a Democrat. But Grant's administration and the Republicans generally had been beset by scandals and allegations of corruption, such as the Crdit Mobilier Scandal and the Whiskey Ring. Associated Press. The Democratic strategy for victory in the South was highly reliant on paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and the White League. a. existential b. feminist c. gestalt d. psychoanalytic. Threats were even muttered that Hayes would never be inaugurated. Updated: November 27, 2019 | Original: March 17, 2011. Create Your Free Account or Sign In to Read the Full Story. Why did the Populists lose the presidential election of 1896? HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. Facing an unprecedented constitutional crisis, the Congress passed a law on January 29, 1877, to form a 15-member Electoral Commission, which would settle the result. Why didn't James Weaver win the presidential election of 1892? Create an account to read the full story and get unlimited access to hundreds of Nat Geo articles. This is the only time both major party nominees were incumbent US governors. [25], Ultimately, all three of Oregon's votes were awarded to Hayes, who had a majority of one in the Electoral College. The question of who should have been awarded those electoral votes is the source of the continued controversy. Running on the Democratic ticket was Tilden, an Ivy League graduate who appealed to voters with a successful anti-corruption track record during his tenure as New Yorks governor. Why did the presidential election of 1876 anger democrats? Porter, Kirk H. and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds. Because the candidates differed little in their support of conservative values and civil . They. But. He had captured 51.5 percent of the popular vote to Hayess 48 percent, a margin of about 250,000 votes. Corrections? Many southern whites had resorted to intimidation and violence to keep blacks from voting and restore white supremacy in the region. Here are five key things to know about the presidential election of 1876. Why was the presidential election of 1888 noteworthy? At the same time, key decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court struck at the protections afforded by Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments and legislation. Why was the election of 1800 a turning point in American history? A presidential election had been held in November, and the result was contested. What sets the election of 1876 apart from the election of 2020 the most is that lawmakers had ample evidence of widespread voter repression against newly enfranchised African Americans in the post-Confederacy Southand therefore good reason to doubt the veracity of election results. All rights reserved. By the 1870s, support was waning for the racially egalitarian policies of Reconstruction, a series of laws put in place after the Civil War to protect the rights of African Americans, especially in the South. in. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Why was the presidential election of 1860 really two separate presidential elections? A political cartoon by Thomas Nast that appeared in the February 17, 1877 issue of the American political magazine Harper's Weekly. Why was the presidential election of 1972 important? The returns accepted by the Commission put Hayes's margin of victory in South Carolina at 889 votes, the second-closest popular vote margin in a decisive state in U.S. history, after the election of 2000, which was decided by 537 votes in Florida. Grant nonetheless sent a letter to the convention imploring them to nominate Fish, but the letter was misplaced and never read to the convention. The Republicans held that the power to count the votes lay with the President of the Senate, with the House and Senate being mere spectators. It was one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history. Much of the party's support. ", Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), https://www.history.com/news/reconstruction-1876-election-rutherford-hayes, How the 1876 Election Tested the Constitution and Effectively Ended Reconstruction. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The Greenback ticket did not have a major impact on the election's outcome by attracting slightly under one percent of the popular vote, Cooper nonetheless had the strongest performance of any third-party presidential candidate since John Bell in 1860. The Democrats insisted that Congress should continue the practice followed since 1865: no vote objected to should be counted except by the concurrence of both houses. Heres a closer look at its events and legacy, On election night, Republican presidential candidate and Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes was losing so badly that he prepared his concession speech before turning in for the night. Using the strategy of the Mississippi Plan, the groups actively suppressed both Black and White Republican voter turnouts by disrupting meetings and rallies and even using violence and intimidation. Tilden won more than 400 votes on the first ballot and the presidential nomination by a landslide on the second. A new discovery raises a mystery. Upon his defeat, Tilden said, "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.". Eminent counsel appeared for each side, and there were double sets of returns from every one of the states named. Hayes had served in the Civil War with distinction as colonel of the 23rd Ohio Regiment and was wounded several times, which made him marketable to veterans. Hayes would also have to agree to name a leading southerner to his cabinet and to support federal aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad, a planned transcontinental line via a southern route. In addition, accusations of corruption within the administration of Ulysses S. Grant and an economic depression had heightened discontent with the Republican Party, which had been in the White House since 1861. In Columbus, Ohio, a shot was fired at Hayes's residence as he sat down to dinner. The Democratic platform pledged to replace the corruption of the Grant administration with honest, efficient government and to end "the rapacity of carpetbag tyrannies" in the South. Why were the issues of the presidential election of 1828 important? Why did Northern Republican support for Reconstruction diminish in the 1870's? You can specify conditions of storing and accessing cookies in your browser. For their part, white Southern Democrats did not honor their pledge to uphold the rights of Black citizens, but moved quickly to reverse as many of Reconstructions policies as possible. Why was the 1968 election a turning point in U.S. political history? Only one ancient account mentions the existence of Xerxes Canal, long thought to be a tall tale. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Why did the Democrats win the presidential election of 1856? The Compromise of 1877 was an informal agreement between southern Democrats and allies of the Republican Rutherford Hayes to settle the result of the 1876 presidential election and marked the end of the Reconstruction era. The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes victory on the condition that Republicans withdraw all federal troops from the South, thus consolidating Democratic control over the region. Why did Northern Republican support for Reconstruction diminish in the 1870s? | READ MORE. It also called for treaty protection for naturalized United States citizens visiting their homelands, restrictions on Asian immigration, tariff reform, and opposition to land grants for railroads. The main thing Democrats did with their new control of the House, starting in December 1875, was to investigate every department of the . rebecca is likely exp Add an answer or comment Log in or sign up first. They seized the uncertainty of the moment, encouraging Republican leaders in the three states to stall, and argued that if black voters hadnt been intimidated away from the pollsand if voter fraud hadnt been as rampantHayes would have won the contested states. In 1876, a decade after the U.S. Civil War, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes competed against Democrat Samuel Tilden in a bitterly contested presidential election. Soon after his inauguration, Hayes made good on his promise, ordering federal troops to withdraw from Louisiana and South Carolina, where they had been protecting Republican claimants to the governorships in those states. Though these claims are unfounded, the lawmakers cite the 1876 election as precedent for their actions. Why did Henry Clay lose the presidential election of 1844? The Democratic Party's failure to nominate its own ticket in the previous presidential election, in which they had instead endorsed the Liberal Republican candidacy of Horace Greeley, had resulted in much debate about the party's viability. But archaeology is confirming that Persia's engineering triumph was real. Hayes, a lawyer, businessman and abolitionist, was a war hero who had fought in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. 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. When Davis refused to serve, the moderate Republican Justice Joseph Bradley was chosen to replace him. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan and Matt Mullen. But Tilden had amassed only 184 electoral votesone shy of the number needed to defeat his Republican opponent, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. Tilden needed just one more vote in the electoral college to reach the 185 electoral votes necessary for the presidency. Ultimately, Congress. Made by History About Made by History and Contact Americans worry about 2020 being another 2000, but the real worry is another 1876 An unclear outcome in deeply polarized times could be. This week, the events of the 1876 presidential race have once again come under scrutiny. Why was the presidential election of 1840 considered modern? She is also a freelance journalist based in Chicago whose work has appeared in Wired, Washingtonian, the Boston Globe, South Bend Tribune, the New York Times and more. But the election process in Southern states was rife with voter fraudon the part of both partiesand marked by violent voter suppression against black Americans. All rights reserved. The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate shall, in presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the [electoral] certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." [2][3] Tilden's 50.9% is the largest share of the popular vote received by a candidate that was not elected to the presidency. Immediately after the presidential election of 1876, it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolinathe only three. That selection proved decisive. On Election Day that November, the Democrats appeared to come out on top, winning the swing states of Connecticut, Indiana, New York and New Jersey. This action marked the effective end of the Reconstruction era, and began a period of solid Democratic control in the South. Why was the presidential election of 1944 significant? Still, the Republicans continued their strong commitment to the civil rights of emancipated slaves, their party platform stating that the permanent pacification of the Southern section of the Union and the complete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment of all their rights, are duties to which the Republican party is sacredly pledged. It further criticized the Democratic Party for its lack of commitment to civil rights, arguing that the party counts, as its chief hope of success, upon the electoral vote of a united South, secured through the efforts of those who were recently arrayed against the nation and we invoke the earnest attention of the country to the grave truth, that a success thus achieved would reopen sectional strife and imperil national honor and human rights.. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. Philanthropist Peter Cooper from New York, The Greenback Party had been organized by agricultural interests in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1874 to urge the federal government to inflate the economy through the mass issuance of paper money called greenbacks. The nominations The presidential campaign of 1896 was one of the most exciting in American history. In fact, even as the electoral commission deliberated, national party leaders had been meeting in secret to hash out what would become known as the Compromise of 1877. The next time those two states voted against the Democrats was their support of the "Dixiecrat" candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948. Grant's inner circle advised him to go for a third term and he almost did so, but on December 15, 1875, the House, by a sweeping 233-18 vote, passed a resolution declaring that the two-term tradition was to prevent a dictatorship. 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. [24] The Republican-dominated state electoral commissions subsequently rejected enough Democratic votes to award their electoral votes to Hayes. The 1876 Democratic National Convention nominated Governor Tilden of New York on the second ballot. Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893), the 19th president of the United States, won a controversial and fiercely disputed election against Samuel Tilden. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Why did the South secede following the presidential election of 1860? Although 1876 marked the last competitive two-party election in the South before the Democratic dominance of the South until 1948 and that to of the Border States until 1896, it was also the last presidential election (as of 2020) in which the Democrats won the wartime Unionist Mitchell County, North Carolina;[28] Wayne County, Tennessee; Henderson County, Tennessee; and Lewis County, Kentucky. [25] Bradley then joined the other seven Republican committee members in a series of 87 votes that gave all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, which gave Hayes a 185184 electoral vote victory. Why did the Democrats lose the presidential election of 1904? As the 1876 presidential election approached, the Democrats chose Governor Samuel B. Tilden of New York as their candidate, while the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio. Furious Democrats refused to accept the ruling and threatened a filibuster. The results of the U.S. presidential election of 1876 were a mess. The 1876 election occurred in the midst of an economic depression in the United States and continuing sectional animosity, particularly in the South, where opposition to federal occupation and Reconstruction had grown. It was the second of five U.S. presidential elections in which the winner did not win a plurality of the national popular vote. How this animal can survive is a mystery. With a Republican-controlled Senate, a Democrat-controlled House and no clear presidential winner, Congress was thrown into chaos. Each of the disputed state election cases (Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina) was respectively submitted to the commission by Congress. In South Carolina, the election had been marred by bloodshed on both sides of the party line. A severe economic depression followed the Panic of 1873, and scandals in the Grant administration had tarnished the party's reputation. However, Blaine was unable to win a majority at the 1876 Republican National Convention, which settled on Governor Hayes of Ohio as a compromise candidate. In the months during and preceding the election, mobs known as red shirts patrolled voting stations and threatened, bribed and murdered black voters. Meanwhile, in Oregon, the vote of a single elector was disputed. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 (or Compromise of 1876), Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina became Democratic once again, effectively bringing an end to the Reconstruction era. In 1876, "the elections in three statesFlorida, Louisiana, and South Carolinawere alleged to have been conducted illegally," the senators write in a statement.
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