Depressing! The compromise ended reconstrucdtion?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2018 9:03 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] 1876 presidential election: Hayes v Tilden
I just began an interesting book on the 1876 presidential race between
Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden. It was the precursor to George Bush v
Al Gore.
To any who doubt that history repeats itself, just read the account I've
reprinted from Wikipedia.
******
The United States presidential election of 1876 was the 23rd quadrennial
presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1876. It was one of the
most contentious and controversial presidential elections in American history,
and is known for being the catalyst for the end of Reconstruction.
Republican
nominee
Rutherford B. Hayes
faced
Democrat
Samuel Tilden.
After a controversial post-election process, Hayes was declared the winner.
After President
Ulysses S. Grant
declined to seek a third term despite previously being expected to do so,
Congressman James G. Blaine emerged as the front-runner for the Republican
nomination. 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. The
1876 Democratic National Convention
nominated Governor Tilden of New York on the second ballot.
The results of the election remain among the most disputed ever, although it is
not disputed that Tilden outpolled Hayes in the popular vote. After a first
count of votes, Tilden won 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, with 20 votes
from four states unresolved. In the case of Florida, Louisiana, and South
Carolina, each party reported its candidate had won the state, while in Oregon
one elector was replaced after being declared illegal for being an "elected or
appointed official". The question of who should have been awarded these
electoral votes is the source of the continued controversy. An informal deal
was struck to resolve the
dispute: the
Compromise of 1877,
which awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes. In return for the Democrats'
acquiescence to Hayes's election, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal
troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. The Compromise effectively ceded
power in the Southern states to the Democratic Redeemers, who proceeded to
disenfranchise black voters in subsequent years.
The 1876 election is one of five presidential elections in which the person who
won the most popular votes did not win the election, and the only such election
in which the popular vote winner received a majority (rather than a plurality)
of the popular vote. To date, it remains the election that recorded the
smallest electoral vote victory
(185–184) and the election that yielded the highest voter turnout of the
eligible voting age population in American history, at 81.8%.