Historical Verdict on the 1876 Election

In the 140 years that have passed since that election, with contemporary passions given time to die down, have historians and scholars arrived at a consensus as to who should have been awarded the 20* disputed electoral votes (and by extension, the presidency)?

*Hayes needed all 20 to win, so if there’s a consensus that even 1 of them rightfully belonged to Tilden, then he would have been the rightful winner.

If we consider only the votes legally cast and deposited in ballot boxes as of Election Night 1876, there is little doubt that Tilden carried (at a minimum) Louisiana and Florida, and with them the election.

However, there is no doubt whatsoever that Democrats achieved that result, and carried Alabama and Mississippi as well, only through sickening, brutal, wholesale massacre and intimidation of African American would-be voters.

Democrats of the time were quite open about their methods. “We shall carry the next election,” Democratic candidate for Governor of Louisiana John McEnery promised in 1874, “if we have to ride saddle-deep in blood to do it.” Former Confederate General Martin Gary laid out a similar plan for South Carolina: “Every Democrat must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one Negro, by intimidation, purchase, keeping him away or as each individual may determine how he may best accomplish it . . . A dead Republican is very harmless.”

The results were borne out at the polls. In East Feliciana parish in Louisiana, a Republican vote of 1,688 in the 1874 state elections declined to zero. In Yazoo County, Mississippi, a Republican vote of 2,433 in the 1873 state elections decline to 7. This didn’t happen because African Americans suddenly lost interest in voting. It happened because they knew if they showed up at the polls, they would be killed.

Republicans controlled the election canvassing boards in LA, SC, and FL, so they retaliated in the only way they could—by throwing out votes from heavily Democratic counties due to tenuous allegations of fraud, to make up for the Republican votes that were lost to intimidation. They threw out enough Democratic votes so that both Hayes and the Republican state tickets carried all three states.

Congress accepted the Republican electoral votes, but in parallel negotiations, the incoming Hayes administration agreed not to use federal troops to support the Republican state governments-elect in LA, SC, and FL. This was the infamous “Compromise of 1877”. All three Republican state governments quickly fell in the face of superior Democratic fire-power. Once Democrats controlled the state government, they had little to fear in future elections, and indeed no Southern state cast a single Republican electoral vote between 1876 and 1920. Over time Southern Democrats enacted the familiar array of poll taxes, literacy tests, and white primaries so that they could suppress the African American vote without wholesale massacre, which was bad for the local economy.

So, who won the election of 1876? Hayes almost certainly would have won a free and fair election, carrying not just the three disputed states but AL and MS as well. In the election that actually took place, Tilden won via massacre and intimidation, so Republicans committed counter-fraud (in LA and FL) to take back enough electoral votes to win.

As far as historical consensus, modern historians regard the Election of 1876 as only one link, and not at all the most important one, in the depressing sequence by which the United States moved from the promise of biracial democracy and equality after the Civil War to the long night of lynch law and Jim Crow. The important thing about the election wasn’t that Hayes got to spend a relatively uneventful four years in the White House, it was that Republicans agreed, as a condition of his election, to abandon the already-faltering attempt to use the federal government to enforce civil rights in the South.

I was vaguely aware of some of that FtP, but the details are interesting. Certainly the subsequent history supports what you say. Moreover, depriving blacks of the right to vote is still ongoing and it is no longer confined to the south. That’s what all the voter ID laws are about and note that the parties have traded position.

This is the story of Rutherford Hayes
Who ended our Reconstruction phase.
Hayes was Ohio’s favorite son
Who took an election he never won.
The dirty election of Seventy-Six
Was fixed with many political tricks.
Hayes reformed the civil service
Which made his enemies rather nervous.
His wife was nicknamed Lemonade Lucy
'Cause her White House was never boozy.
So that’s our nineteenth president
Who made big changes in government.

The concern in 1876 was that every citizen votes, now the priority is to not have people prove citizenship so that even illegal immigrants can vote.

Moderator Note

It was clearly stated in your ATMB thread that the modern political context of Hari Seldon’s post was off-topic for GQ. In that ATMB thread, I also stated this:

Since you have tried to steer the topic into voter ID and modern politics, this is where I said I would step in, and this is where I am stepping in.

To everyone: Unless it directly relates factually to the OP’s topic regarding the 1876 election, take all discussions of modern politics to a more appropriate forum.

To Saint Cad: Intentionally posting on the very same aspect of Hari Seldon post that you were complaining about in ATMB, knowing full well that it was off topic for GQ, seems like you were intentionally provoking the moderation staff. Do not pull crap like this in GQ again or you will face warnings and/or further disciplinary action. Consider yourself very lucky that I am not warning you for being a jerk for this one.