Presidential election in the United States 1876

‹  1872  •   •  1880 ›
23rd presidential election
November 7, 1876
			Republican Party
			Rutherford B. Hayes / William A. Wheeler
			electors					185
			be right				4,034,311
									47.9%
			Democratic Party
			Samuel Tilden / Thomas Hendricks
			electors					184
			be right				4,288,546
									51.0%
Election results by state
21 states   Hayes / Wheeler						17 states   Tilden / Hendricks
President of the United States
Before the election Ulysses S. Grant Republican Party						Elected Rutherford B. Hayes Republican Party

The 1876 ​​presidential election in the United States took place on November 7, 1876. It was the 23rd election of the President of the United States and was one of the tightest and most controversial in US history. The Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes won with an electoral majority ahead of the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden , although Tilden got more votes overall. The choice ultimately decided by a political deal is seen as the end point of the reconstruction .

Nominations

The incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) was aiming for a third term, but was not supported by the party, which is why he announced in 1875 that he would no longer run. The June 1876 Republican Convention held in Cincinnati, Ohio, failed to come to an agreement in multiple rounds of the expected candidate, House Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine. This was rejected by the radical wing of the party because it did not have a clear opinion on the question of reconstruction. Therefore, the governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes, was nominated in the 7th ballot with 387 to 351 to 21 votes. In contrast, William A. Wheeler , previously MP for New York, easily won the nomination for the vice-presidential candidate.

The Democratic convention was held after the Republican and was held in St. Louis, Missouri. Promising candidates were New York Governor and Bourbon Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Indiana Governor Thomas A. Hendricks, and former Pennsylvania Union General Winfield S. Hancock . Tilden prevailed in the second ballot, Hendricks became his running mate .

The other candidates included:

• Peter Cooper of the Greenback Party with Samuel F. Cary as a fellow candidate;
• Green C. Smith with Gideon T. Stewart of the Prohibition Party ;
• James A. Walker with Donald Kirkpatrick from the American National Party.

Election campaign

Democratic campaigns focused on the corruption scandals erupted under the previous administration, while Republicans continued to focus on the successful rescue and unification of the nation, which celebrated 100 years of independence that year, and accused the Democrats of treason.

choice

The election took place on November 7, 1876. In many states the outcome was very narrow, in around a dozen states the difference in the proportion of votes was three percent or less. On election night and the next morning, many newspapers declared Tilden the winner. This had won the Swing States Connecticut , New Jersey and Indiana as well as his home state New York and was considered a certain winner in the Democratic South.

On November 8, the results were known from most states, after which Tilden received 184 electoral votes against 165 for Hayes, 185 votes were necessary for victory. The remaining 20 votes were in the three southern states of Florida (4), Louisiana (8) and South Carolina (7) as well as in Oregon (1). The three southern states were claimed by both sides, while in Oregon only the admission of one of the electors, but not the outcome, was in question.

dispute

The political farce : posters as an expression of protest against the type of voting decision

Both sides accused each other of manipulating the election. Republicans accused the Democrats of creating paramilitary groups and intimidating Republican supporters away from the election. At the same time, the Democrats accused the Republicans, who controlled the counting of votes in the three states in question, of withholding Democratic votes, especially since prior to the election it was firmly assumed that the South would vote for Tilden, while the Republican electoral commissions would vote for Hayes 'Declared victory.

Both sides also prepared opposite certificates for their presumed majority in the three states and had them signed by officials who were still in office or just elected (governors, public prosecutors) of their party. When the Democratic Governor of Oregon's undertaking to deny and replace an elector with a Democrat because of his previous work in the civil service failed because the other two electoral men of the state received a certificate for three Republican votes signed by the Secretary of State of Oregon (not just two) were able to present a serious constitutional crisis with hardened fronts.

As the United States Constitution requires a clear vote by the scheduled date of inauguration, a solution was urgently sought. By law of January 29, 1877, a 15-member electoral commission was formed from five members each from the Senate , House of Representatives and Supreme Court . This should include three members of the majority and two members of the minority parliamentary groups from the Senate and House of Representatives as well as two representatives from each party from the Supreme Court. Since the Senate was dominated by the Republicans and the House by the Democrats, both sides were represented equally until then. The four members of the Supreme Court should then jointly determine the 15th and final member of the commission, who should be independent from party. Its first candidate was the non-party David Davis , who, like many other liberals, had left the Republican Party in 1872 . Before the time of the election decision, Davis was elected to the US Senate by Illinois and immediately left the Supreme Court, so that he was no longer available for the post. Ironically, the Democrats had given Davis decisive support in his election, hoping for his benevolence on the electoral commission, but instead prevented the only non-party candidate. Since all of the remaining chief justices were Republicans, the outcome was predetermined; with Joseph P. Bradley a Republican became the 15th member of the commission.

During these decisions, what was known as the 1877 Compromise was sought behind the scenes . Accordingly, the Democrats should submit to the appointment of Hayes as president and receive the following concessions in exchange:

• Withdrawal of the remaining federal troops from the former states of the Confederation (this only affected the states of Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida, which were also the contested states in the election)
• Appointment of a South Democrat to the Hayes administration
• Construction of another transcontinental railroad through the southern states
• Support for the industrialization of the south through federal laws

Only the first two commitments were actually redeemed later. In the following years, numerous southern states systematically expanded their segregation and, through various provisions, deprived many blacks of the right to vote guaranteed by the 15th Amendment (including the Jim Crow Acts ), so that this compromise was viewed by the blacks as treason by the Republicans has been.

The electoral commission finally decided on March 2nd that Hayes had won the three southern states (and thus the overall election) (the respective party members each voted for their candidate). On March 4, Hayes was sworn in as the new president.

Result

candidate	Political party	be right		electors
		number	percent
Rutherford B. Hayes	republican	4,034,311	47.9%	185
Samuel J. Tilden	Democrats	4,288,546	51.0%	184
total		8,413,101	98.9% *	369

* to 100% missing percent: invalid votes / other candidates

literature

Fiction

• Gore Vidal : 1876 (1976)

Non-fiction

• Edward Foley: Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-023527-7 , pp. 117-149 (= 5. Hayes vs Tilden: To the Edge of the Constitutional Cliff ).
• Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton, Sherman C. Puckett: Presidential Elections, 1789-2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2010, ISBN 978-0-472-11697-3 , pp. 208-218 (= Chapter 25: Rutherford B. Hayes's Election. ).
• William H. Rehnquist : Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876 . Vintage Books, New York 2004, ISBN 0-375-71321-2 .

Web links

Commons : US Presidential Election 1876  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

• Distribution of votes in the individual states
• Distribution of votes by counties
• Representation of party controversy of Harper's Weekly
• The loser's victory. Spiegel Online (from November 4, 2008)