The Hayes-Tilden Standoff and the Compromise of 1877
Imagine this: The candidate who receives the most votes does not get elected president. It sure sounds controversial, but in U.S. presidential elections, has happened several times. But the plot thickens in this scenario, what if the election came down to three states with conflicting states. But wait there’s more! One candidate is awarded the delegates from the disputes state in exchange for a political favor that will shape American history forever! If this sounds like the plot line from Scandal or House of Cards then you’re right. But the absolute chaos described above is no mere hypothetical. It is exactly what happened in the 1876 US presidential election.
The Republican Rutherford B. Hayes (left) faced the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden in the 1876 Presidential Election
Background: The Electoral College and how America elects presidents.
The Current Map of the Electoral College
In the United States, voting for president isn’t as simple as seeing who got the most votes. The US created a system called the Electoral College to decide who the next president will be. Instead of having the people directly elect the president, a group of electors are responsible for doing so. These electors meet in December to officially decide the president. The electors are supposed to follow how their state voted, but there have been instances of rogue electors. Each state is awarded a proportional amount of electors based on population. For example, California is the country’s most populous state and gets the most electors (55), while small states like Wyoming get the least (3). The amount of electors in total is calculated by how many members of Congress come from each. In the US, each state receives two Senators and then a population-based number of Representatives for the House of Representatives. California has two senators and fifty-three representatives. Add this together and you get California’s magic number of 55. There are 538 electors up for grabs in the Electoral College(435 members of the House of Representatives, 100 Senate members by 3 from the District of Columbia under the 23rd Amendment). In order to win an election, a candidate must get 270 or just over half of the total electors. A candidate wins a states’ electors by winning the popular vote in that state. At the end of the day, the person who reaches 270 is elected the President of the United States, even if they did not win the popular vote. (Don’t worry, if the system sounds complicated that’s because it is. The framers of the U.S. The Constitution wanted it this way) Back in 1876, the magic number to win the Presidency was 185. This will be very important as we delve deeper into the election.
Background: American Politics in the mid-late 19th Century
The two main political parties in this era were the Republicans and Democrats but were different from their modern form. The Democratic party began under the leadership of Andrew Johnson, a populist-esque president who was controversial, to say the least. Regardless of your opinion, Andrew Johnson and the Democratic party developed the idea of “common man democracy”. Jackson’s elections were the first in which all white men could vote. The Democratic party was the party of the farmer and the common man. The Democratic party was in favor of less government, a lower tariff and a firm belief in agriculture. Many Democrats came from rural areas and the South. However, the issue of slavery caused a chasm to open within the party. The party temporarily devolved into Northern Democrats who opposed slavery and Southern Democrats who favored slavery. It would be these Southern Democrats who greatly influenced the Standoff and Compromise. The Republican party evolved from a party known as the Whigs. Republicans were pro-business and antislavery. Most Republicans tended to form the North and Midwest.
Background: Civil War and Reconstruction
While the events of the Hayes-Tilden election take place in 1876, in order to understand its true impact, we have to go back and discuss a little skirmish. The American Civil War. The American Civil War began in 1861 when South Caroline succeeded from the U.S. Most southern states succeeded and banded together from the Confederate States of America. The primary cause of succession was slavery. The Southern economy insisted almost entirely upon plantation farming, large farms worked by slaves to mass-produce a product. By far the most important thing produced by the South was cotton. Cotton was in high demand all over the world in developed countries and in the North because cotton was necessary to carry out the burgeoning textile industry that employed millions. The debate over slavery in the U.S. goes all the way back to the constitution when the framers inserted the ⅗’s clause, which states a slave was ⅗’s of a human. This was done so southern states could get more representatives in the House of Representatives. Slavery was absolutely vital to the Southern economy but also social structure. Southern society was highly stratified with wealthy gentleman planters dominating society. Below them were poor whites who farmed for a living but often experienced poor quality of life. Below them were slaves who were viewed as property and not people. The planters realized that if the poor white’s realized the inequality around them, there might be a massive uprising. Slavery allowed for poor white people to feel as if they had a common enemy with the planters and to feel better about their own status. The North on the other hand outlawed slavery for the most part by 1800. Unlike the agrarian south, the North’s economy was based on early manufacturing and trading. The North began as being indifferent towards slavery. They had little use for slave labor and were content to let southerners continue the process. Inspired by the 2nd Great Awakening, a religious movement in the 1830s, the abolition movement began. Originally seen as radical, the movement gained more momentum and during the 1840s and 50s, was a major force. This led to the North seeking to stop slavery in its tracks. Ever since, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the north and south squabbled over whether slavery should expand. The issue reached its climax when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who wanted to stop the expansion of slavery won the 1860 Presidential Election. Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in some southern states. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back as the Southern states seceded from the union to form the confederacy. Primarily due to more manpower and manufacturing, the North prevailed in the civil war despite initial confederate success. The Confederacy failed and the Southern states would rejoin the union. But the question was how so? This marked the beginning of the grueling process of Reconstruction. The goal of reconstruction was to readmit the former confederate states and get them on the same page as the rest of the country. Many Republicans wanted the military to oversee the process as they feared if local government oversaw the process, they would slip back into their old ways. On the other hand, Democrats wanted exactly that. They wanted the states to oversee the process and keep the Republicans and Northerners out of this. Under the Tennessean Andrew Johnson, the democrats of reconstruction happened and under the Republican war hero Ulysses Grant, the military oversaw things. It was this debate that would play such a pivotal role in the Hayes-Tilden Standoff and the Compromise of 1877.
Reconstruction was a grueling process that ultimately failed
The Election of 1876
The Election of 1876 pitted Rutherford B Hayes, a Republican from Ohio against Samuel Tilden, a Democrat from New York. Hayes served as the governor of Ohio, and Tilden was famous for helping to expose the corrupt political machine of New York City and get “Boss” Tweed convicted of his various crimes. The election followed two terms of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant’s administrations are remembered for being notoriously corrupt, the panic of 1873, and using the memory of the Civil War to further his political campaign. Despite the Civil, War had ended a decade ago the country was far from unified. Partisanship was incredibly high and long-harbored grudges from the Civil War still existed in particular between the Southern Democrats and Republicans. It is under this backdrop that Americans went to the polls on Election Day 1876. Some elections bring out the vote more than others and in 1876 an astonishing 81.8% of Americans voted. As results came in, Tilden gained a lead over Hayes, 184-165 with only Florida South Carolina Louisiana, and 1 elector from Oregon l. Remember what the magic number was to win the Presidency back in 1876? If you guessed 185 you were correct. Tilden was agonizingly close to the presidency only 1 elector short, but there were still 3 states up for grabs. Surely Tilden could eke out 1 more elector, right? It appeared Tilden could as early returns in the Southern states showed him leading. However, there were instances of voter suppression among the Republican party. This by itself did not cause the ensuing controversy, but it demonstrates how complicated the 1876 Election. Back in the 1800s, states established election commissions to determine the rightful ballot count. The controversy began when the Republican-controlled state election commissions began tossing out Democratic votes and eventually awarded their electors to Hayes. So essentially, the people had come up with a tally of votes that awarded their electors to Tilden, while the state election commissions awarded the electors to Hayes. This situation had no constitutional solution or precedent. In order to determine the winner, Congress created a 15-person Electoral Commission to determine which results would be accepted. This set the stage for one of America’s most notorious examples of political wheeling and dealing.
The end results of the 1876 Pesidential Election
The Compromise of 1877
The Electoral Commission consisted of 5 House members, 5 Senators, and 5 Supreme Court justices. It is important to note that there were seven Republican members seven Democrat members and 1 who leaned Republican. The voting in the Commission essentially split among party lines and the slightly Republican-leaning Commission decided to award all 20 disputed electors to Hayes, giving him a 185-184 victory over Tilden. Naturally, Democrats in Congress were incensed at this announcement. But now the Democrats were going to get something for themselves and this where the tragic part of our story begins. Remember while this election happened, the Southern states underwent the ordeal of reconstruction, painstakingly rebuilding their economy and society. Most Republicans wanted the military to oversee the process and most Democrats wanted to let the states handle it. Under the Republican Grant Administration, genuine progress was made in rectifying southern society. Former slaves began some progress in terms of economic opportunity and equality. (Key word Some but it was important nonetheless). Prior to the Grant Administration, the Democrat Andrew Johnson essentially let the states run the process themselves. When the states oversaw the process, far less progress was made. Now back to the Electoral Commission. The Commission gave all disputed electors to Hayes. Congressional Democrats threatened to filibuster the results until hell froze over. In order to prevent this, Republicans offered the Democrats an offer they couldn’t refuse. Republicans promised to end Military Reconstruction once for all. This would allow the Southern states to run Reconstruction as they saw fit. And the Southern states wanted as little reconstruction as possible. They didn’t want to industrialize like the north, and they certainly didn’t want former slaves to gain a shred of equality. The Southern states wanted to keep former slaves at the bottom of the social political and economic pyramid. Under military reconstruction, the military and federal government mandated that things must improve. With no looming threat of the U.S. army, southern states had no incentive to actually help former slaves or modernize. When left to their own, the states further discriminated against former slaves. To the Southern states, this was the opportunity they had been waiting for to get the Republicans and Northerners out of their hair. The Southern states resented the federal government’s heavy influence in their states. While losing the Presidency would certainly sting, running Reconstruction on their own would be very beneficial to the Southern States and Southern Democrats.
Hayes-Tilden Standoff and Compromise of 1877: Results and Impact
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff and Compromise of 1877 had several important results. First, it made Rutherford B Hayes President of the U.S. Hayes would go on to become a rather unremarkable one-term president. Under the Hayes Presidency, the U.S. continued its heavily pro-business attitude and policy. By far the most important result of the Compromise was the ending of Military Reconstruction. Once Military Reconstruction ended, it was up to Southern Governors and state legislatures to determine how reconstruction would happen. The overwhelming majority of these figures decided that Reconstructions would come to a grinding halt. While the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery, this did not cause any semblance of equality. These local Southern governments got creative and devised a series of strategies to prevent equality. First many states passed laws known as the “Black Codes” which severely limited what a Black citizen could do. Next, southerners encouraged former slaves to participate in a system known as sharecropping. Sharecroppers would let tenets, in this case mostly former slaves and poor whites, work on land they didn’t own in exchange for a share of their crops. Sharecropping kept many former slaves trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and poverty that had few ways out. Then, local governments actively attempted to disenfranchise Black voters. With measures such as literacy tests, poll tax, and the rise of the KKK, it became incredibly difficult for Blacks to exercise their right to vote. Finally, local government established segregation of facilities such as schools and businesses. Under Segregation, Black people and White people could not use the same facilities and were separated. Overall, the four factors above defined the vile era of the Jim Crow South. These facets would not be rectified until the passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The horrible situation described above would likely not happen if the Military remained in charge of Reconstruction. This would have likely continued if it were not for the Hayes-Tilden Standoff and the Compromise of 1877. The Hayes-Tilden Standoff and the Compromise of 1877 will go down as one of America’s most controversial and consequential elections.
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