The 1876 Presidential Election
By the time 1876 rolled around, Reconstruction was very unpopular. Even more so because of the almost constant scandals that plagued the Republican party. It is entirely possible that the country could have slipped back into Civil War if something hadn’t been done.
Violence had been a common factor in the South as former Confederates fought the rule of the Republican party, which had taken over during the Reconstruction period after the end of the Civil War.
Like recent elections, the Election of 1876 was hotly contested. In fact, it is the most contested election in American history, even surpassing the Hanging Chad idiocy that was the 2000 Presidential election. At the time, in order to win the presidency, the winner needed 185 electoral votes out of a total of 369.
Democrat Samuel Tilden won 184 of those votes. Rutherford B Hayes, the Republican, won 165. That left 20 that were contested. Those votes came from the states of Florida (of course), Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon.
Tilden won the popular vote by almost 300,000 votes. In Florida, Louisiana and Oregon, both parties claimed victory simultaneously. In Oregon, one of the electors had to be replaced because he was an elected official.
The outcome was that Hayes was announced as the winner, but only after the Compromise of 1877. The Compromise was that Hayes would win, but he had to agree to remove the remaining troops from the South, those troops having been there since the end of the Civil War. He did so once he took office.
With this compromise, it allowed Southern Democrats to return to office after the Reconstruction period ended. It also allowed them to enact policies that disenfranchised recently freed black men. While this would be the policy for the next several decades, it did slow the violence that had been brewing in the South for years after the war.
It would take until 1920 before a Republican would win a state in the South. And of course, it wouldn’t be until the 1960s that voter disenfranchisement would be made illegal for good.
Also Read: These 10 High Stakes Elections in America Were Bought, Rigged or Stolen.