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Title: Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 by Roy Morris Jr. ISBN: 0-7432-2386-1 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 12 February, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.3 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Did the country miss out on a potentially great President?
Comment: The strength of this book is that is not only that it discusses the post election maneuvering that resulted in the highly questionable election of Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes, but also chronicles a little discussed era in American history. Morris paints a picture of the trials and tribulations facing any President as the Reconstruction era came to a close. Hayes opponent, Democrat Samuel Tilden, governor of New York, is a largely forgotten figure who rose to prominence weeding out corruption at Tammany Hall. I'm not sure I had ever read anything about him. The author was clearly sympathetic to the Tilden cause and a preponderance of the evidence presented suggests that the election was indeed stolen from him. Tilden's reaction to all of this was most curious. Although those surrounding him were certainly passionate about making sure that he was declared the rightful winner, Tilden was simply not inclined to pursue the matter with any vigor. As a result, the Hayes forces carried the day after 4 agonizing months of recounts, commissions and the like. The author does make the point that the culprit was not Hayes himself, but rather a number of Republican party operatives desperate to hold on to power. Morris considers Hayes to be a decent man. All of this makes me wonder if perhaps the country missed out on a potentially great President in Tilden. It seems to me that we need to be more concerned about an individual who will do just about anything to be elected President. Just refer to any newspaper today. In Samuel Tilden, we appear to have a man who preferred to walk away rather than put the country through additional turmoil.
Rating: 5
Summary: We Who Forgot the Past...
Comment: Most people, if they've heard of the infamous 1876 Presidential election at all, recall it only when comparisons were made to the confused aftermath of the 2000 campaign. There were many similarities in that the Democratic candidate ultimately failed to win the Presidency despite outpolling the Republican in the popular vote, and the final judgement was delayed long after the actual voting because of irregularities in Florida (among other states in 1876). But the most glaring thing the two elections have in common is that in both cases the will of the people was ultimately thwarted by that most undemocratic of Constitutional anachornisms: The Electoral College.
Author Roy Morris Jr. rescues the 1876 election from the dustbin of history with his diligent research and lively prose. He also does not hesitate to editorialize on the outcome, as the title of the book makes perfectly clear. It's not that Morris is unfair to former Civil War General Rutherford B. Hayes, who was ultimately declared the winner in an unbeleivably convoluted series of back room dealings, quite the contrary in fact. Morris instead lays outs the facts so that the reader can plainly see that New York Governor Samuel Tilden, despite being a less than perfect candidate, deserved a better fate.
The stakes were high in America's centenial year. Reconstruction was winding down (indeed, Hayes would ultimately end it), white southeners were reasserting their political muscle in a way that would ultimately lead to Jim Crow and the disenfranchisement of the former slaves and tensions between the parties were running high enough that a resumption of Civil War hostilities seemed a distinct possibility. The outgoing, scandal-plauged Grant administration burdoned Hayes, while Tilden was saddled with a Democratic party that had been the home of the Copperheads during the Civil War. Like 2000, the country was nearly evenly split politically, though unlike 2000, as Morris points out, the outcome did not dramatically effect the course of American history because Morris supposes that Tilden would have made many of the same decsions that were made by Hayes as President.
Overall, an extremely well-written and important work that will be enjoyed be history buffs and even by more general readers.
Rating: 4
Summary: Our slime-covered history
Comment: After reading this, you will want to take a shower, because this is one slimy, grubby tale of politics of the lowest order. If you are someone who needs to know who the good guys and bad guys are, then you should avoid this book. Virtually everyone emerges from this story tarnished.
On first glance, this is the story of a stolen election. Samuel Tilden won the popular vote by 260,000 votes and initially appeared to have a comfortable margin of victory in the electoral college. By the time the dust settled, the votes in 3 states had been creatively interpreted and the Twelth Amendment of the Constitution circumvented to give Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency. It would seem to be simple enough: the Democrats are the victimized good guys and the corrupt Republicans were the nasty bad guys.
Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems. As Morris delves more deeply into the subterreanean political strata, he shows that the story is actually multiple stories of various power blocs pursuing their respective goals in some rather unsavory ways. Were the carpetbag Republican governments in the South maintaining their power through fraud & corruption? Certainly they were --- however, the Southern Democrats were also expanding their power base through violence and intimidation of black voters. Of course, Republicans were also not above using the same intimidation tactics, sometimes against apostate black voters who had the temerity to support the Democrats. One is left with a bad taste in one's mouth in regards to all parties involved.
Morris also draws the distinction between party politics at the national and local levels, and illustrates that different levels of the same party very often have mutually exclusive goals. A case in point would be the Democratic Party in South Carolina & Louisiana, which was more concerned with ending Federal occupation in both states than with getting Tilden elected. The local Democrats of both states were willing to deal with either Hayes or Tilden to achieve that goal. Morris explicitly denies that Hayes cut a specific deal with Southern Democrats, but through vague platform statements and soothing statements through his lieutenants, Hayes was able to reassure Democrats in Louisiana & South Carolina that they need not worry about a Federal presence in their respective states for too much longer. Democratic leaders in the South also knew that protesting too violently against the election results might result in renewed Federal occupation throughout the South --- something, considering that the Civil War had ended only 11 years before, that they were none too eager to provoke. The Democrats took the most pragmatic approach, even though it probably cost Tilden the election.
The Republicans, on the other hand, demonstrated that as a party they were willing to abandon Southern Republicans, particularly those who were black, to their fates in order to maintain possession of the White House. The 1876 elections signalled the end of Reconstruction, although the Grant administration had been slowly disengaging for the last two years approximately. The Republicans of the South were abandoned for the greater good of the party, or so the Republican power brokers convinced themselves.
As for the candidates themselves, they do not emerge too covered in slime, but they are hardly unblemished. While Hayes was not complicit in his lieutenants' scheming, Morris observes, "Whether he should have known about them in the first place is another question altogether." Tilden is similary compromised, as his lieutenants (albeit without his knowledge) attempted to bribe various officials into producing a favorable result for their candidate.
Thankfully, Morris does not overindulge in the "what if" brand of speculative history. Would Tilden have made a good President? Perhaps, but his political instincts failed him during the election crisis. If he had been more actively involved and had courted the necessary people (as Hayes did), Tilden might have been able to produce a favorable result. As it was, he withdrew from view and remained passive throughout the crisis, allowing the momentum to slip away. Would Tilden have been as passive as president. I am inclined to think that he would have been as unremarkable as Hayes. Hayes, for his part, entered the White House under a cloud which never totally left him during his one term. What he left posterity is thoroughly uninspiring.
As a whole, this book is recommended reading for anyone who thinks that US history is less squalid than some Banana Republic. It is important to keep in mind that 4 presidential elections (1800, 1824, 1876 & 2000) were decided in rather controversial fashion. At least one other election (1888) was decided by fraud, and one can also look at other elections (1960, for example) with a healthy dose of skepticism. Yes folks, it can happen here, and it has several times. If nothing else, the election of 1876 should serve as a warning against complacency.
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