1877 US commission
The 1877 Electoral Commission, charged with resolving the disputed U.S. presidential election of 1876
The
Electoral Commission
, sometimes referred to as the
Hayes-Tilden
or
Tilden-Hayes Electoral Commission
, was a temporary body created by the
United States Congress
on January 29, 1877, to resolve the disputed
United States
presidential election of 1876
.
Democrat
Samuel J. Tilden
and
Republican
Rutherford B. Hayes
were the main contenders in the election. Tilden won 184 undisputed
electoral votes
, one vote shy of the 185 needed to win, to Hayes' 165, with 20 electoral votes from four states (Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina) unresolved. Both Tilden and Hayes electors submitted votes from these states, and each claimed victory.
Facing an unparalleled
constitutional crisis
and intense public pressure, the Democratic-controlled
House of Representatives
and the Republican-controlled
Senate
agreed to formation of the
bipartisan
Electoral Commission to settle the election. It consisted of fifteen members: five each from the House and the Senate, plus five
Supreme Court
justices. Eight members were Republicans; seven were Democrats. The commission ultimately voted along party lines to award all twenty disputed votes to Hayes, thus assuring his electoral victory by a margin of
185?
184. Congress, meeting in a
joint session
on March 2, 1877, affirmed that decision, officially declaring Hayes the winner by one vote.
Election of 1876
[
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]
1876 United States presidential election (excluding contested electors)
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The presidential election was held on November 7, 1876, and Tilden won the electors of his home state of New York and most of the
South
, while Hayes' strength lay in
New England
, the
Midwest
, and the
West
. Tilden had won the popular vote by just over a quarter of a million votes, but he did not have a clear
Electoral College
majority. He received 184 uncontested electoral votes, while Hayes received 165. Both campaigns claimed the remaining twenty (four from Florida, eight from Louisiana, seven from South Carolina, and one from Oregon) votes. As 185 votes constituted a majority, Tilden needed only one of the disputed votes, while Hayes needed all twenty. The returns in several states, including the disputed states of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, were tainted by allegations of
electoral fraud
, with each side claiming ballot boxes had been stuffed, ballots altered, and voters intimidated.
Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina
[
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]
Early returns suggested that Tilden had won the election, and on election night Republican Party chair
Zachariah Chandler
believed Hayes had lost. However, Chandler gave permission early the next morning to
William E. Chandler
and
John C. Reid
, managing editor of
The New York Times
(which had run the headline "The Results Still Uncertain"
[a]
), to wire Republican officials in
Florida
,
Louisiana
, and
South Carolina
to hold their states for Hayes. In each state, Republicans controlled the partisan
returning boards
, tasked with certifying the popular results of the election.
In response to Chandler's directive, Democratic Party chair
Abram S. Hewitt
organized committees of prominent Democrats to travel South and oversee the vote counting. President Grant, in turn, sent Republican delegations to follow the Democratic observers.
In each of the three disputed Southern states, the pattern that followed was largely the same: the returning board invalidated numerous ballots on the grounds of fraud or voter intimidation, delivering a popular majority to Hayes and the Republican candidate for Governor. A dissident Democratic government claimed victory and the legitimate authority to govern and certify the electoral vote of the state. The Republican claimant certified an electoral slate for Hayes, and the Democratic claimant certified a slate of electors for Tilden.
In
Florida
, the initial count showed Hayes ahead by 43 votes, but after corrections were made,
[
clarification needed
]
Tilden took the lead by 94 votes. Subsequently, the returning board rejected numerous ballots, delivering the election to Hayes by nearly a thousand votes. The board also declared that the incumbent Republican
governor
,
Marcellus Stearns
, had won the gubernatorial election; however, the Florida Supreme Court overruled them, instead awarding the victory to Democrat
George Franklin Drew
, who announced that Tilden had carried Florida.
[2]
Louis M. Kenner, Casanave Gardenne, Thomas C. Anderson, James Madison Wells at the 1876 presidential fraud hearings.
[3]
In
Louisiana
, early unofficial tallies indicated that Tilden had carried the state by over 6,000 votes, but the Republican-controlled returning board rejected over 15,000 votes (13,000 for Tilden and 2,000 for Hayes) for reasons of fraud and voter intimidation. As a result, Hayes won Louisiana's eight electoral votes, while Republican candidate
Stephen B. Packard
was considered to lead the vote count in the simultaneous
election
for
Governor of Louisiana
. In response, the Democratic Party instituted a rival state government under
Francis T. Nicholls
, and this rival administration, in turn, certified that Tilden had won.
[4]
The Louisiana Returning Board was composed of
James Madison Wells
, Thomas C. Anderson, Gardene Casanave, and Louis M. Kenner.
[5]
A nearly identical scenario played out in
South Carolina
, where initial returns suggested that Hayes had won the presidential election, while the Democratic candidate
Wade Hampton III
had won the
gubernatorial contest
. As in Louisiana, the Republican-controlled returning board rejected several thousand votes, ensuring the election of a Republican
governor
,
Daniel Henry Chamberlain
, and legislature. The Democratic Party promptly organized a rival state government, led by Hampton, and this body declared Tilden the victor in the presidential election.
[4]
Oregon elector
[
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]
In addition to sending Democrats to observe the vote count in the South, Hewitt also responded to Chandler by directing Governor
La Fayette Grover
of Oregon to reject the election of a Republican elector. Though the popular vote in Oregon had clearly favored Hayes, the elector, John W. Watts, was a United States
postmaster
, calling into question his constitutional eligibility to serve.
Article II, section 1, clause 2
of the Constitution reads "no … person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States shall be appointed an elector." Watts resigned his office a week after the election, long before the Electoral College was scheduled to meet.
[2]
Thus, the question hinged on whether Watts was "appointed" at the time of his election in November or at the meeting of the electoral college in December.
Governor Grover certified a Tilden elector who had the next-most votes, C.A. Cronin, in his place.
Thus, the Governor had certified two Republican electors and one Democratic elector. Historian
C. Vann Woodward
suggests this was done to provide a legal pretext to look behind the official state certification in the disputed states; if Republicans questioned Cronin's credentials as an elector (which they would have to do in order to win), they would be forced to permit questions against the apparently certified slates in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
Electoral College vote
[
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On December 6, 1876, the electors met in the state capitals to cast their ballots. In Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, both the Democratic and the Republican slates of electors assembled, and cast conflicting votes, while in Oregon Watts and Cronin both cast ballots. Thus, from each of these four states, two sets of returns were transmitted to
Washington, D.C.
Constitutional crisis
[
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]
The election dispute gave rise to a
constitutional crisis
, as no clear constitutional directive was given for recognizing or resolving disputed electoral counts. The
Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution
reads in part, "The
President of the Senate
shall, in the presence of the
Senate
and
House of Representatives
, open all the certificates and
the votes shall then be counted
;" but gives no indication by whom "the votes shall then be counted" or where the authority rested to decide between competing slates of electors.
Some Hayes supporters argued that the President of the Senate had the authority to determine which certificates to count, because he was responsible under the Twelfth Amendment for presiding over the congressional session at which the electoral votes were tallied. Since the office was occupied by a Republican, this method would have favored Hayes.
[b]
Many Democrats argued that Congress, in joint session, should determine which certificates to count; because they controlled the much larger House, this would ensure Tilden's victory. Other Democrats posited that because neither candidate had a clear majority of the electoral vote, the election should be thrown to the House of Representatives, per the explicit terms of the Twelfth Amendment.
Still others proposed that the matter should be settled by the Supreme Court.
[2]
As members of the political class returned to
Washington D.C.
in advance of the December congressional session, Democratic cries of "fraud" and "Tilden-or-fight" were met with Republican recriminations that Democratic victories in the South were attributable to fraud and intimidation. Democratic opinion was united in favor of Tilden, while some Republicans (including President
Ulysses S. Grant
and Senator
Roscoe Conkling
) privately expressed their belief that Tilden had won, and some Republican newspapers were ambivalent about Hayes's case.
In a reversal of
Civil War
ideology, many Republicans argued that the right to certify electors lay solely with the states and could not be reviewed by Congress; Democrats argued that state returns were subject to federal scrutiny.
However, the sole Democratic elector certified by the Governor of Oregon rendered the Republican argument for states' rights mostly moot, since pure deference to state returns would result in a vote of 185?184 in favor of Tilden.
In the background of the legal and political arguments lay the threat of armed violence, which did not clearly favor either side in the dispute. The United States was just over a decade removed from the
American Civil War
and sectional, racial, and ideological tensions had remained fraught during the
Reconstruction Era
. Republicans controlled the regular
United States Army
, but it was small and widely dispersed; Democratic governors throughout the country controlled their state chapters of the
National Guard
.
Congressman
Henry Watterson
of
Kentucky
declared that an army of 100,000 men was prepared to march on Washington unless Tilden was declared President.
[
citation needed
]
Electoral Commission Act
[
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The
44th United States Congress
met in a
lame-duck session
beginning December 7, the day after the disputed electoral votes were submitted. The House was controlled by the
Democratic Party
, while the Senate was controlled by the
Republican Party
. Based on the results of the 1876 election, party control promised to remain the same in each chamber for the
45th Congress
.
[2]
On December 21 and 22, respectively, the Senate and House established special committees charged with establishing a process to resolve the dispute, with membership as follows:
[2]
The two committees ultimately settled upon creating a commission that would count the electoral votes and resolve questions arising during the count. Many Republicans objected to the idea, insisting that the President pro tempore should resolve the disputes himself. Rutherford Hayes charged that the bill was unconstitutional.
[8]
However, enough Republicans joined the Democrats to ensure its passage. On January 25, 1877, the Senate voted in favor of the bill 47?17; the House did likewise the next day, 191?86. The Electoral Commission Act (19
Stat.
227
) was signed into law by President
Ulysses S. Grant
on January 29, 1877.
[2]
The Act provided that the Electoral Commission was to consist of fifteen members: five representatives selected by the House, five senators selected by the Senate, four Supreme Court justices named in the law, and a fifth Supreme Court justice selected by the other four. The most senior justice was to serve as president of the commission. Whenever two different electoral vote certificates arrived from any state, the commission was empowered to determine which return was correct. The commission's decisions could be overturned only by both houses of Congress.
[9]
Membership of the commission
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Originally, it was planned that the commission would consist of seven
Democrats
and seven
Republicans
, with an independent (Justice
David Davis
) as the fifteenth member of the commission. According to one historian, "no one, perhaps not even Davis himself, knew which presidential candidate he preferred."
[10]
Just as the Electoral Commission Bill was passing Congress, the
Legislature
of
Illinois
elected Davis to the Senate, with Democrats in the Illinois legislature believing that they had purchased Davis' support for Tilden, but this was a miscalculation: Davis promptly excused himself from the commission and resigned as a Justice in order to take his Senate seat.
[2]
With no other independents on the Supreme Court, the final seat on the Electoral Commission was given instead to Justice
Joseph P. Bradley
, a Republican, giving the GOP a one-seat majority on the commission. In each case, Bradley would vote with his fellow Republicans to give the disputed electoral votes to Hayes.
[9]
The membership of the commission was as follows:
Proceedings of the commission and the Compromise of 1877
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The Electoral Commission held its meetings in the Supreme Court chamber. It sat in the same manner as a court, hearing arguments from both Democratic and Republican lawyers. Tilden was represented by
Jeremiah S. Black
,
Montgomery Blair
,
John Archibald Campbell
,
Matthew H. Carpenter
,
Ashbel Green
,
George Hoadly
,
Richard T. Merrick
,
Charles O'Conor
,
Lyman Trumbull
, and
William C. Whitney
. Hayes was represented by
William M. Evarts
,
Stanley Matthews
,
Samuel Shellabarger
, and
E. W. Stoughton
.
[11]
The tribunal began hearing arguments on February 1, 1877. Tilden's lawyers argued that the commission should investigate the actions of the state returning boards, and reverse those actions if necessary. Conversely, Hayes' counsel suggested that the commission should merely accept the official returns certified by the state governor without inquiring into their validity. To do otherwise, it was argued, would have violated the sovereignty of the states. The commission voted 8?7, along party lines, in favor of the Republican position.
Subsequently, in a series of party-line votes, the commission awarded all twenty disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Under the Electoral Commission Act, the commission's findings were final unless overruled by both houses of Congress. Although the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives repeatedly voted to reject the commission's decisions, the Republican-controlled Senate voted to uphold them. Thus, Hayes' victory was assured.
The final results of the presidential election of 1876 are shown above.
Unable to overturn the commission's decisions, many Democrats instead tried to obstruct them. Congressman
Abram Hewitt
, the chairman of the
Democratic National Committee
, made a spurious challenge to the electoral votes from
Vermont
, even though Hayes had clearly carried the state. The two houses then separated to consider the objection. The Senate quickly voted to overrule the objection, but the Democrats conducted a filibuster in the House of Representatives. In a stormy session that began on March 1, 1877, the House debated the objection for about twelve hours before overruling it. Immediately, another spurious objection was raised, this time to the electoral votes from
Wisconsin
. Again, the Senate voted to overrule the objection, while a filibuster was conducted in the House. However, the Speaker of the House, Democrat
Samuel J. Randall
, refused to entertain dilatory motions. Eventually, the filibusterers gave up, allowing the House to reject the objection in the early hours of March 2. The House and Senate then reassembled to complete the count of the electoral votes. At 4:10 am on March 2, Senator Ferry announced that Hayes and
William A. Wheeler
had been elected to the
presidency
and
vice presidency
, by an electoral margin of 185?184.
[2]
The Compromise of 1877
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Some historians believe that Democrats and Republicans reached an unwritten agreement (known as the
Compromise of 1877
) under which the filibuster would be dropped in return for a promise to end
Reconstruction
, but there is no contemporary evidence of it and little evidence at all. The name was coined by
C. Vann Woodward
in his 1951 book,
Reunion and Reaction
.
[12]
Aftermath
[
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]
Many of Tilden's supporters believed that he had been cheated out of victory, and Hayes was variously dubbed "Rutherfraud", "His Fraudulency", and "His Accidency." On March 3, the House of Representatives went so far as to pass a resolution declaring its opinion that Tilden had been "duly elected President of the United States." Nevertheless, Hayes was peacefully sworn in as president on March 5.
[10]
Many historians have complained that, after entering office, Hayes rewarded those who helped him win the election dispute with federal offices.
[9]
Most notably, one of the lawyers who argued Hayes' case before the Electoral Commission, William M. Evarts, was appointed
Secretary of State
, while another, Stanley Matthews, was appointed to the Supreme Court, and a third, Edwin W. Stoughton, was appointed
Minister to Russia
.
In May 1878, the House of Representatives created a special committee charged with investigating the allegations of fraud in the 1876 election. The eleven-member committee was chaired by
Clarkson Nott Potter
, a Democratic congressman from New York. The committee, however, could not uncover any evidence of wrongdoing by the President. At approximately the same time, the
New York Tribune
published a series of coded telegrams that Democratic Party operatives had sent during the weeks following the 1876 election. These telegrams revealed attempts to bribe election officials in states with disputed results. Despite attempts to implicate him in the scandal, Samuel Tilden was declared innocent by the Potter Committee.
[13]
To prevent a repetition of the farce of 1876, the
49th Congress
passed the
Electoral Count Act
in 1887. Under this law, now codified in
3 U.S.C.
§ 15
, a state's determination of electoral disputes is conclusive in most circumstances: the President of the Senate opens the electoral certificates in the presence of both houses, and hands them to the tellers, two from each house, who are to read them aloud and record the votes.
[14]
In the event of a state sending multiple returns to Congress, then whichever return has been certified by the executive of the state is counted, unless both houses of Congress decide otherwise.
The end of Reconstruction
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]
One major outcome of the electoral commission and the
Compromise of 1877
was the return of the South to "home rule" via the removal of federal troops, effectively ending the Reconstruction era.
With the end of federal government's enforcement of post-bellum equality, takeovers of the Southern legislatures by the
Southern wing of the Democratic Party
were quick to occur, often involving fraud and/or violence.
These new "Redeemer" governments implemented
Jim Crow
laws which imposed a system of racial discrimination, reversing the gains of Reconstruction and disenfranchising black people in the South until 1965.
See also
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References
[
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]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
"Hayes v. Tilden: The Electoral College Controversy of 1876?1877." HarpWeek.
- ^
"The political farce of 1876"
.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
. Retrieved
2024-02-10
.
- ^
a
b
Hoogenboom, Ari
. (1995).
Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President
.
Lawrence, Kansas
:
University Press of Kansas
.
- ^
"Proceedings of the Returning board of the state of Louisiana. Election of 1876"
.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
. Retrieved
2024-02-09
.
- ^
Rehnquist, William H. (2004).
Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- ^
a
b
c
Nagle, John (2004). "How Not to Count Votes." 104 Columbia Law Review 1732.
- ^
a
b
Morris, Roy, Jr. (2003).
Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden and the Stolen Election of 1876.
New York: Simon and Schuster.
- ^
"Electoral Commission." (1911).
Encyclopædia Britannica
, 11th ed. London: Cambridge University Press.
- ^
"
"Frequently Asked Questions About the Disputed Election of 1876." The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center"
. Archived from
the original
on 2016-05-03
. Retrieved
2006-02-26
.
- ^
Kennedy, Robert C. "Cipher Mumm(er)y." HarpWeek.
- ^
Andrews, E. Benjamin
(1912).
History of the United States
. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Notes
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Further reading
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]
- Bigelow, John
(1895).
The Life of Samuel J. Tilden
.
- Ewing, Elbert W. R. (1910).
History and Law of the Hayes?Tilden Contest Before the Electoral Commission: The Florida Case, 1876?1877
. Washington: Cobden Pub. Co.
- Foley, Edward B.
(2016).
Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States
. Oxford Univ. Press.
- Haworth, Paul Leland
(1906).
The Hayes?Tilden Disputed Election of 1876
. Cleveland: Burrow Bros.
- Robinson, Lloyd (1968).
The Stolen Election: Hayes Versus Tilden 1876
. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co.
- Polakoff, Keith Ian (1973).
The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction
. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press.
- Woodward, C. Vann
(1951).
Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstructio
. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.
- U.S. Electoral Commission. (1877)
Electoral Count of 1877. Proceedings of the Electoral Commission and of the Two Houses of Congress in Joint Meeting Relative to the Count of Electoral Votes Cast December 6, 1876, for the Presidential Term Commencing March 4, 1877.
44th Cong. 2d Sess. Washington: GPO.
External links
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1863
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1864
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