What is the significance of the election of 1876

The presidential election of led to the end of Reconstruction. In this election, the Republican Party nominated Rutherford B. Tilden won the popular vote by , votes, but a dispute arose in the Electoral College.

If Hayes received the Electoral College votes from these states, he would win the election by a single vote to , despite losing the popular vote. The United States Congress appointed a special committee to determine how the disputed votes were to be counted.

Initially, seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and one independent served on the committee. Instead of dissociating himself from Babcock, Grant leaped to his defence. Indeed, Grant displayed an almost incredible loyalty to dubious colleagues during his Presidency.

His support of Babcock largely contributed to an acquittal. But this was just part of the rapidly mounting troubles faced by the Republican Party. In March , just eight months before the election, Secretary of War William Belknap was charged with malfeasance in office by the House of Representatives.

One month later it was James G. As Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Blaine was in a most influential position. The scandals could not have come at a more inopportune time, for the Republicans desperately needed a politically untarnished standard-bearer in the coming election and Blaine was a strong candidate. In doing so, he alienated those members of his party who sought a genuine rapprochement with the old Confederacy.

Hayes of Ohio. Hayes was a compromise between the extreme wings of the Party. Above all, his personal record and political integrity could not be seriously challenged. The year-old Hayes had a good, if not spectacular, background. Born in Delaware, Ohio, he had been raised by a widowed mother who, fortunately, enjoyed financial security. He received a degree from the Harvard Law School in and subsequently accepted a number of fugitive slave cases.

During the Civil War, Hayes rose to the rank of brevet major-general of volunteers, participated in many actions and was severely wounded. While the war still raged he was elected to Congress. He was later elected Governor of Ohio on three separate occasions and put through a number of reforms. This conciliatory statement was in sharp contrast to Resolution Number 16 of the Party Platform which went so far as to question the loyalty of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

This allegation reflected the presence of Congressmen who had fought for the Confederacy. The Democrats had no problem in devising their campaign strategy. Corruption was the issue and the Democratic Party promised reform.

On June 27th they held their convention in St Louis, Missouri. In an auditorium jammed with 5, people, Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York scored a landslide victory on the second ballot.

Tilden was a unique figure, and certainly one of the most interesting to cross the American political scene. This frail, cold, articulate bachelor commanded a crusading zeal from his supporters.

As a boy, Tilden was withdrawn and showed little inclination to mix with young people. Politics, however, fascinated him and his father fostered that interest. By he was a qualified lawyer with a continuing and consuming interest in politics.

His brilliant grasp of political matters brought him to the attention of Democratic leaders who sought his counsel. For some time Tilden studiously avoided candidacy for high public office, but his own abilities soon brought him national recognition. His popularity soared and he was elected Governor of New York. Then he broke up the Canal Ring, a group of crooks and unscrupulous politicians.

This was just what the Democratic Party wanted as a contrast to the Republican Administration. The battle lines were clearly defined. Left to themselves, it is possible that Hayes and Tilden might have kept the election campaign free from distortion of facts and bitter personal invective, but it was not to be.

Tilden was subjected to a number of damaging of charges. There seemed to be no limit to the accusations: that he was a liar, swindler, perjurer, counterfeiter and even an absurd claim that he had been in league with the infamous Tweed. In line with their basic campaign strategy, the Republicans alleged that Tilden had supported the Confederacy, the right of secession and the continuation of slavery. This all stemmed from his opposition to Lincoln in , but that was because he was a Democrat and feared a Republican victory would bring disaster to the United States.

This feeling had no bearing on his fundamental loyalty to the Union, and once the war began he had urged the quick suppression of the Confederacy. Tilden needed just one more vote in the electoral college to reach the electoral votes necessary for the presidency. Hayes, meanwhile, had Election returns from three Republican-controlled Southern states—Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina—were divided, with both sides declaring victory.

With a Republican-controlled Senate, a Democrat-controlled House and no clear presidential winner, Congress was thrown into chaos. In late January, the commission voted along party lines that Hayes had won all the contested states, and therefore the presidency, by just one electoral vote.

Furious Democrats refused to accept the ruling and threatened a filibuster. Finally, just after 4 a. Ten years later, the debacle would also result in a long-overdue law: the Electoral Count Act of , which codified electoral college procedure, as Shafer reports for the Post. Just two months after his inauguration, Hayes made good on his compromise and ordered the removal of the last federal troops from Louisiana. These troops had been in place since the end of the Civil War and had helped enforce the civil and legal rights of many formerly enslaved individuals.

In the absence of federal intervention over the next several decades, hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan flourished, and states enacted racist Jim Crow laws whose impacts continue to be felt today. As Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, and Republicans dominated in the Senate, the two sides compromised by creating a bipartisan electoral commission with five representatives, five senators and five Supreme Court justices.

Though the commission was supposed to be comprised of seven Republicans, seven Democrats and one independent, the independent—Supreme Court Justice David Davis— ended up dropping out when he was offered a Senate seat, and a Republican was named to replace him. In the end, after a series of votes along strict party lines, the commission awarded Hayes all three of the contested states in early March , making him the winner by a single electoral vote.

A political cartoon by Thomas Nast that appeared in the February 17, issue of the American political magazine Harper's Weekly. The cartoon is in response to the Compromise of The caption says "A truce—not a compromise, but a chance for high-toned men to retire gracefully from their very civil declarations of war. In fact, even as the electoral commission deliberated, national party leaders had been meeting in secret to hash out what would become known as the Compromise of Hayes agreed to cede control of the South to Democratic governments and back away from attempts at federal intervention in the region, as well as place a Southerner in his cabinet.