Author: Patrick Young
Counting the Vote in 1876-Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money
Election Day 1876 had gone anything but smoothly in South Carolina. The heavily armed white Redshirt supporters of former Confederate General Wade Hampton set the…
Video: “Why Reconstruction Matters” With Henry Louis Gates, Eric Foner, and Kimberly Crenshaw
In October Columbia University did another of its free online Zoom symposiums. Here is the description from Columbia: On October 20, 2020, leading scholars examined…
By Nov. 12 Rutherford B. Hayes Comes to Terms with Defeat by “Violations of the 15th Amendment”
On November 12, 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes wrote in his diary that he had accepted that he had lost the election. He wrote that numerous…
Hayes Warns Don’t Claim Victory Until the Votes Are Fully Counted
The day after the Election of 1876, Republican candidate Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes looked over the telegrams reporting the still only partial vote tallies…
Nov. 8, 1876: White Richmonders Celebrate the Election of Tilden as President
Nerves were on edge as the balloting ended in the highly contested Election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. The…
The Plan to Suppress the Black Vote in South Carolina Revealed!: Election 1876
General Martin W. Gary was a Confederate brigadier general during the Civil War commanding cavalry. He had served in Hampton’s Legion and he had refused…
“A dead Radical is very harmless” How to Win the Election of 1876
The Election of 1876 is most well-known for what happened after the polls were closed. Fraudulent and delayed vote counts, rival state tallies of votes,…
When the White League Militia Took Over New Orleans in 1874 It Pledged to End the “Stupid Africanization” of Government
The White League was one of the largest and most dangerous of the Reconstruction Era militias. It embraced the worldview of the Ku Klux Klan,…
In 1868 the Republican Campaign Song Promised That Grant Would “Make the Ku Klux Klan Shiver”
While modern political campaigns typically employ popular music at rallies as walk-on music for candidates, in the 19th Century most campaigns came armed with a…
Around the Web October 2020: Best of the Blogs on The Civil War and Reconstruction
This is a new feature here at the The Reconstruction Era Blog: Each month I will highlight a few new articles from other blogs that…









