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 tone with paramilitary operations near polling places. In Greenville white Democrats set up a “Police Force” around the polls that admitted whites only to vote. In the counties of Edgefield and Laurens more Democratic votes would be cast than the total number of registered voters. [1]

Even after the polls closed, the violence continued. White and Black crowds clashed in Charleston, leaving one African American and two whites dead, and two dozen men of both races wounded. [2]

In Louisiana Black registered voters outnumbered whites by 104,191 to 84,167. In spite of this majority of Black voters, the Democrats won the count in Louisiana by 7,000 votes. Charges of the suppression of Black voting were rampant in the Pelican State. [3]

While Rutherford B. Hayes seemed to accept his defeat through voter intimidation, many other Republicans did not. On Election Night former Union General Dan Sickles dropped by Republican headquarters  in Madison Square in Manhattan to review the results. Republican Party chairman Zachariah Chandler had already gone  to bed when the notorious political general arrived. Looking at the returns, he became convinced that the vote would be close in Oregon, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina and that if the Republicans won those states Hayes would be the next president. [4]

Sickles composed a telegram to Republican leaders in those four states which he, with the collusion of Chester Arthur sent out signed by Chairman Chandler, even though the Republican boss was not told of “his” telegram before it was sent out. The telegram said “With your state sure for Hayes, he is elected. Hold your state.” Each Republican recipient was to believe that he alone could save the party. [5]

Sickles sat through the night waiting for telegrams in response. Finally Republican Governor Daniel Chamberlain of South Carolina wired back; “All right. South Carolina is for Hayes. Need more troops. Communications with interior cut off by mobs.” [6]

The same night, John Reid, managing editor of The New York Times, learned that the Democrats seemed worried about their margins of victory in some states. Reid was an Andersonville Prison survivor with strong feelings about the restoration of former Confederates to power in the South. As the other New York papers were awarding the election to Democrat Samuel Tilden, the Times called the contest too close to call. Reid may have been fortified in his opinion by telegrams coming from Southern Republicans in response to Sickles’s earlier wires.

The Times came out with an editorial the day after the election warning:

“At the time of going to press with our first edition the result of the presidential election is still in doubt…Enough has been learned to show that the vote has been unprecedentedly heavy; that both parties have exhausted their full legitimate strength … and that in some of the states where the shotgun and rifle clubs were relied upon to secure a Democratic victory, there is only too much reason to fear that it has been successful.” [7]

With the conservative Southern media claiming Tilden had triumphed and the Republican organ The New York Times arguing for a close count, the path was laid for months of destabilizing conflict. In an era when a media organization could seem identical to the party it supported, editor John Reid went to Republican Chairman Chandler and demanded that he order Republicans in Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon to refuse to concede defeat. He took the telegrams to the Western Union office and sent them charged to a New York Times account. [8]

In the days that followed, both parties sent prominent lawyers and political leaders to the disputed Southern states to try to win the election long after the last ballot had been cast. Florida’s capital Tallahassee, for example,  was flooded by Republican luminaries like William Chandler, former Ohio governor Edward F. Noyes and Union generals Francis Barlow and Lew Wallace. Chandler allegedly brought $10,000 cash with him, about a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money to cover whatever the party’s great men needed to purchase. [9]

Note on the Feature Illustration: This is a detail from Thomas Nast’s Death at the Polls published in Harper’s Weekly in 1879.

Notes:

1. State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina by Richard Zuczek pp 190-191
2. State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina by Richard Zuczek pp. 191-192
3. The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 by Paul Haworth (1906) note 120.
4. The Sickles Memorandum: Another Look at the Hayes-Tilden Election-Night Conspiracy byJerome L. Sternstein Journal of Southern History Vol 32 No. 3 Aug. 1966. The article reproduces Sickles’s memorandum on the telegrams.
5. Id.
6. Id.
7. Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (p. 23). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
8. Id.
9. Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (pp. 196-197). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Additional Sources:

Southern Democrats in the Crisis of 1876-1877: A Reconsideration of Reunion and Reaction by Michael Les Benedict in The Journal of Southern History Vol. 46, No. 4 (Nov., 1980), pp. 489-524 (36 pages)

Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 by Roy Morris published by Simon & Schuster (2007)

State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina by Richard Zuczek published by University of South Carolina Press (1996)

The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 by Paul Haworth (1906)

By One Vote: The Disputed Election of 1876 by Michael Holt published by University of Kansas Press (2008)

Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction by C. Van Woodward published by Oxford University Press (1966)

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President by Ari Hoogenboom published by University of Kansas Press (1995)

The Reconstruction Presidents by Brooks D. Simpson University Press of Kansas; 2nd edition (1998)

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