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 and he became convinced that he had narrowly lost the election to Samuel J. Tilden. He worried to a reporter from the Cincinnati Times that if he was defeated, those who would suffer would be the “poor colored men of the South.” Hayes predicted that the Southern conservatives would “practically treat the constitutional amendments as nullities, and then the colored men’s fate will be worse than when he was in slavery…”
In the afternoon, rumors began to circulate that perhaps Hayes had won after all. While Hayes was unsure of the final outcome, he was still pessimistic. He asked the journalists to refrain from publishing “encouraging dispatches,” saying they might “mislead enthusiastic friends to bet on the election and lose their money.” The governor was content for the vote counting to continue to its conclusion.
That evening Republicans marched to the Hayes residence to cheer news of new hope from some presumably lost states. They hoped he would claim his victory. Hayes stepped out and addressed his supporters, saying:
“If you will keep order for one half minute…I will say all that is proper to say at this time. In the very close political contest, which is just drawing to a close, it is impossible, at so early a time, to obtain the result, owing to the incomplete telegraph communications… I accept your call as a desire on your part for the success of the Republican Party. If it should not be successful, I will have the pleasure of living for the next year and a half among some of my most ardent and enthusiastic friends as you have demonstrated tonight.”
Note on Feature Cartoon: Thomas Nast is believed to have drawn the feature cartoon “Keep Cool” ten days after the election. It was published in Harper’s Weekly on December 2, 1876. The cartoon shows Nast in a cooling unit trying to stay cool as he is being bombarded by media that claims that both Tilden and Hayes had won! The ticker tape coming out of the “Polar Cooler” alternates the names of the two candidates to show that one minute Tilden appears to have won and the next Hayes has won. The message is to “keep Cool” and wait for the final vote tally.
Source of Quotes: Fraud of the Century by Roy Morris Jr. pub. by Simon and Schuster (2007) pp. 187-188
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“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
-Mark Twain