1876 U.S. presidential election

In 1876 Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, the reform governor of New York, won the popular vote over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, about 4.29 million to 4.03 million, or 51 percent to 48 percent. But the electoral count was in dispute. Tilden had 184 undisputed electoral votes, one short of the 185 needed. Twenty votes were contested: those of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, where rival officials sent in competing results, and one from Oregon, where an elector's eligibility was challenged. Hayes needed all twenty.¹²

The dispute grew out of Reconstruction. In the three Southern states, still under Republican governments backed by federal troops, Democrats used intimidation and violence to keep Black Republicans from voting, while Republican-controlled returning boards threw out enough Democratic ballots to declare Hayes the winner. Each side accused the other of fraud, with good reason. The Constitution did not say who should decide between competing returns, and the Republican Senate and Democratic House could not agree. Talk of armed conflict spread through the winter.¹

In January 1877 Congress created a 15-member Electoral Commission of five senators, five representatives and five Supreme Court justices. It was meant to have seven Democrats, seven Republicans and independent Justice David Davis, but the Illinois legislature elected Davis to the Senate and Republican Justice Joseph Bradley took his place. The commission awarded every disputed vote to Hayes by 8 to 7, and Congress declared him president on March 2, 1877, two days before the inauguration. Democrats accepted the result in what became known as the Compromise of 1877, an informal understanding that Hayes would withdraw federal troops from Southern statehouses. He did so that April, ending Reconstruction.¹²