"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." – Harry Truman
The Hayes-Tilden Affair and The Wormley Conference
(Feb. 26, 1877) In American history, meeting at Wormley's Hotel in Washington, D.C., at which leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties resolved the disputed Rutherford B. Hayes-Samuel J. Tilden presidential election of 1876.
Democrat Tilden had won a 250,000-vote popular plurality, but he fell one electoral vote short of a majority. The electoral votes of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana (as well as one vote in Oregon) were in dispute as a result of widespread vote fraud on both sides.
After the selection of a special group called the Electoral Commission and several meetings between Republicans and
Democrats, the Wormley Conference reached a compromise. The Democrats gave up their claim to the presidency in return
for promises from the Republicans to withdraw the remaining federal troops from the former Confederate states, to end
Northern interference in local Southern politics, to share Southern patronage with Democrats, and to appoint at least one Southern Democrat to the cabinet. Perhaps the most important concession of all was the Republicans' vow to support congressional appropriations for much-needed railroad construction and other internal improvements to help the war-struck Southern economy. This plan was facilitated by Hayes's sympathy with Southern whites and his desire to end Radical Reconstruction, as well as by general agreement among Southern whites with Hayes's conservative economic views.
Hayes was declared the winner on March 2, 1877, and was inaugurated three days later. In April he withdrew the troops, marking the end of Radical Reconstruction and signaling the return of white rule in the South.
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There is evidence that the Republicans entered into a secret deal with Southern Democratic leaders to withdraw Federal
troops from the South (where they were safeguarding Reconstruction) if the disputed electoral votes could be counted for Hayes. Tilden, who had received a clear majority of the popular vote, nevertheless accepted the verdict to avoid possible violence.
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The Electoral Commission (1877)
Iin U.S. history, commission created by Congress to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876 between
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. For the first time since before the Civil War the Democrats had polled a majority of the popular vote, and preliminary returns showed Tilden with 184 electoral votes of the 185 needed to win, while Hayes had 165. Three states were in doubt: Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, with 19 electoral votes among them.
The status of one of Oregon's three electors--that had already been given to Tilden--was also in question. Hayes and most of his associates were ready to concede when a New Hampshire Republican leader, William E. Chandler, observed that if Hayes were awarded every one of the doubtful votes, he would defeat Tilden 185-184. Both parties claimed victory in all three Southern states and sent teams of observers and lawyers into all three in hopes of influencing the official canvass.
The responsibility for resolving the conflicting claims rested with Congress--which was more evenly divided between the parties than it had been in decades. The U.S. Constitution provided that each state send its electoral certificate to the president of the Senate, who "shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives,
open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." But it shed no light on whether Congress might, in a disputed election, go behind a state's certificate and review the acts of its certifying officials or even if it might examine the choice of electors. If it had such powers, might it delegate them to a commission?
The impasse continued on December 6, the appointed date for electors to meet in the states. When Congress convened the
next day there were rival reports from the doubtful states. For more than six weeks maneuvering and acrimony prevailed in Congress and out, punctuated by threats of civil war. Finally, Congress created an Electoral Commission (Jan. 29, 1877) to pass on the contests. The Commission was given "the same powers, if any," possessed by Congress in the matter, and its decisions were to be final unless rejected by both houses.
The Commission was to have five members from the House of Representatives, five from the Senate, and four members from
the Supreme Court. Congressional and court contingents were divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and the
four associate justices were to name a fifth, tacitly but universally understood to be the noted independent from Illinois, David Davis. At this stage the Republican-controlled legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the state's vacant U.S. Senate seat, and he refused the commission appointment, although he stayed on the Supreme Court until March 3. Thereupon the four justices picked their colleague Joseph P. Bradley, a Republican whose record made him acceptable to the Democrats.
Bradley leaned toward Tilden's convincing claim to the Florida vote, the Commission's first action, but Republican pressures swayed him, and the Florida tally went to Hayes,
who had almost certainly lost it in fact. Thenceforward all votes followed Florida, on a straight party-line 8-7 basis. (Hayes's claim to Oregon was clearly legitimate, and fraud
and intimidation by both parties had been widespread in Louisiana and South Carolina.) The final vote was reported to Congress on February 23. After a week of ominous bluster, which Tilden did much to quiet among his aggrieved followers, a tumultuous session of Congress convened March 1 to count the electoral vote and after 4 Am the next day declared Hayes elected; he was sworn in on the following day.
The verdict was received bitterly by Democrats in the North and philosophically by those in the South, who had been
promised by Hayes's allies that federal troops would be removed promptly from the former Confederate states, as in fact they were before the end of April. The threats of violence that had recurred throughout the dispute came to naught, giving a welcome sense of assurance to both factions that, even so soon after the Civil War, self-government and domestic peace were not incompatible.
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Hayes's campaign managers challenged the validity of the returns from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, and as a result two sets of ballots were submitted from the three states. The ensuing electoral dispute became known as the
Tilden-Hayes affair. Eventually a bipartisan majority of Congress created a special Electoral Commission to decide which votes should be counted. As originally conceived, the commission was to comprise seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and one independent, the Supreme Court justice David Davis. Davis refused to serve, however, and the Republican Joseph P. Bradley was named in his place. While the commission was deliberating, Republican allies of Hayes engaged in secret negotiations with moderate Southern Democrats aimed at securing acquiescence to Hayes's election. On March 2, 1877, the commission voted along strict party lines to award all the contested electoral votes to Hayes, who was thus elected with 185 electoral votes to Tilden's 184. The result was greeted with outrage and bitterness by some Northern Democrats, who thereafter referred to Hayes as "His Fraudulency."
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The presidential election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden was the most bitterly contested in United States history. Both the Democrats and the Republicans accused each other of fraud. Not until March 2, two days before President Grant's term expired, was the issue at last settled. The electoral commission decided in favor of the Republican candidate, Hayes.
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The outcome of the election of 1876 was not known until the week before the inauguration itself. Democrat Samuel Tilden
had won the greater number of popular votes and lacked only one electoral vote to claim a majority in the electoral college.
Twenty disputed electoral votes, however, kept hopes alive for Republican Governor Hayes of Ohio. A fifteen-member
Electoral Commission was appointed by the Congress to deliberate the outcome of the election. By a majority vote of 8 to 7 the Commission gave all of the disputed votes to the Republican candidate, and Mr. Hayes was elected President on March 2.
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From Hayes' Inaugurual Address: "Upon one point there is entire unanimity in public sentiment—that conflicting claims to the Presidency must be amicably and peaceably adjusted, and that when so adjusted the general acquiescence of the nation ought surely to follow."
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