Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In this work of popular history and scholarship, acclaimed historian and biographer Roy Morris, Jr., tells the extraordinary story of how, in America's centennial year, the presidency was stolen, the Civil War was almost reignited, and black Americans were consigned to nearly ninety years of legalized segregation in the South." "The bitter 1876 contest between Ohio Republican governor Rutherford B. Hayes and New York Democratic governor Samuel J. Tilden is the most sensational, ethically sordid, and legally questionable presidential election in American history. The first since Lincoln's in 1860 in which the Democrats had a real chance of recapturing the White House, the election was in some ways the last battle of the Civil War, as the two parties fought to preserve or overturn what had been decided by armies just eleven years earlier." Riding a wave of popular revulsion at the numerous scandals of the Grant administration and a sluggish economy, Tilden received some 260,000 more votes than his opponent. But contested returns in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina ultimately led to Hayes's being declared the winner by a specially created, Republican-dominated Electoral Commission after four tense months of political intrigue and threats of violence. President Grant took the threats seriously: he ordered armed federal troops into the streets of Washington to keep the peace.
FROM THE CRITICS
The Washington Post
Fraud of the Century is a writerly account of a fascinating chapter in American history, but longwinded on the fine points of the electioneering struggle and light on the knotty mystery of Justice Bradley's rulings. Students of the 1877 crisis who want to get a bit closer to the bottom of the affair will supplement it with a look at Woodward and Fairman. If there is a bottom. The historical truth, residing in the lost conscience of Joseph Bradley, may never be pinned down. — Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
The Denver Post
Morris' fine, objective account of the 1876 election debacle involving Hayes and Tilden is an informative, insightful and, yes, entertaining act of memory. — Dorman T. Shindler
Publishers Weekly
For those who think the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000 represented the nadir of American electoral politics, Morris (The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War) provides some muchneeded historical perspective. In 1876, New York Democrat Samuel Tilden almost certainly won the popular vote over Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But contested returns in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, as well as a legal issue in Oregon, eventually led to a 15-member congressional commission awarding Hayes all 20 contested electoral votes, giving him an improbable one-vote victory in the Electoral College. Well researched and written in clear prose, Morris's account details the stunning sequence of political dirty tricks-including overturning Tilden's nearly 8,000-vote lead in Louisiana-as well as the personalities that conspired to steal the election from Tilden. Although he maintains the decency of both candidates, Morris revives the political legacy of Tilden, portrayed here as a courageous and principled politician who stood up to the corruption of New York's Tammany Hall. Tilden chose to concede the election rather than drag the nation down a dangerous path. "It was an act of supreme patriotism," Morris concludes, "for a man who had won, if not the presidency, at least the election." In sharp contrast to the contested election of 2000, dominated by hanging chads and confusing ballots, Morris's account of the 1876 election reminds us that character can triumph over politics. Agent, Tom Wallace. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Having endured the long national nightmare of the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath, readers may find it hard to imagine any election more bizarre and problematic. But the 1876 election was even stranger, and historian Morris (The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War) does an excellent job of bringing to life this peculiar election (which he calls "one of the most brazen political thefts in American history"). Charges of vote fraud and disputed ballots in several Southern states caused the creation of a special election commission to decide the eventual winner, and a series of intrigues large and small marred the process that eventually put Rutherford B. Hayes into the White House (Ruther F-R-A-U-D, his critics called him thereafter), ended Reconstruction in this country, and cost Samuel Tilden the office he probably rightfully won. Morris has an eye for detail and a lively writing style that make this highly detailed, first-rate work of history read more like a whodunnit than a historical examination.-Michael A. Genovese, Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Respected biographer Morris (Ambrose Bierce, 1996, etc.) reconstructs in amazing detail a presidential election that profaned the rule of law and nearly rekindled the Civil War. A vivid past portrayer of such diverse Victorian personalities as General Phil Sheridan and Walt Whitman, the author here meticulously fleshes out the character and influences of the antagonists: Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican Governor of Ohio, and Democrat Samuel Tilden, Hayes's counterpart from New York. The contest, in the country's centennial year, pitted an affable born politician and bona fide war hero (Hayes) against a bookish, lifelong bachelor barrister who had once dropped out of Yale because he didn't like the food. Morris lets the reader smell the corruption accrued over 16 years of Republican administration, indelibly tarred as "Grantism" even though the two-term president in 1876 had never been touched directly by scandal. The wounded South still festered under Reconstruction, which brought carpetbaggers into sway in legislatures vacated by disqualified rebels, plus regular visits by federal troops anytime things threatened to get violent. In those days, the Democrats were the reformist party, out to curtail the size and power of the federal government while the entrenched Republicans strove to preserve and enhance it. Blacks in the South were free by decree only: armed white intimidators waited at the polls, and some local codes enabled the arrest for vagrancy of any refusing to work for their former masters at subsistence wages. The negation of Tilden's eventual 265,000-vote plurality devolved into three southern states with Republican governors, and the fraud progressed from Florida (eventhen) to Congress and the Electoral College. By the time Morris documents the entire process, with Hayes's victory declared official in February, democracy seems as dead as Wild Bill Hickok, gunned down that August in Deadwood, South Dakota. One of the nation's darkest chapters, brilliantly exhumed and analyzed with due attention to its obvious contemporary relevance.
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