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contest of 2000. and it's no coincidence, in fact, that three years after the 2000 lection, two new books about the election of 1876 appeared ith the 2000 contest clearly in mind. one was by a bitter democrat. its title says it all. braud of the century,

rother ford b hey. the republicans had stolen elections before. the other interesting thing, lee, was former chief -- which was sort of subtle defeet or subtle degeese in. he went into deciding whether to settle the election of 1876. there were certainly parallels, sometimes eerie. in 1876, as in pho two. as in 2000, electoral votes were in dispute, including the electoral roets of florida but

also the electoral votes of south carolina and louisiana that were being disputed. in act, all three of those states ent contesting sets of electoral votes to washington to be counted. now, there's emocratic electors and republican electors. in 2000, here were people who counted rutherford b. hays as an. i was originally approached by editors of a new series for the university of kansas on presidential elections. they

said, would you write one on 1848? or 1860. and as george said, i would spend a lot of time riding about the. we got on the topic of 1876 and why would i want to do that? well, i had written some chapters in a new version of a textbook called the civil war and rejuxz - chapters of reconstruction a bit yert. there was the onstruction of two things of the one was the university of colorado as a centennial state in the summer of 1876. why, i wanted to know, did this happen? because the admission of colorado with its three

electoral votes changed the game. arguably, it was the single most important thing preventing the democrat tilden from winning the election, because had colorado not been admitted as a state, the winning electoral vote majority would have been 184 electoral votes, which is exactly what tilden got. he was beaten 185 to 184 in the electoral vote count. absent colorado, tilden would have won no matter what happened to the dispute from the south. and since the democrats had a 19-seat majority in the house and representatives in 1876, i wondered, how can they be so full formal. when the hp heblt. they could have stopped it and said if an election is held and a constitution is ratified

before july 4, 1876, the resident shall admit it as a state without any further action by congress whatsoever. so the republics neutered a few of them before they even ontrolled both sided of. the election of 1876 is an anomaly in the sense of what happens to political parties during depressions. this election occurred in the midst of a really severe depression, the depression was 1870s was the most severe. depression in the 19 this you end up getting them

in politics. it was true in the 1830s. the end party takes a he lacking in the off year congressional elections that precede the presidential election and then they get these following the presidential elections. this happens with the wings in 1840, t happens with the republicans in the 1890s, i want to say it happened with the democrats in the 189900s. they won the presidential campaign. that didn't happen. in the 1870s, the democrats won big. proportionally, they had the biggest turnaround of congressional seats in american

history. over a third of the seats switched hands from republicans to democrats in 1874 and 1875, but then the republicans won the election, the presidential election, although democrats at the time would say, no, they didn't win it, they stole it. the third hing that interests me about this election was mentioned by george. and when i asked to write about it, i didn't even know this. it had the highest turnout of voters proportionately of any election n american history. 81.8% of males over 21 apparently vote. ow, some of this turnout was

clearly fraudulent. south carolina reported a turnout of 101% of the eligible electorate. the edgefield county, which was an upstate county along the savannah river, reported 2,000 more votes than there were adult males in the county. there was a reason for this, by the way. edgefield is right across the savannah river in augusta, georgia. a lot of georgians came across the river and voted in georgia. that pushed up the total. this total turnout also includes southern states where the turnout was artificially depressed or repressed by white

democratic violence against blacks so that they wouldn't vote republican. and i want to read you -- i think i have this arked in the right spot -- ive you some examples of this. in louisiana, three parishes of wichita, east baton rouge and west baton rouge had 2100 whites on the voter registration list and 5300 blacks. they reported together democratic majority of 3,000. the registration list in west

eliciana parish reported 436 whites and 2200 blacks, yet the reported vote was 485 for tilden and only 428 for hayes. registered blacks outnumbered registered whites, 2100 to ,000, yet there was no recurrent vote for hayes, and 1700 for tilden. louisiana parishes at the time, and this i find fascinating. this is probably one thing from this talk you might remember going away from it. the louisiana parishes at the time mpwere described as being bulldozed. you think back for a minute. wait a minute. this is 1876. there aren't gasoline engines yet. there aren't bulldozeerres. why were these

parishes spoken of as being bulldozed and the answer is as a reporter from the "new york times" wrote back who had gone down to louisiana after the election, the term bulldoze comes from the practice of whipping blacks with a bull hip if they said they were going to vote republican. and that is the source of the term we still use, bulldozer and bulldoze. it was giving blacks the dose of the bull whip if hey dared to think about voting republican. so one thing that is very clear is that had this been a fair election, had outhern blacks been allowed to

vote freely and fairly, the republicans would have run away with the election. but they were suppressed, kept from voting in most southern states except for three, and some of those that the republicans still controlled, in louisiana, florida and south carolina where they controlled the returning votes. i thought about this this morning. i used to play tennis with a guy when i still taught at yale who came up with a great line. i'm looking at paul with whom i used to play tennis here. he came up with a line one day. he said a good call beats a good hot every time. out! you know, out! and so a good count, the republicans could count the votes, a good count could be

the actual returns any time. so, i want to get to the dispute in a minute, but let me - first of all -- what might explain this high turnout. this is really unprecedented in the sense of an equal turnout of voters. well, it wasn't the candidates, although the contrast between the candidates itself is very -- it wasn't the candidates but, of course, candidates did not campaign in the 19th century. that was erforbidden. you didn't go out on the stump. others campaigned for you. the two candidates were interesting. actually,

there were three candidates -- actually, four, but there was a greenback candidate, too, that i can mention in there. but rutherford b. hayes was in his third term as governor of ohio when this election returned he was a veteran of the civil war who had enlisted as a major in n ohio regiment at the given age of 34, he was a hail, hearty guy, who was the father of eight living children at the time of this election. hayes was an interesting guy. he was a real bibliophile. he loved books. he loved he was introduced in the nominating peech. you hear this all the

ime. but the guy actually said it. the democratic candidate could not have been more different. he was a lifelong achelor. he was a very wealthy uy. had a big house on rammerson park that is now

omething called the national artist club. it was his estate that was used to build new york public library that massive building on 42nd street and fifth venue. and then the third candidate interestingly enoughlived across grammerson park at

the end of lexington avenue, and this was peter cooper, the immensely wealthy guy in new york city. and interestingly nough, cooper's son-in-law ived in this house with him on the corner of grammerson park nd lexington avenue. running he campaign. he is the guy who won a three-way mayoral race in new york against young theodore ut, so he lives around the

corner. so what were the ssues. this is a campaign. here is extensive unemployment and suffering. yet neither party offered any propose al proposal for doing anything bout the depression with one exception. but there was a reason for this. and that is that the target of both parties in this campaign were people

known as liberal republicans. bolded the republican ticket. hey nominated boris greeley. they were regarded as an ndependent vote. this is the emocrat. this is the democratic candidate announces in his letter accepting the democratic nomination. 6,000 words long. the problem he said is that the government taxes too much. the government has taken too much money out of the economy by tax s taxes robbing in base of funds for investment

in the economy in a way to bring about economic recovery s to cut taxes. aside from the green backers. the major parties didn't offer any hope f immediate economic relief. what were the issues. well, one that i don't want to get into happened to be money. and it ad to do with this supply of united states notes. or the so-called green backs that were in circulation and what it would take to get back to a gold standard of payments. i won't get into that other than

to say that both parties were split on east west lines over what to do about this. there are still some green backs in circulation, or at least in people's whether they keep money as souvenirs. and then these united states notes with red stamp. the supply of them now is almost totally confined o $2 bills. what to do about those whether they have to contract the supply of them. another issue that was very

dear to the republican ss was an open attack on catholics. his was all fictitious, but, this was a certainly a hayes thought this was the winner. a big issue for the democrats. nd republicans had to go along and reform. we're going reform overnment. the democrats are aying we're going clean up

government. we need a new party to do it. the republicans are saying we're going to clean up government. we have got hayes. let's just get honest people in office. not economic reform of any kind was to accusing the emocrats as being the party of the confederacy. the warning here was we're not promising

any more programs to protect black voters in the south but if the democrats win, the confederates are going to get back in power. you know what hey will do. for all the value, the dollar value of what they lost because of emansipation. and i have to say the democrats helped the epublicans make this charge. the democrats take over the house of representatives the first thing they do is fire all f the clerks. one arm, one leg, they are all fired. and they replace them all with

confederate army veterans. and t's, you know, 9% in iowa. 98% in indiana. these are huge urnouts. of the eligible voters. because they saw this s the last chance. the turnout or democrats in the south. i

was going to give you great examples of rhetoric from this election but let me move on. what is the dispute about. who on those states was going to be determined by returning boards that were controlled by republicans in all three states. these were the last states that republicans controlled during reconstruction. and it was clear the morning after the election that tilden had this 184 electoral votes and that hayes had 166 and that these 19 electoral votes from the south were being disputed. democrats

by the way, also tried to steal vote that they didn't -- that they didn't deserve from oregon by challenging an elector, but the real dispute was these 19 votes from the south. and just like 2000, i think was most -- clearly the most exciting presidential election in my life because it lasted so long, you know, went on for weeks and weeks after the election -- both sides lawyered up. they lawyered up in florida and south carolina, with louisiana they just carried cash and the return was clearly up for sale in louisiana. they offered to both democrats and republicans $100,000, i'll make sure you get the votes. this is the irst election, interestingly enough, where both parties in

south carolina and -- actually in all three states -- the parties go to the courts. this is the first presidential election in the 19th century that i know of where people go to courts seeking rulings that is going to give them an advantage. and the use of courts in florida was particularly interesting. a democratic judge gave writs of quo warranto to the democratic electors to serve on the republican electors. a writs of quo warranto is by what right do you hold this office and you have to appear in court and prove that you deserve to be -- to cast the electoral vote for that state. later the supreme court of florida, the state

supreme court rules that in fact the democrats had won the election. interestingly enough, the people who settled the election in washington reject that claim. exactly the same logic that they used in bush v. gore. the constitution specifies that state legislatures will determine how electors are chosen. state courts have no say in the matter whatsoever. it is beyond their jurisdiction. only state legislatures can decide this. kay. anyway, contested electoral votes are sent up to washington. and the question is how do we count them? how do we count them? the 12th amendment to the constitution specifies that electors are to meet on a certain day. it was december

6th, 1876 in this case. cast their votes, have them signed by the governor of the state, put them in sealed envelopes and send them to the president of the senate and at a meeting of a -- a joint meeting of the house and the senate, whether it was a joint session was actually something that was disputed at the time, but a joint meeting in the house chamber of the house and senate this -- the 12th amendment says that the president of the senate, this was a republican named thomas ferry, the vice president, shall open the votes and then the language is this, and the votes shall then be counted. never in american history has the imprecision of the passive voice meant so

much. counted by whom? well, avoid the passive voice. counted by whom? well, there was a dispute. the republicans said it means the president of the senate can count them because the republicans had a majority in the senate. the democrats who have this huge majority in the house of representatives say, no way, if you insist on that, we're simply not going to hold a joint session, you have to come over to the house chamber for this. we won't count the vote. nobody will have an electoral majority because we won't count any votes and the constitution says nobody has an electoral majority, the house of representatives will pick the president and we'll pick among ourselves or we'll use the 22nd joint resolution which the senate had repealed but there is a big question whether one

chamber can repeal a joint esolution. this allowed -- several judges said this is flatly unconstitutional. it allowed any member of the house or senate to challenge one or all electoral votes from the state, the house and the senate go to their separate chambers. if any house upheld this challenge, the electoral votes are thrown. the electoral votes are thrown out by a challenge. the democrats threaten to use that. so there is sort of a stalemate and then they come up with this idea of forming what became known as the federal electoral commission. and this called for five members of the senate, three republicans and two democrats, five members of the house, three democrats and two republicans and five members of the -- five justices of the supreme court to hear isputed returns when they came

up. the way the members of the court were to be picked is that the bill forming this commission cited certain circuits and in those days the supreme court justices still rode circuit. we want such and such a judge in that circuit and that. it came with two democrats and two republicans and those four guys were to pick the fifth member and they had to be from associate justices, nobody wanted the chief justice. and everybody elieved this was going to be david davis, a fat judge from illinois who had been run in lincoln's campaign in 1860. but the day before congress is going to vote on this bill, the democrats in the illinois legislature with some

greenbackers, third party, elect david davis as the next u.s. senator from illinois to replace a republican blackjack logan. davis refuses to serve on this. he said, i'm not a judge. he refuses to serve on this electoral commission. so they -- the four guys pick another guy named joseph bradley from new jersey. what happens? well, i can give you the bottom line because i want to leave time for questions. the votes are counted in the joint session and that's where this is a picture of the actual painting, the actual joint session which the votes were counted on the book. when they got to florida, the disputed returns are sent to this commission. and there and on all of the disputes there is a dispute or this one vote from oregon, on all of the disputes the commission votes 8-7 to give the votes to hayes. 8-7. there is another one vote. 8-7. so hayes is counted in. but the democrats, and this is the scene i want to leave you with, what a scene it would have

been. the democrats still didn't get up. once it was clear that they -- that this commission was going to rule for the republicans, because there are eight republicans on it and seven democrats, all the time, people start writing ilden. and they say, we want you to go to court and get writs of quo warranto to serve n hayes. and one guy says -- he said i want you to get that writ of quo warranto and i want

you to be at the inauguration on inauguration day and after he takes the oath of office, but before he gives his inaugural address i want you to serve it on him, right there on the steps of the capitol. so he spends all four years in court trying to defend his right to hold office. that would have been a scene for the history >> i invite you. those who would like to ask questions of professor holt to join me in the back of the room in just a minute. we have time -- we will have time for a few questions. michael, i'd like to kick it off by asking what difference did this election make? i know that you argue in your book that the policy differences

between the two parties were slight and probably if this election had gone to the democrats, it might very well not have made a great deal of difference in what happened over the next several years. and you argue that the restoration of political equilibrium is the important legacy of the election of 1876. could you expand on that a bit? >> geez, george. you did read he book. holy cow. yeah, well, first of all, let me expand on why i don't think it made any difference. hayes is often accused of betraying the last vestige of reconstruction by ordering -- people say he removed troops from the states,

remaining states. he didn't remove troops. he ordered them back to their barracks away from state capitols. but in fact, grant had given that order even before hayes was inaugurated. it just went astray. but can we believe that if a democrat had got in there you wouldn't have removed those troops from the south? the two -- there was an attempt, but it was a stalemate to get a constitutional amendment, so-called blaine amendment, prohibiting public support -- public support for catholic schools. at that time, by the way, the bill of rights had not been incorporated as it is called by courts which meant that people said it only applies this prohibition about religion applies only to federal government states allowed to establish religion and aid religion if they want to. but there was -- there was never a chance that that constitutional amendment would pass, even though it had been

an issue in the campaign. specie payments were resumed on january 1st, 1879, just as the republican law called for. i don't think it would have been any faster and it certainly wouldn't have been any slower had tilden won the election. the one area that one has to guess in that is we know that there was a massive violent strike by railroad workers in 1877 and that hayes ordered federal troops in to break up the strike in a number of the cities. it is difficult for me to believe since tilden was so close to railroads and all this money from railroads and merging railroad companies that he wouldn't have done the same thing to protect the railroad property but that's iffy. the equilibrium that i'm talking

about is that, you know, republicans had won four lections in a row going into -- presidential elections in a row. they controlled both houses of congress since 1860. it was a dominant majority and what happened in this election, because of the increase in the democratic vote, especially in the south, that the parties grew towards equilibrium. and, indeed, until the 1890s, except for a two-year stretch, you had this same situation where democrats controlled the house and republicans controlled the enate. at the -- and in many northern states, the parties became much more competitive than they had been for the

remainder of -- well, until the so-called voter realignment of the 1890s. where as it was this election and this was -- this election, though you could see it from the 1874 congressional congress, that really you have the real evidence of a one-party democratic south, which really shows up in congressional returns from the former confederate states, despite the dispute over the electoral votes. >> hi. i have a couple of questions sort of relating to today. my first is if the u.s. system is so great, i wouldn't think there would be so many disputed elections. i was wondering if you think it is inevitable in a country like ours where discussion is so valued or if there is a better way. and the second question is, do you think the issues today are not as mobilizing as the issues of the 1876 election or is there another reason why voter turnout is so low?

> good question. i don't think the issues -- if i can take your second question first -- are as mobilizing because the civil war was still fresh in people's minds in 1876. and when the republicans said the damn rebels are going to get control of the national government, everything we fought for is going to be wasted, this was a gut issue, an appeal -- an issue with gut appeal and whites in the south said, we're fighting for white supremacy. they made no bones about it. the southern democrats, their rhetoric was very ugly. and this was an issue with appeal. there also, i think, you know, the parties had to work very hard to gen up

that kind of turnout. and there were big machines. most of you probably don't know it, my colleagues from the history department do, but in the 19th century, state governments and local governments didn't print ballots. it was up to political parties themselves to print and distribute ballots. so it took a lot of manpower to get those ballots to the polls and they would do -- they would canvas voters, find out before who ould vote for who. with regard to your other question, it eems to me, in fact, that what is remarkable about american

history from 1788 on is now few disputes have been about the results of presidential lections. we had two go to the house of representatives. and i don't know -- how many people here know in the original onstitution, before the 12th amendment prosecution that it said the top five candidates in electoral votes will go to the house and had to be decided on ather than the top three which was in the 12th -- so we had an 1800 and 1824, you had elections go to the house of representatives. you clearly had a violent reaction to the results of the 1860 election. it provokes secession in the deep south. but you didn't have

people disputing the results. they could be angry about the results. so again, it seems to me what is interesting is how few the disputes had been. >> i felt the statistics you gave on the how the whites kept the blacks out of the south voting is astounding. my question is, weren't there still federally controlled troops in the south that the republicans could have used to help if it would have made such a huge deal in the election if the blacks had been allowed to vote to help ensure they were protected and could have voted? ? show less text >> there were very few troops. but, grant, that's a good question. grant had ordered troops to south carolina ecause of so-called red shirts or rifle clubs refused to turn in their weapons when the republican government asked for it. but all of those troops were stationed at the polls.

they were there and there were federal supervisors in the south as well as in northern cities actually. at the polls. but what the democrats did was stop to ask before they got to the polls, out of sight of the troops, to keep them from voting. let me give you one example that is just sort of hair raising. but it was testimony before the returning board in louisiana from a black woman. and she comes under guard of soldiers and relates the following story. a gang of whites came to our house two days before the election. they asked my husband who he was going to vote for. i was standing there with a baby in my arms. he said he was going to vote republican and they

shot and killed him on the spot. they shot and killed the baby in my arms and they stabbed me and gang raped me. this is what whites were doing n these states to intimidate blacks. what is extraordinary, actually, if you look and take louisiana case, we have a great senior thesis written by one of my former undergraduate students here, the guy later clerked on the supreme court, he was a good guy, but he did this study that showed actually black turnout for republicans espite all this harassment increased in 1876 from previously. but what he also saw is that where as, you know, about 60% of whites had voted in 1872, 94% of them voted in 1876 for the democrat. this huge increase in white turnout in the election.

>> professor holt, thank you very much. really interesting topic and interesting resentation. it brings to mind some of your comments with regards to catholicism which affected the 1932 election as well as was very prominent iscussed in the 1960 election. also, the vote of the dead or there are more votes cast than here were people present appen at these -- rumor had it happened in chicago in the 1960 election. any comments on those, please? >> well, there certainly were rumors about that in chicago in

1960. and there probably had some basis to them. i think the catholic issue was more central actually in 1928 than in 1932 because al smith was the democratic candidate. but let me comment on this. well, i on't think dead people voted n south carolina. i know the comment. let me -- i want to write this down while i emember it. real people voted, they just weren't residents of the county in which they voted. they rode over from georgia and often voted -- south carolina id not have a registration

list of voters. and this actually ended up the biggest challenge that democrats made to the south carolina results. the state constitution requires that voters be registered and they have never been registered, the whole election is unconstitutional, you had to throw out the votes of south carolina. real people voted, they just voted illegally. but my -- what i wrote down was, and i didn't get into this -- what was feared by democrats when they found out that the republicans were going to florida in particular and what was feared by republicans at the same time, actually, was that florida was a big state and most of the people who lived in it were up in the northern counties. but there were people in key west and other counties, took a long time for the vote to get in.

and what republicans feared and one legal maneuver by democrats was what they want to do is they want to find out, they want to hurry up the count of the vote to find out how many votes hayes has. so then they can rig the returns from the counties that hadn't turned in yet to win the election. and this is lyndon johnson's first election in the senate in texas, that all the south texas votes. he waits to find out what he needs and they are en'd up. >> yes, quick question. what do you see as the essential difference between 1876 and 2000? is it just voter intimidation in '76? > joe, that's a good question.

voter intimidation is certainly ne of the big differences. the other difference is minor, but t is intriguing to me. there was far more tribunal shopping in florida in 2000. let's find a judge that is going to rule our way than there was in ither florida or south carolina in 1876. you had all odd things that the south carolina supreme court jailed the entire republican returning board for contempt of court because they brought in returns efore the supreme court said they could. but there weren't

as many -- you couldn't forum shop as much as was true in 000. >> professor holt, thank you for coming. i have a couple of questions. it seems to me that nowadays every disputed lection ends up with the argument being brought up that the electoral college should be abolished. i was wondering if a, that was present at this time. and the second question i had for you was, how salient were discussions of fraudulence of the general public and did that matter in 1876? >> there were a lot of discussions among democrats who were bitter about the result after it was elected and there were a lot of people who considered hayes a fraudulent president for most of his term. i happen to like hayes. i find a lot about him that is admirable. he was a scholar,

collected books. he liked books. i'm sorry, remind me of he second. >> essentially just in an age of a lack of expansive media coverage on disputed election like this how much did the public opinion matter and also were the discussions of abolishing the electoral college. unidentified speaker >> yeah, that's good. actually, two years before the event, in january and february of 1875, a republican senator from indiana named oliver p. morton gets up in the senate and said, we're going to have a crisis counting the electoral votes because the democrats control the house and the republicans the senate and we're heading for big trouble if this happens. he said, what we have to do is change the way we count electoral votes. and

he -- he proposed a constitutional amendment. he said, he went over and said, you know, there is -- the electoral vote totals are wildly disproportionate than the popular vote totals. and all these elections. he said, what we need to do is have two state wide electoral votes in each state and all the other electors chosen by congressional district so the minority counts. let's get rid of winner take all. i think that's a terrific idea. and that used to be the way before you adopted winner take all systems. public opinion mattered. as i argue in the book, these committees of so-called visit states men and republicans and democrats that go down to louisiana and it is no surprise that a lot more people wanted to go to new

orleans, which was then the state capital of louisiana than go to tallahassee. there were a lot of them there, all staying at a st. charles hotel in new orleans, and their biggest concern, because the --1 the returning board there wreaked of corruption. everybody knew it was corrupt. everybody knew heir votes were for sale. it was a big pr campaign on the art of -- let's make sure that this -- that the north can accept, people in the north can accept the decision that louisiana is going to make. so they were concerned about public opinion. public opinion was very upset. this is -- i on't particularly like tilden. i admire his bequest to the new ork public library, but tilden

received literally scores of telegrams and letters saying i can raise 5,000 troops tomorrow and we're going to march on washington and stall you at the point of the bayonet. scores of letters like this. there was talk of appointing civil war veterans, george mccleland, to lead the democratic army and march on washington and tilden said no. no way are we going to do that. i think it was his finest hour in this dispute that we were not going to result -- or row resort to armed force like that. >> following the 2000 election i was at a small breakfast where one of the chief council counsel for one of the parties was talking about the election. he commented that it is not who votes that counts. it's who who counts the votes that counts. >> good call.

>> true in 2000, true in 1876. >> that's right. >> thanks, michael holt. >> ok. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2016] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption contents and accuracy. visit ncicap.org >> up next on american history , steven knot offer of alexander hamilton and george washington. he argue that is the two had different personalities but collaborated on the federalist agenda to create a stronger central government, often in opposition to the views of thomas jefferson and james