OCTOBER 25, 2020 – Today’s edition of CBS Sunday Morning featured a segment on the contested presidential election of 1876—an historical episode providing valuable insights.
America had been torn asunder by the Civil War (1861- 65). In the aftermath came Reconstruction and the Civil War Amendments; for a time, Blacks in the South were afforded legal rights protected by federal troops sent by President Grant.
Unfortunately, the rest of Grant’s administration was a corrupt disaster. New faces—Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel T. Tilden—ran to replace the beleaguered president.
The outcome was what many Americans fear will unfold between Trump and Biden—one candidate winning the popular vote while falling short of an electoral-vote-victory; allegations of voter fraud; decision in the hands of a Congress split between Democrats (House) and Republicans (Senate); a Supreme Court (controlled by Republican appointees) dragged into the fray.
The dispute of November 1876 dragged on for months in a country whose war wounds were still relatively fresh. Would the tentatively re-united nation divide again? At the end of January 1877, Grant signed into law the Electoral Commission Act, establishing a panel consisting of five House members, five senators, five Supreme Court justices—four named in the statute and the fifth appointed by the four. Inevitably, commission membership split along party lines—eight Republicans, seven Democrats.
The Republican advantage, however, didn’t end the matter. Disputes over the validity of ballots in Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and Oregon created substantial controversy. House Democrats challenged the result. All their guy needed was one more electoral vote. Republican Hayes was behind by 20.
If you know anything about our story, you know President Tilden isn’t in it. What you might have missed, however, is that those Democratic House filibusterers worked out a compromise with their Republican opponents. Despite its informality, its long-term consequences earned it a formal historical title: The Compromise of 1877.
On the one hand, the “compromise” prevented the nation from ripping itself apart in what could have been a continuation of the Civil War—a Kentucky (Democratic) Congressman claimed that an army of 100,000 was prepared to march on the nation’s capital if Tilden wasn’t declared president. Many others joined the Congressman in rattling the saber.
On the other hand, the Compromise of 1877 “kicked the can” of America’s “Original Sin” right down to the present. Democrats yielded to Hayes’s election on the condition that Hayes would withdraw troops from the South, which in effect ended Reconstruction. What followed was a raft of Jim Crow laws in the South, the Great Migration, and perpetual marginalization of a whole class of American citizens.
Compromise is at the heart of politics. But in a democracy, lots of compromises wind up in proverbial “kicked cans.” As the cans tumble they often leap out of the gutter and smack future generations in the back of the head.
Know history and you’ll understand better the present—to navigate more wisely into the future . . . ducking cans kicked from the past.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
