Political operative
Daniel Edgar Sickles sat in the Republican National Headquarters massaging his
knee. His lower leg had been destroyed by a cannonball at Gettysburg and the lower part amputated. He
had sat down to relieve the weight on his prosthetic and stared at the dismal
election returns. There was no doubt about it, the returns spelled out a
victory for Governor Samuel Tilden the Democrat who had just taken “New York,
New Jersey, Connecticut, Indiana and the entire South.” This meant that the
Republican candidate Rutherford B Hayes had just lost the election of 1876 by a
“plurality of at least 250,000 popular votes and 203 electoral votes with 185
being required for victory.”
In fact Hayes had gone to bed after realizing
he had lost. This left Sickles alone in the Republican headquarters to brood
over the returns but after staring at the numbers Sickles saw a glimmer of
hope. Oregon had not come in yet and neither had South Carolina, Florida, and
Louisiana. If these came in for Hayes then the election might be salvaged.
Sickles fired off telegrams to the Republican's who oversaw the election boards
in the Southern states and Oregon. “With your state sure Hayes, he is elected.
Hold your state.” Hold your state was code for change the results whatever they are to a
win for Hayes. By morning Oregon and South Carolina had let him know they would
comply. Sickles fired off another telegram, “vigilance and diligence that enemy
could be defeated yet.” Now the nation went into an electoral crisis. Hayes had
won the general election by 250,000 but Sickles got the Republican leaders in
line and told them all not concede. By contesting electoral votes in Oregon,
Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, the disputed electoral votes could be
delivered to Hayes.
There was still no clear winner as March 4
neared. Inauguration day might see no clear winner and Congress convened a
bipartisan Electoral Commission. This was for the public and to show that the
dispute was being mediated but behind the scenes the Presidency was being sold
off. The Senators from the South wanted Reconstruction gone. They wanted
federal troops out of their states. A deal was proposed to the Republicans.
They could have their President Hayes, if the South received “his solemn pledge
to bring full home rule to the Southern states and an immediate end to the
Reconstruction regime.”
The deal was struck and Rutherford B. Hayes
became President and as a result of “the corrupt bargain” Reconstruction was
ended and the Jim Crow South moved in with “Black Codes” and would last until
the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The Presidency had been sold off on the
back of newly freed African Americans and America had its first fraudulent
President. Hayes was referred to from then on as "his faudulency." Everything including the Presidency in the Gilded Age seemed to be
for sale...history always repeats itself.
