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BOOK REVIEWS87 were doomed to failure and it still remains to be demonstrated that a coercive policy would have worked any better. Glenn Linden Southern Methodist University The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction . By Keith Ian Polakoff. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971. Pp. xiv, 343. $10.95.) Keith Ian Polakoff has made a significant revisionist contribution to the literature of Reconstruction with this much-needed monograph on the crucial and controversial presidential election of 1876. The Politics of Inertia is not a refutation of C. Vann Woodward's 1951 landmark study, Reunion and Reaction, but it is a revision of that part of Woodward's thesis which emphasized "the secret deal by which southern Democrats of 'Old Whig Antecedents' assented to the seating of Rutherford B. Hayes in return for various political and economic concessions to be granted their section by the New Administration" (p. x). Polakoff believes that Woodward concentrated too heavily on the negotiations and maneuvers of Andrew J. Kellar, Henry Boynton and William Henry Smith, ignoring the internal strife of the Republicans and the defeatist attitude of Democratic standard bearer Samuel J. Tilden. Woodward also showed a lack of concern with those Democrats and Republicans who did not participate in the negotiations. As a result, he "obtained only a partial view of the complex pattern of events leading to the inauguration of Hayes. When that pattern is seen in its entirety, however, it is clear that the diffusion of power in both major parties, and not the machinations of a handful of journalists, was instrumental in preserving peace in 1877" (p. 314n). Polakoff insists that it was the almost total inability of both the Republican and Democratic leaders to control thenown organizations, "even in a crisis demanding centralized direction," which assured a peaceful, though clumsy, solution to the disputed election (p. x). The first five chapters carefully examine the events leading to the nominations of Hayes and Tilden. The author pictures Hayes as an ambitious nonentity, obnoxious to no one, who won the nomination on the seventh ballot after a vicious convention battle between the supporters of James G. Blaine and Benjamin H. Bristow. The Democratic presidential hopeful, Samuel J. Tilden of New York, who had no trouble gaining the nomination on the second ballot, emerges as a cold, remote figure who loved the clerical work involved in organizing a political campaign; but when unforeseen developments forced him to make difficult decisions on short notice, Tilden usually failed as a political leader. The author then concentrates on the campaign of each party at the national level, where, he notes, both were equally ineffective. He also discusses the campaign in the states. Polakoff presents fascinating information concerning the political realities of 1876 in the three southern states still 88CIVIL WAR HISTORY under Radical control: Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. The remaining chapters treat the stalemate following announcement of the disputed electoral votes and the failure of either candidate to have a majority. The author faults Tilden for failing to provide leadership in this crisis and dramatize the Democratic position to the public. This failure encouraged the Republicans to carry out plans "boldly and confidently ," and created "a power vacuum that allowed the party's centrifugal forces to pull it asunder. The Democratic party never fully recovered the initiative in the dispute" (pp. 222-23). The final chapters outline the several compromises of 1877 and the resulting selection of Rutherford B. Hayes as president by the joint electoral commission. Polakoff concludes that the electoral dispute ended as it did because Hayes worked harder than Tilden to hold party factions together and because Tilden had the grace and courage to accept defeat. Both Tilden and Hayes lost control of their forces at the same time, and the result was the joint electoral commission which Illinois Democrats, in a classic breakdown of intra-party communication and coordination, helped turn into an eight to seven Republican majority through the incredibly stupid election of an "independent," Justice David Davis, to the Senate as a Democrat, resulting in Davis' replacement by Justice Joseph P. Bradley, a Republican. The commission then determined the election's final...

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