By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (review)

For twenty-four years, this reviewer has taught U.S. history survey courses. On the first day of the semester, students learn why the course is divided at 1877. This involves a quick overview of the election of 1876, when Samuel G. Tilden, a Democrat, the man who won the popular vote, lost the presidency to the Republican nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes. Most students remember the 2000 presidential election and usually perk up and express some interest, wondering how the 1876 and 2000 elections were similar. Highlight is given to the contested electoral votes in 1876 and the creation of an electoral commission and finally a compromise that brought Hayes to the White House and brought an end to Reconstruction.

So there it is, the disputed presidential election of 1876. Of course the subject is much more complex, and it is addressed in more depth at the end of the semester, but some students, especially those who are history aficionados, yearn for more details in order to comprehend this tumultuous event. Michael F. Holt, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and author of five previous books, offers a thorough study of the election.

Holt examines the relationship between the economic conditions of the country in 1876 and the political results of the election. The country was in the throes of an economic crisis caused by the banking panic in 1873. Democrats won the congressional and state elections of 1874 and seemed poised to take the White House in 1876. Holt sums up: "Yet Democrats lost the presidential election of 1876. The primary purpose of this book is to explain why" (xii).

The chapters in this study analyze congressional elections; the second session of the Forty-third Congress, from December 7, 1874, until March 1, 1875; the Republicans' fall from grace during the Ulysses S. Grant presidency; the power of the Liberal Republicans; the importance of Ohio both as a key electoral state and for its favorite son Rutherford B. Hayes; the rise of the Democrats and the emergence of Tilden as their candidate; the election of 1876; its disputed results; and the resolution of that dispute. Most important, this is the story of a Republican Party that revitalized itself in the North and brought hundreds of thousands of voters to the polls in 1876. These numbers verify that hatred and fear aroused by the Civil War still lingered and that "waving the bloody shirt" was a successful tactic in turning out the vote and electing Republicans to office.

Utilizing the Hayes and Tilden papers, diaries of the key actors, newspaper accounts, Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, the cartoons of Thomas Nast, biographies, and numerous secondary sources, Holt's study overflows with a host of details and facts. Black-and-white photographs and political cartoons are scattered through the text, an appendix contains eight tables of election statistics and Hayes's inaugural address. This is a noteworthy retelling of a familiar tale with rich facets that expose the complexity that is American politics and history.