Customer Reviews

Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In this book, William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the American Supreme Court, looks at the disputed presidential election of 1876. In that election, which pitted Democrat Samuel Tilden against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, disputes in the election in the states of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina resulted in each of those states sending in not one, but two competing sets of returns! As there was no constitutional provision to cover this eventuality, the two parties set up a commission to determine how the returns should be treated, and, as such, determine who would become President of the United States. The commission found for the Republican Party, which left the Democrats embittered, with charges of fraud and election stealing which have echoed down to this very day.

First of all, I must say that I found this to be a very good history. Mr. Rehnquist goes into great depth to give the reader a grasp on all aspects of the controversy, giving an enormous amount of information on the proceedings and the people involved. In fact, it is not too much to say that he gave too much information. As you go through the narrative, the constant, and rather lengthy, digressions begin to get a little wearying, making the history somewhat bloated and disjointed feeling.

But, that said, I did find this to be a very interesting look into that dispute, and I now understand a good deal about it that I never did before. The Chief Justice deals with it in a very even-handed manner, pointing out the hypocrisies and underhanded practices perpetrated by both parties; such as the Republicans' use of an all-Republican Returning Board in Louisiana to reject some 13,000 Democratic votes(!), and the Democrats' blatantly illegal double return from Oregon and the terrorist suppression of the African-American vote throughout the South, spearheaded by such groups as the Ku Klux Klan.

Overall, I found this to be a very good, if somewhat bloated history. If you are interested in reading an even-handed look at the disputed election of 1876, then I do recommend that you get this book.

This book, as it happens, came to my eyes just after I read another book also discussing the 1876 election, by Roy Morris, entitled "Fraud of the Century" (which I have also reviewed). The books could not have been more different. Morris' book is a partisan polemic who uses his book on the 1876 election as a way to criticize the result on the 2000 election, which he considers to be "stolen," just as he does the 1876 election. Rehnquist, of course, could (as one of the most important players in the drama that was the 2000 election) have used 1876 in the same manner to defend the 2000 result. But this is not what he does.

Instead, the book provides a lot of political background, so that one can put yourself in the position of an 1876 American. And he gives biographical information about the five Supreme Court Justices on the Electoral Commission, which essentially decided the result, as well as about David Davis, who was intended to be on the Commission, but felt he could not serve when the Illinois legislature chose him to a Senate seat. (Rehnquist points out that Davis' Senate term would not have begun until after the Commission rendered its decisions, so that he probably could have served, but he felt honor-bound to decline to serve.) I had always wondered why the Democrats controlling the Illinois legislature would "shoot themselves in the foot" by choosing Davis; this book actually makes it understandable.

Of course, there were fifteen members of that commission, five Senators and five Representatives as well as those five Justices. The Democratic-controlled Senate chose three Democrats and two Republicans while the Republican-controlled House reversed those numbers. (Among those Republicans was James A. Garfield, who became President four years later!) Since Rehnquist felt that those political people would obviously vote according to their partisan inclinations, he concentrates on the Supreme Court Justices. It might have been interesting, however, to know more about some of those Congressional members as well, I think.

Another thing that occupies Rehnquist in this book, and which some reviewers seem to have objected to his including, is a summary of the various times that Supreme Court justices have acted outside the judicial arena. But I think that Rehnquist is justified in doing this. He is in this book attempting to decide whether Justice Bradley especially, but also the other four Justices on the Commission, were doing something that judges should not do. And his conclusion, that it was probably not the sort of thing that a Justice should normally do, but in this case it probably was necessary to save the country, seems a reasonable one in the light of the circumstances.

I very much preferred this book to Morris' book, and I think, as befits the judicial position of its author, it comes much closer to impartiality. But it is probably as hard to write about 1876 impartially, even more than a century later, as to write about 2000 impartially. And so, while this book falls short of total impartiality, it comes closer enough to make it the better book by far.

The author presents the facts of case pretty much as a lawyer would. The presentation appears to be complete and detailed. But a professional historian would have taken a different tack. Personally, I feel that Chief Justice Rehnquist presentation was excellent.

I particularly liked the Chief Justice's analysis of what might have been Justice Bradley's thought processes in arriving at his opinions. I do not believe that a professional historian could have provided this type of insight into the situation.

I enjoyed this book and found it very informative about the 1876 election.

Then Rehnquist loses his focus at the end, including a lengthy chapter summarizing how the U.S. Supreme Court has played an extra-judiciary role in American government throughout American history. That chapter did not seem to belong in this book. It was as though Rehnquist wrote it as an essay to justify his Court's role in the 2000 election, and he needed a place to put it. I got frustrated and bored during that chapter, and finally decided that I was not obligated to finish it, and I stopped.

I recommend reading this book until the last chapter, which you can skip.

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist has tackled one of the most insteresting, yet understudied, episodes in presidential election history by detailing the events of the disputed 1876 presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. While providing ample material highlighting the historical background for the election and its key participants, Rehnquist, quite naturally, focuses on the role of the judiciary in the settlement of the disputed electoral votes. Five key Supreme Court members were a part of the congressionally appointed commission which ultimately decided the outcome of the election, and Rehnquist spares few details in identifying the motives and justifications for their decisions.

Unfortunately, Rehnquist completely dodges comparisons between the 1876 election and the disputed 2000 election. No doubt that Rehnquist, who is both a sitting jurist as well as a major player in the final outcome of the 2000 campaign, would have a lot to say about the connections between 1876 and 2000. However, Rehnquist avoids this issue entirely, leaving us without a greater historical connection and context between the two elections.

Still, this is a fascinating story of elections, partisanship, aspirations, and egos, one that has timely relevance for a nation that today is sharply divided politically.

William H. Rehnquist was a great American -- scholar, lawyer, public servant, jurist -- but here he shows his mischevious side in writing a book about a centennial crisis of 1876 instead of the one that he was at the center of in 2000. I can imagine that goofy smile going into overdrive as this great man dictated this work. It is unfortunate today that we have not done much to recognize Rehnquist's contributions.

In 1876 the country and its elected officials were even more divided than we saw in 2000 after eight years of Clinton/Gore tactics. Both Hayes and Tilden had reasonable claims on the electoral college but Congress was at a stalemate to resolve this. For this one election only the leaders divised a commission scheme to include some members of the Supreme Court into this mess. Eventually the commission resolved in favor of the Republican Hayes and Tilden was put out to pasture. Not that Hayes did much with the opportunity; there was even talk 4 years later of dusting off the old war horse US Grant to return to office.

Rehnquist is not much of an historian. There is no new analysis or commentary on these events but rather a recitation of the facts presented evely, albeit with some editorial commentary on the capabilities or qualifications of key players.

What the Chief adds here is a historical view of the role of the Supreme Court. He speaks at length about how the role and the responsibilities of the Court has changed since the Revolution. There have only been a handful of times when Supreme Court justices took on extra-judiciary responsibilities, such as negotiating treaties, leading war claims tribunals, or most famously investigating the murder of a President. Rehnquist reviews these occassions and the issues they presented with his unique sense of the role of the law in our society. Fortunately we seem to have survived them all although it seems unlikely that any will be proposed in the future given the court's workload and reluctance to be involved in issues that are likely to come before the court later.

If Doris Kearns Goodwin is not discredited as an historian by her admission of plagiarism, she is disqualified by the praise she allowed to be printed on the back of this book. This is a bad book, a rambling, repetitive, vague and plodding account of an event of monumental proportions. It had a powerful effect on many years of Presidential and Congressional behavior. Yet the tale seems curiously small as told here. One longs for a treatment such as Ken Ackerman gave Garfield in Dark Horse.

Specific problems? Well, there are many. First, the book is not really about the Centennial Crisis. It is about the Supreme Court being called upon to act outside its judicial roles. The actual discussion of the crisis takes but a few pages. We are treated to brief and generally boring biographies of the major players, with none of the whiff of smoke or clink of glasses that Ackerman laid out on every page. Instead, we get what feels like high school history textbook descriptions. Born here, lived there, did this, worked with him, until these giants of history are needed in the story. But these were not the bland people so described, but complex and passionate participants in events that seemed to them to be of enormous consequence. So though the fire and brimstone are mentioned, they seem remote and confusing.

In addition, for such a brief book, the needless small repetitions grate. The prose is without flair or fancy. The judge remains aloof and dispassionate, offering few opinions. The only really meaty issue is a skilled dissection of Allan Nevins' attack on Justice Bradley, but this, in a controversy as long-standing as this, seems rather pale. Surely there are more tales that could be rebutted? The photos are scattered throughout the book, often in places where they have no connection to the story, so I was forced to go back to the list of illustrations repeatedly; when reading about someone on page 130 I had to check and see their portrait was on page 154.

Whether one needs to be a professional historian to write great prose, I sincerely doubt. I have read many great books by amateurs and many bad ones by pros. But avoid this book neither for the 2000 debate nor for Rehnquist's academic standing. Avoid it because it isn't very satisfying.

Setting aside any praise or derision of the late Chief Justice, I bought this book to increase my knowledge of the election of 1876. While getting to the crux of that historical moment there were many tangential digressions, since I enjoy history and political science they were interesting, but frustrating at times as these ancillary topics and issues were only covered in general terms. Furthermore I would have liked to have seen more use of primary sources, seemingly (then congressman) James A. Garfield left one of the only accounts of how the special commission (set up to decide the merits of the recorded electoral votes) deliberated while arriving at their decision. However Rehnquist does not reference it enough.

The account of that era reads fast but feels incomplete once the chapter on the actual resolution of the election was finished, I felt cheated. Then in a relatively lengthy epilogue Rehnquist delves into some interesting moments in US history when the sitting justices performed other duties aside from those delineated for a Supreme Court justice, but it really does not fit. In 2004, political pundits alleged that this book was written as a smug response by Rehnquist for not feeling the need to discuss the disputed election of 2000 with deference to the voters. Initially I thought that such claims were the product of left-wing hysterics, upon reading it, I am not clear what Rehnquist was pulling. It reads like he wanted to talk about so much more than the election of 1876, and perhaps would have been a better volume of a greater treatise on monumental moments in extra-judicial Supreme Court history. I bought my copy for $2.00 and it was well worth it but if I paid the cover price I would certainly feel robbed.

This is an excellent history of a somewhat obscure event in American history. C.J. Rehnquist gives the reader a great sense of historical context and a window into life in those times. This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in 19th century American politics.

Whatever you think of the chief justice as a jurist, you should not mistake him for a historian. Simply put, the chief justice is ignorant of scholarship on this election, a prisoner of old stereotypes foisted upon him by whatever research assistant sought to placate his views (do you really think the cheif justice went to the sources?). Scholars will be interested in this book insofar as it might shed some light into the chief justice's own views on the disputed election of 2000, but no one should mistake this volume for a reliable work of historical scholarship.