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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Corrupt Election, March 3, 2003
Americans all over the country went to bed after election night thinking that the Democrats had won the White House. The Democratic candidate won the popular vote, and while this was conceded by all, the antiquated Electoral College system made the popular vote of decidedly secondary importance. There were races in such states as Florida where the balloting was contested, and outright fraud at many levels was claimed. Election officials headed south to try to provide trustworthy re-counts, but more important were the deals made secretly between the press, the state officials, and the eager Republicans who intended to put their man in office. Only after a Republican member of the Supreme Court cast his vote was there a certified Republican victory, but the outcome will ever be suspect of polling chicanery. So it was that Americans elected a president in 1876. The parallels to the 2000 election are often surprising, but those coincidences are not the point of _Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876_ (Simon & Schuster) by Roy Morris, Jr. The election was indeed stolen, but Hayes's eventual victory and its cost to public confidence in governmental capability meant that Reconstruction was ended and Jim Crow came into power. Both Hayes and Tilden went to bed on election night assured that Tilden had won. Final returns showed that Tilden had won the popular vote by 250,000, and had 184 of the 185 electoral votes sewn up; there were four states which were late in reporting, and one electoral vote from any of them would have given Tilden the election. It seemed a done deal, but Republicans refused to give up. Alternative counts were produced, and Congress set up an Electoral Commission of fifteen members. Southern Democrats started making deals with Hayes's men, and were promised that federal troops would be withdrawn from the states still under reconstruction governments. Blacks who had helped bring the Republicans into office were cut out of the deal, which ensured that black Americans in the South would be held back from participating in politics until the modern civil rights movement. Four months after the election, and just before swearing in, Hayes was declared the winner. It was the most corrupt election in our nation's history, and yet Morris shows that the two candidates were decent men forced by circumstances to play roles in it. Tilden, especially, shines; he clearly saw what would be good for the nation, and acted unselfishly, even though he had been defrauded by the Republicans. Morris says, "It was an act of supreme patriotism on the part of a man who had won, if not the presidency, at least the election." _Fraud of the Century_ is a rousing story, full of dirty tricks and rascals. Certainly it has relevance to recent events, but the 1876 election has been mostly forgotten. Morris has dramatically brought it forward as an example of how the Electoral College previously complicated and reversed popular will, with serious repercussions for subsequent history. Lively and well researched, without polemics regarding current events, the book rightly puts our last election in historical context.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Rousing History of a Misunderstood Era, June 23, 2003
Roy Morris's history of the 1876 election is a rousing work that brings to life the incredible politcs of America's Victorian Gilded Age. Despite how history has treated the politicians of this era, Morris explains well that both combatants, Ohio Gov. Rutherford B Hayes and New York Gov. Samuel Tilden, would have been worthy of the White House in any era. Morris's respect for Gilded Age politicians was the high point of the book for me. He shows us more than the non-entities history has treated them. Hayes, a real Civil War hero (as opposed to other CW Generals, like "General" Ben Harrison) who was a cagier politician than often given credit for. Tilden, a sickly and brilliant bachelor, a disciple of Martin Van Buren and maybe America's last Jacksonian, is shown as a methodical and brilliant reformer who blew up the Tweed Ring. Morris also excells at looking at the real issues of the campiagn: government reform, fighting Grantism, and most of all----Reconstruction. The story of the this miserable election bears little resembles to the 2000 election. In 2000, the basic story was a bunch of old people did not vote right. Nobody did anything. In this election, you not only had contested states, but SOUTHERN states who 16 years before had left the union. Since then, carpetbag regimes had taken overm causing near strife across the south. One must remeber that Civil War seemed more imminent in 1876 than 1860. At the heart of this fight was the growing feeling in the North that continued occupation and negro rights was just not worth it anymore. My one qualm with the book is Morris seems to be blinded by the consequences of blacks by this election. He seems to overlap his sympathy for Tilden to include the former confederate, white Democrats in the South. He minimizes the violence in an attempt to build a case against Hayes and the Republicans. I felt that Morris could have been more critical of the Bourbon southern democrats in this work. All in all, however, it is a wonderfull read. We find that America was robbed of two great men in this election. Tilden never entered the White House, and the talented Hayes was never able to execute his full potential due to the circumstances of his election. A fascinating book.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A singular account, November 24, 2003
This is a wonderful account of a forgotten crises, the election of 1876. This was the election that created the `Southern Block' of unrepentant deep south governors and ended reconstruction, thus handing power back to the same people who had stood strong in the face of Lincoln in 1859. An amazing story of American politics as it was in the late 1800s. The machinations, the political machines, the `smoke filled rooms' and the `gray beards' who were king makers. This is a riveting, if sometimes disorganized, story of the `stolen election' in which competing delegations from southern states created a crises that in some ways shows the weakness and towering strength of American democracy. The subsequent election of 1880, covered expertly in `Dark Horse' which serves as a good companion to this book, was also tumultuous. A wonderful read the opens up the whole theatre that was Americana in the 1870s. The personalities of Grant and others are exposed in this book as well.
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