Customer Reviews

The Stolen Election: Hayes Versus Tilden - 1876

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In this book Lloyd Robinson writes, "What the whites had done to the Negroes was bad enough, but Radical Reconstruction in the South was just as severe a misuse of power." (23) The equation here is: slavery, vs. allowing blacks to vote, a state which lasted a grand total of 15 years before resumption of southern home rule after 1876 led to black disenfranchisement until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The assumption that slavery and Reconstruction were equally repugnant is perhaps enough to undermine this book. Certainly there are few books where Pres. Andrew Johnson comes out quite so well (read Johnson's speeches which Robinson complains made people think he was "rash and foolish"...)

It should be noted that Robinson's basic contention -- Democrat Samuel Tilden was robbed of the Presidency in the 1876 election -- is probably right, though there was lots of foul play on both sides. The book is well written and it is, as the jacket copy points out, useful to remember that all the mess we associate with 2000 has happened before and arguably for higher stakes. If one can ignore Robinson's biases there is a useful narrative here.

Lloyd Robinson first wrote this book in the 1960s and interest was renewed after the 2000 election. As a history buff, I found this book to be surprisingly well-written and informative. I say "surprisingly" because I kind of expected a book that would get bogged down in minutia and academia. However, this book gives an excellent portrayal of the country in 1876, especially in the South where the white Democrats were trying to reclaim power from the Republicans and the former slaves who were beholden to the Republicans. Although Mr. Robinson clearly felt the election was stolen and Tilden should been president, he also points out irregularities in the south, especially in the disputed states of South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida whereby blacks were not allowed to vote and how this contributed to Tilden's victory in the popular vote in these states.

If you are a history buff and enjoy reading about politics of previous eras this is a book worth reading.

I thought this a great read after the fiasco of the 2000 election. Our constitution is great, but what if the electoral votes are so close and people decide to cheat in a election year. This was exactly what happened in 1876 where both Democrats and Republicans cheated to get their man into the White House. The result was the end of Reconstruction and the disenfrachisement of the black population in the South by our glorious Democratic Party. It also resulted in a disaster of the Hayes Presidency, rather than a reform minded Samuel Tilden as President.
Robinson wrote this book in the sixties, but it is still relevant today. Unless the American people change the way we elect our presidents, this might well happen again. This is solid, interesting read.