REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 THE RESULTS OF THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION COULD HAVE BEEN MUCH WORSE

 

                      …Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19^th President of the United States

 

Rutherford B. Hayes election took over 4 months to be finally decided

 

If you think the latest presidential election was an ugly political test and was a close contest, it is nothing like the 1876 election of  Rutherford B. Hayes.  To put it all in one sentence.  Rutherford Hayes won by one electoral vote.  Yes, just one vote.

The following is a condensed version of that particular race that was seriously full of fraud and voter intimidation.

Around 12 midnight in New York City on Election Day in 1876, the former Union General, Daniel Sickles stopped by the Republican national headquarters at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.  The place was nearly deserted. GOP presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes was losing so badly that the party chairman had gone to bed with his bottle of whiskey.

Sickles noticed something about the early returns, which gave Democratic New York Gov. Samuel Tilden a large lead. But, in four states, the results were in dispute.

Sickles sent telegrams under the name of the sleeping party chairman to the Republican leaders in the four contested states urging them to safeguard votes for Hayes. “With your state sure for Hayes, he is elected. Hold your state.”

Thus began the longest fought for, and the closest presidential election in US history.  Much as President Trump is doing now, the backers of Hayes, the governor of Ohio, charged that the election was being stolen. The difference was that, unlike now, there was clear evidence of fraud and voter intimidation. The outcome in the tense, post-Civil War atmosphere, not only decided a presidency but the war had led to nearly a century of racial segregation in the South.

The next day, Democratic newspapers trumpeted a Tilden victory. “GLORY! Tilden Triumphant,” the Buffalo Courier headline said.  A “Solid South Buries Sectional Hate,” blared the Kansas City Times.

But the Republican New York Times had cited disputed results in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon.  They declared, “The Results Still Uncertain.”

Back in Ohio, Hayes was pessimistic. “I think we are defeated in spite of the recent good news,” he said.

As the days passed, the uncertainty increased. Tilden led by more than 250,000 votes in the popular vote in the 38 states.  But he was one vote short of the 185 electoral votes, then needed for victory. Hayes only had 165 votes.

All eyes focused on charges of intimidation of Black Republican voters in three of the disputed Southern states.  Southern Whites were rebelling against Black political power granted under the Reconstruction.  Republican President Ulysses S. Grant had already sent federal troops to the states to help keep the peace.

In South Carolina, a majority Black state, armed White men belonging to the then: “rifle clubs” and dressed in red shirts had harassed Republicans. The “Red Shirts” killed six Black men in the famous “Hamburg Massacre”.  A paramilitary group backed a former Confederate general for South Carolina governor and threatened to kill the Republican Gov. Daniel Chamberlain.

On Election Day in Edgefield, S.C., more than 300 armed Red Shirts on horseback “packed their horses so closely together that the only approach to the election windows, back of which was the ballot box, was under the bellies of the beasts,” the New York Times reported.  In Barnwell County, one newspaper reported that there were “riflemen wearing red shirts, riding to and fro, cursing and threatening the negroes.”

Voter intimidation also was rampant in Louisiana and Florida.  Vote fraud was widespread on both sides. According to the Rutherford B. Hayes Library, the Democrats used “repeaters,” who voted repeatedly. They printed fraudulent ballots to trick illiterate Black voters into voting for Democrats.

The national voter turnout was 81.8 percent, still the highest ever recorded for a presidential election. But the number clearly was falsely inflated. As an example, in South Carolina, despite the voter suppression, the official turnout was 101% of eligible voters.

Republicans contended Hayes would have won easily with honest voting. A leading advocate was that same former Union General, but during the campaign he was known as “Devil Dan” Sickles, who had campaigned for Hayes, who was also a fellow, former Union General. 

Now Sickles had gained his infamy back in 1859 when, as a first-term congressman, he shot and killed his wife’s lover.  The lover just happened to be the son of “Star-Spangled Banner” author, Francis Scott Key.  Sickles also did it in broad daylight in the park across the street from the White House.  Sickles then became the first accused murderer, acquitted because of “temporary insanity”.

On Dec. 5, 1876, all of the states sent their official results to Washington to be counted, and then announced by the president of the Senate. In those four contested states, Republican and Democratic officials filed separate tallies for Hayes or Tilden, throwing the election into chaos.

At the time, the Republicans controlled the Senate, and Democrats controlled the House, (sound familiar).  Finally in late January, Congress created a 15-member Electoral Commission of five senators, five House members and five Supreme Court justices.  The commission voted separately on the four disputed states. They finally awarded all of the states a total of 20 electoral votes, all the votes went to Hayes, but it was by a slim, 8-to-7 vote.

Now the Democrats charged that the election was being stolen from Tilden.  House Democrats began a filibuster, while amid cries of “Tilden or blood,” one Washington newspaper reported on plans “to send a threatening and bellicose mob to the National Capital to see that the count is made according to their wishes.”

Then on March 2 — nearly four months after the election and just two days before the then Inauguration Day, Congress finally reached an agreement. After a heated debate, at 4:10 a.m. the president of the Senate formally announced that Hayes had been elected the 19th president by an electoral college vote of 185 to 184.

On March 3, President Grant hosted Hayes at the White House, where he was sworn in as president by the Chief Justice. On March 5, there was a public inauguration ceremony.

Tilden continued to maintain that “the country knows that I was legally elected president.”  But all the dissidents dubbed Hayes: “His Fraudulency.”

Historians differ on what ended the standoff.  Many believe Republicans made a deal to appease Southern Democrats in a secret meeting at Washington’s Wormley’s Hotel, which was owned by the African American James Wormley. In his inauguration speech, Hayes said the time had come to allow the Southern states to govern themselves again. He soon withdrew federal troops from the South.

With that move, the rights of Black citizens in the South were devastated.  White rule soon prevailed, ushering in the original Jim Crow laws and the many years of segregation.

Thirty years later on the Senate floor, South Carolina’s Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, a leader of those Red Shirts, told the story about the vote frauds of 1876.

“We set up the Democratic Party with one plank only, that this is White man’s country, and White men must govern it,” Tillman said. “Under that banner, we went to battle. It was then that we shot them. It was then that we killed them. It was then that ‘we stuffed ballot boxes,’ because this disease needed a strong remedy.”  Tillman added: “I do not ask anybody to apologize for it. I am only explaining why we did it.”

So that is the story of a real close election, as we hear all the things that Trump is falsely accusing that happened with his election.  The difference is that the false frauds and the intimidation that was tried by Trump's cronies, didn’t make any difference in the 2020 election.  The actual voter turn-out was outstanding for both parties.  As a result, the most Americans ever, actually turned out to vote, even during a deadly pandemic.  All the states are properly certifying their final results and no state is questioning those final results. 

Actually, only Donald Trump and his legal team are making the allegations of fraud, and the courts are saying, “You bring us the evidence and you’ll get your day in court.”  Of course, there isn’t any evidence.

So it seems that Mr. Trump is going to have to either live with the worst loss that he has ever had, as he continues to falsely claim that his election was stolen.

Copyright G. Ater 2020