Consequences of a Stolen Election

The election of 1876 was one of the most controversial in American history, as the winner of the popular vote and the probable winner of the electoral vote, Samuel J. Tilden, was denied the presidency.

And, in a sense, other losers of the election were African Americans in the South, who were establishing new lives a decade after the end of slavery.

In 1876, three states in the South held disputed elections, and the awarding of their electoral votes had to be decided by the U.S. Congress. In a highly unusual deal struck on Capitol Hill, members of Congress decided that Rutherford B. Hayes would be the winner of the presidential election.

Hayes was not even officially named the president-elect until days before he was sworn in on March 4, 1877.

Making the peculiar deal possible was the Compromise of 1877, in which southern Democrats said they wouldn't block the presidency of Hayes if he agreed to remove federal troops from the South and bring an end to Reconstruction.

Hayes agreed to that, and also to serve only one term. With Reconstruction thus ended, African Americans in the South were at the mercy of white legislatures, and the Jim Crow era came into being.

So not only was the election of 1876 most likely stolen, but the result proved to be a grave setback for African Americans.