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hey listeners sarah here elizabeth and i recorded this episode that i wrote back earlier in december of 2020. um and when we recorded it it seemed uh you know strangely relevant um as you will undoubtedly hear as you listen um this is an episode about the election of 1876 the election that put an end to reconstruction the process to rebuild and reformulate the american south after the civil war um and as we were you know recording it and as i was writing it um i was of course struck by all of the many parallels to the election of 2020 um you know worries about you know conspiracies that that the elections had the election had been interfered with um you know threats of violence um serious racial strife um and a contested election that you know just seemed to drag on forever and ever in the case of 1876 right up until um you know just days hours before the inauguration took place in march of 1877 um but i had no way of knowing when we recorded it that it would um become as relevant as it has this week so today is um thursday january 7th this episode is going to drop early we typically drop our episodes on sundays but um as avril was editing this one she decided that it was really important that we get this one out as quickly as we could and um that's because yesterday on january 6th a group of extremists fueled by conspiracy theories put out by our president of the united states donald trump stormed the capitol building broke in walked through its hallowed halls carrying nazi flags carrying confederate flags tried to remove the american flag from our capitol building and replace it with a trump flag i'm at a loss for words um it's so recent that um you know my historian hat is on but my brain hasn't quite caught up yet um i know that this was a obviously a historic day and it will have many historic meanings um but we're not quite there yet but what we can do and what we set out to do from the very beginning with this podcast is to help you um out there listening to put into context the things that are happening today i want to be clear that we are not saying that the election of 1876 was exactly the same as what's happening right now as you'll see um what happened yesterday did not happen in 1876 it came close things were really fraught there was a lot of tension and certainly during that era during the era of reconstruction and after many people trying to exercise their right to vote were killed and terrorized but no one has ever stormed the capitol building before since the war of 1812. since 1814 when the british burned washington dc and so i'm not trying to say that 1876 is the same thing as what's happened today but i do think that it will give some context help you to understand the process that the the house of representatives and the senate was trying to go through yesterday when they were trying to vote those elector or excuse me count those electoral votes um that was a process that um was critical to the 1876 election so you'll get that context here but you'll also get the uh a glimpse into the context of um of the sort of political strife the political maneuvering the um the lengths that frankly white supremacists were willing to go to in order to maintain political power in order to redeem the south from republicans and their plan for reconstruction our goal with this podcast is to help our listeners contextualize to help you to to make sense of of why things happen in the united states it's not to say that it's a straight line from one thing to another but that by looking to the past by understanding the things that have come before uh we can better make sense of what's happening right now [Music] welcome to dig history podcast [Music] picture it election day a tuesday in early november voters went to the polls across the united states casting their ballots for either the republican or the democratic candidate as the night drew to a close the outcome seemed clear the new york times even unofficially called the election but the night wasn't over just yet while at first glance it seemed like the democrat had won the electoral college the outcome was extremely close just one electoral vote stood between the candidates the republicans alleged that voter fraud had swung the vote towards the democrat and demanded recounts tempers flared and threats of violence even civil war filled the media the country was on edge and democracy seemed to hang in the balance hmm does that sound familiar it sure does unfortunately yeah it really does but we are a history podcast and so of course we are not talking about the election of 2020. see what we did there i'm so clever even though it sounds bizarrely similar we're actually talking about the disputed election of 1876. just over 10 years after the war between the states ended with a beleaguered grant administration on the way out the nation still suffering from a depression and the situation in the former confederacy precarious a lot was riding on this presidential election between republican rutherford b hayes and democrat samuel j tilden but unlike the election of 2020 which is ostensibly old over although january 20th cannot come soon enough to just get this thing in the bag just for you guys who are listening to this in the future like we're right we're so close but we're not there yet right it's it's the shining light the but the election of 1876 wasn't decided until literally days before the inauguration in early march and while we won't know for a long time with the long-term consequences of president-elect joe biden and the 2020 election will be we do know that the consequences of 1876 were enormous to end the election limbo democratic and republican politicians worked out a shadowy deal in which rutherford hayes was declared the president by one electoral vote and the republicans agreed to end reconstruction in the former confederacy the results of this compromise of 1877 were a total abandonment of the process of reforming the south from a land ruled by white supremacy and defined by slavery to one of freedom and equal rights the federal government effectively washed its hands of reconstruction and left the south to its own devices the result was not good as one freedman henry adams described it the whole south every state in the south had got into the hands of the very men that held us as slaves today as part of our series on elections we're talking about 1876 the election that ended reconstruction upended the accomplishments of the civil war era derailed civil rights and allowed for the reign of jim crow i'm sarah and i'm elizabeth and we are your historians for this episode of dig [Applause] [Music] 2020 was a weird year and we could not have done what we do without you dear listeners our patreon supporters keep the lights on and the microphones recording and we are grateful for each and every one of you we want to give a special shout out to our mega donors our auger and excavator level patrons maddie dennis colin edward susan christopher peggy maggie danielle and iris thank you a million times listener if you are not yet a patron of this show it's easy just go to patreon.com dig podcast to learn more i'm going to make you imagine again for a second imagine you had to explain the election of 2020 to some future students or to your grandchildren or to some other young person someday many years down the line where would you have to start to explain the extremely complicated situation that is was maybe fingers crossed this crazy election you can start maybe with the 2016 election but really you'd actually have to go back to the obama administration to explain who joe biden was right and even farther to get into donald trump's like bizarre obsession with barack obama you might even have to go back into the 1990s to get into the details of who the clintons were and trump's long and slimy backstory and i believe that the election of 1876 is similar in order to really understand how the united states got to yet another breaking point just a decade after the civil war and how the hard-won reforms of reconstruction disintegrated afterwards we have to go way back now i don't want this episode to grow to dan carlin-esque proportions no three-hour epic episodes here even though i could talk about reconstruction for that long uh we're going to assume that you have a general overview of the war years and we'll start with just a general overview of reconstruction but i will also say this eric foner's classic text reconstruction america's unfinished revolution which i based much of this episode on uh and is still considered the standard survey of the period is almost 600 pages long and that's not because phoner is wordy it's because reconstruction is freaking complicated so you'll just have to forgive us if we simplify and you know pick up some of our suggested readings if you need to fill in the blanks that's good yeah so let's start with the most basic of basic introductions what actually was reconstruction when the civil war ended in the spring of 1865 the only thing that really ended was the shooting instead the end of the war marked the beginning of what was arguably a bigger challenge now we talk a lot about the civil war bringing about a new birth of freedom in the united states but if that was to actually mean something the war had to be followed by a lot more work to make it a reality up until 1863 with the emancipation proclamation the american south had an economy and social structure entirely founded on white supremacy and chattel slavery if the civil war had to some extent dismantled to that the former confederacy would have to be reconstructed to create a new society where equality and free labor were possible now this meant lots of things had to happen on a very practical level there was a massive population of formerly enslaved people that needed basic services ranging from health care to resettlement assistance to legal help southern whites and former confederates were not just going to start issuing fair labor contracts and providing civil rights overnight just because the federal government declared black people free the south also had to be reconstructed in a literal sense after four years of war including a year of william tecumseh sherman's intense campaign of total war across the southeast in 1864-65 southern infrastructure was wrecked agriculture disrupted and several cities in ashes not to mention the southern economy had been haphazardly based on new confederate currency that was by 1865 good for nothing but starting fires but reconstruction would also mean rebuilding state governments without allowing the slave holding and former confederate elite to just return to the status quo antebellum states needed new leadership and new constitutions reconstruction then was nothing short of another attempt at state building and in some ways reconstruction wasn't just about rebuilding the south but about completing the very process of building the american state begun by the so-called founding fathers for instance believe it or not the constitution had never directly addressed what it actually meant to be a citizen of the united states and this was finally solved by the second of the reconstruction amendments the 14th amendment which eric foner calls the most important amendment ever added to the constitution david blight has said that the united states was invented at philadelphia in 1787 but in many ways the country you actually live in was invented in 1866 it's the country of the 14th amendment the 14th amendment established that all people born on american soil were american citizens and that all citizens had the right to equal protection under the law for all the talk about freedom before and during the war it was the 14th amendment that actually defined freedom for americans black and white in a meaningful way and and as a side note i i did do a pretty deep dive into the 14th amendment uh if you want to check that out so there's another podcast on just the 14th amendment alone yeah which is fantastic it's one of the i think one of our best episodes for teaching with because it's such a deep dive into that amount plush but i want to give you a little breakdown of how all this reconstructing and rebuilding actually happened because it will help us to understand the politics of the 1870s the process of trying to come up with a plan for what would happen to the south after the war began as early as 1863 which always surprises me because that was before it was even sort of clear who was going to win this war i think that tells us a lot about abraham lincoln that he was just like losing this war is not an option it is literally not an option yeah right abraham lincoln released his plan for reconstructing the south in december 1863 and it was called the proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction the name should give you a clue to how lincoln planned to deal with the post-war south the operative word there was amnesty his plan would offer a full pardon and restoration of rights except of course the right to own slaves to all former confederates as long as they signed an oath of loyalty to the federal government a few people like high-ranking confederate politicians and generals weren't eligible to take that oath and would be basically stripped of their citizenship once just 10 of a state's population had taken that oath the state could establish a new state government and draft the new constitution and eventually get their representation back in congress and be admitted back into the union that constitution had to abolish slavery of course but there weren't many other specific requirements about what those new governments would have to do to protect black civil rights now as you all likely know abraham lincoln was a republican the first republican president of course but lincoln was a moderate compared to the liberal wing of the party which had taken on the moniker radical republicans the radicals who were often abolitionists or anti-slavery politicians before the war thought lincoln's plan was way too conciliatory towards former slaveholders and traders and were appalled at how little the plan would do to provide formerly enslaved people civil rights they responded with their own plan detailed in a bill called the wade davis bill which envisioned a much more severe process in the post-war but nothing came of it because lincoln killed it with a pocket veto we have to remember though that all of this is happening before the war is even close to being over abraham lincoln's plan does seem weak and conciliatory to us now but we also need to remember that lincoln's plan was just that a plan it would certainly have changed when the war actually ended but we also need to think about lincoln's plan within the context of 1863. according to eric foner lincoln likely saw the plan as a device to shorten the war and solidify white support for emancipation lincoln hoped that unionists so people who oppose the confederacy in southern states would go ahead and take the oath before the war was over creating rival minority governments and undermining states ability to fight all of this becomes irrelevant though in april 1865 when abraham lincoln is shot and killed then the question of reconstruction fell into the lap of probably the worst possible person vice president andrew johnson a former slave owner who was born in north carolina and lived most of his adult life in tennessee johnson had been a democrat up until 1865 when lincoln had decided he needed a war democrat on his ticket to help win re-election this political move may have seemed great at the time but when lincoln died it meant he left behind a very different kind of president to oversee reconstruction at first the republicans had reason to believe that johnson wouldn't deviate too much from lincoln's plan after all in 1864 when he joined the presidential ticket he had declared that quote treason must be made odious and traitors must be punished and impoverished but it didn't take too long for johnson to change his tune even though johnson embraced emancipation and welcomed the end of slavery he was undoubtedly racist and believed that white men had to be in charge of rebuilding the south white men alone he declared must manage the south johnson' plan for reconstruction also called for loyalty oaths but required that wealthy slave owners and high-ranking officials applied directly to him for pardons now this some historians have speculated was because as a former small-time plantation owner johnson resented rich planters and kind of wanted to make them grovel to him to like beg for their rights back also in his plan former confederates who took the oath could write new constitutions which had to include a revocation of the state's secession ordinance abolish slavery ratify the 13th amendment and refuse to pay off any confederate debt other than that well southern state governments could do what they wanted this was the phase of reconstruction that historians call presidential reconstruction by the end of 1865 each of the former confederate states had formed new governments all with relatively paltry statements on abolition and no requirements for black civil rights these new state governments also passed laws that became known as black codes which attempted to control black southerners and i actually have a podcast i did on black clothes as well uh mississippi required all blacks to have written proof of employment not just in the moment but several months in advance black laborers worked under strong contracts and they were denied wages and potentially arrested if they broke a labor contract even if it was to get a new job south carolina actually exacted attacks on any black person who worked in any occupation other than farming or household service other states had similar measures even if they were couched in less transparently racist language they controlled the sale of produce black people had to get permission from their masters first controlled hunting and fishing rights even grazing access these laws were in the words of u.s army general alfred terry an attempt to re-establish slavery in all but name the radical republicans were not going to stand for this when the republicans picked up seats in congress in fall of 1865 they refused to seat the newly elected representatives from these neo-confederate governments and just a tiny pause um that yes 1865 was an off year but there were a handful of like kind of congressional elections in that year especially for those southern states so i'm gonna we're gonna be talking about lots of election years here um and so it does seem weird that there were some um elections in the fall of 1865 but that's how it sometimes goes then uh flexing their mandate muscle the radical republicans got to work putting into motion a third plan for reconstruction this is what historians call radical reconstruction unlike the previous plans radical reconstruction wasn't just focused on getting north and south reconciled and then moving on instead radical reconstruction was in the words of eric foner again quote first and foremost a civic ideology grounded in a definition of american citizenship this was a plan not just to whip the south into shape and get it readmitted into civic life but to literally dismantle and rebuild the very society of the south and along the way no big deal basically reform all of america yeah you know as one does remember abolitionists had long claimed that the constitution was fatally flawed by its acceptance of slavery this was their grand opportunity not just to change the south but to fix the flaws in the very blueprint of american government in 1866 leadership in congress created a joint committee on reconstruction to study the situation on the ground in the south they brought in almost 150 witnesses to testify about the treatment of freed people the attitudes of southern whites generally trying to find out what people in the south actually needed out of a reconstruction plan would they benefit from schools or hospitals did they need food the joint commission report at the end of the investigation was that presidential reconstruction was to put it very mildly not working they called it madness to allow former confederates to go right back into power nothing had changed and nothing would change without radical action see what we did there based on a radical based on the committee's findings republicans drew up legislation that they began to pass in the summer of 1866. they passed the civil rights act of 1866 which defined citizenship and outlined the rights and responsibilities of being an american citizen for the first time much of this law was formally enshrined in the constitution in the form of the 14th amendment passed in 1866 and ratified in 1868. they renewed funding for the freedmen's bureau the agency tasked with helping resettle formerly enslaved people by 1869 they had also passed what became the 15th amendment to the constitution which enshrined voting rights for all male citizens i'm not sure what order these um these episodes in our elections uh series are going to come out in but something that i find striking in recording these episodes with you elizabeth is is how our episodes could be used hand in hand because here we see the civil rights act of 1866 we see the passage of the 15th amendment having to do with voting rights and then we see in your episode in 1968 how those two things basically have to be passed again with the civil rights act of what 64 and the voting rights 65 and also the importance of political assassinations to the passage of of these really important laws and amendments right because all of those were ushered in right after jfk is assassinated on this kind of wave of reconciliation um you know like lbj finally has like the the political will to to push these things through that have just been languishing in congress forever and ever and ever yeah so yeah that's great i mean they are like two bookends so to speak too yeah they really are yeah um and that's something that uh is is so striking about reconstruction in general is you know as as foner names his his giant book on this the america's unfinished revolution absolutely because it is so radical and so revolutionary but it really does not um does not end until the era that you're talking about in the in the 1960s and even then we could you know very easily make the argument that that process has not happened either and and i feel i'm i'm so curious to look back at this moment that we're living through now in like another 20 years because i feel like we're on the cusp of another major reckoning i don't know i don't know if we are not i mean you know our eyes will believe it when we see it and see some you know major changes but i feel like the the period is ripe again for some kind of major systematic and uh you know and legal policy changes certainly and that's another thing that i found myself thinking during your episode um when in terms of the the rioting in in 1968 i mean yeah we just 2020 has been part of this yeah has been a completely crazy year for so many reasons one of which is that even in the midst of a pandemic we've had us we had a summer of race riots right like racial riots and demonstrations based on yeah this need for racial reckoning around police violence which is is very much what was going on in 68 so lots of of really interesting echoes here between these episodes and between our our modern um day so after picking up huge majorities in both houses of congress in 1866 the republicans set to work on the third attempt at reconstruction in 1866 and 1867 they write and pass the reconstruction acts a series of laws that drew up a new process for the post-war south under these laws the former confederacy was broken up into five military districts overseen by a general of the us army for instance the first district was just virginia the second included both north and south carolina and so on and so forth the commanding officers had control over the process of creating a new government in these states and oversaw elections which meant that the force of the us army stood behind these new civil rights laws ready to enforce them if necessary so they're not just passing legislation and letting it like flow out there they're passing it and then like literally sending in the the big guns to stand behind those laws in the south they were also responsible for helping to register voters of course black men enfranchised by the 15th amendment and white men who had not participated in the rebellion those qualified voters could then vote in delegates who would draft new state constitutions which had to include black voting rights ratify the reconstruction amendments and then they could be considered for readmission to the u.s quickly republicans a combination of black men carpetbaggers and scalawags controlled southern state governments and i i recognize that i did not um define this in the copy but carpetbaggers were typically republicans from the north who moved down into the south to kind of participate in this process and scalawags were southerners who became republicans which are both kind of disparaging terms for them given they are listeners yes and again i use them because phoner used them so southerners unsurprisingly screamed that this was tyranny one democratic newspaper declared these constitutions and governments will last just as long as the bayonets which ushered them into being shall keep them in existence and not one day longer so basically saying once the guns go we'll go back to normal just absolutely by 1870 terrorist groups such as the ku klux klan knights of the white camellia and white brotherhood founded immediately after the war had a foothold in every former confederate state and used violence and intimidation to fight back against republican control and punish black people for trying to exercise their rights as american citizens in mississippi friedman jack dupree who worked as the president of a local republican party club was brutally murdered in front of his wife when george moore voted republican in 1870 in alabama the clan beat him and sexually assaulted his daughter in south carolina white supremacists drove over a hundred freed people from their homes and murdered several prominent republicans both black and white clashes over local elections devolved into massacres such as the colfax massacre in which white supremacists murdered around 150 black republicans who had come to the courthouse in colfax louisiana to defend the newly elected republican government these are just a few examples of the intense violent backlash white supremacists perpetrated to resist reconstruction the radicals again weren't going to stand aside and let the clan terrorize black southerners and destroy their political power in the south in 1870 and 1871 congress passed two enforcement acts which allowed the president to use the federal courts and the u.s army to protect civil rights in cases of election fraud and voter intimidation a third enforcement act also known as the ku klux klan act made it a federal crime for state officials to deny citizens civil rights as well as making many of the tactics used by the klan federal crimes it also gave the president extraordinary powers including the ability to suspend the writ of habeas corpus if the local authorities failed to intercede against white supremacist groups the enforcement acts are a prime example of what made radical reconstruction work the attempts at change were backed by the military political and economic power of the federal government the laws enraged democrats but republicans under the direction of president u.s grant insisted that this was not only necessary for reforming the south but again necessary to making the united states a modern nation quote if the federal government cannot pass laws to protect the rights liberty and lives of citizens in the united states in the states asked republican politician and former union general and probably banger of victoria warhol the woodhull benjamin butler why were guarantees of those fundamental rights put in the constitution at all and the federal government did exactly that in 1871 prosecuting hundreds of klansmen even turning the u.s army against the south carolina clan with such force that thousands of klansmen actually fled the state to avoid prosecution in short order the kkk was more or less defunct as one mississippi republican politician wrote the enforcement act has a potency derived alone from its source no such law could be enforced by state authority the local power being too weak state or local governments could not have rooted out this domestic terrorism on their own it was only the might of the army and federal government that made it possible and that is exactly the crux of the rest of this story the might of the federal government because if the reconstruction and enforcement acts in the early 1870s were the height of the power of the federal government to enforce radical reconstruction it was certainly downhill from there while the south was in the process of rebuilding the north was changing in its own ways railroads boomed and the railroad business led to the extraordinary wealth of the railroad barons like jay gould and cornelius vanderbilt railroads penetrated the american west leading to booms in settlement and renewed military action against native american peoples which rivaled the south for the time attention and funding of the us army industry expanded from grain production and processing to meat packing to logging and mining with the explosion in industry came labor unrest as factory laborers agitated for fair wages safer conditions and better hours and capitalists responded with strike breaking and violence and with the growth in capital came grift the grant administration was marked by the corruption of members of the administration and of the republican party and no i am not going to try to explain the credit mobilier uh scandal because that's where my eyes like really start to glaze over like there's so much corruption scandal in the grant administration that i have been learning about since i was in middle school and i could not if you put a gun to my head explain any of it to you it's basically a lot of rich white people enriching themselves through political grief that's that's what it comes to although i do want to say grant gets um grant ends up taking a hit for a lot of this because it was his administration but grant himself was not involved in any of these scandals as far i think as historians believe now grant himself was kind of um tainted by his kind of connection what am i trying to say yeah by um by cronies around him but not necessarily exactly actions right right so in 1872 the republican party was starting to splinter the moderate and radical wings of the party started to reorganize and the reform-minded more moderate members of the party even organized a rival convention and nominated their own candidate for president in 1872 the famous editor of the new york tribune horus greeley ulysses s grant was still re-elected in 1872 and the republicans had electoral successes across the country pushing back on democratic attempts to quote redeem the south from republican control but the pressure on the radicals led to lasting changes in the party and consequences for the south nervous about the challenge from within the radicals passed an amnesty law that counteracted section 3 of the 14th amendment which prevented former confederates from holding office this might have appeased their critics but it also provided a foothold for the very redeeming process the republicans were fighting against and 1872 was also marked by a shift in how both parties talked about reconstruction in their attempts to woo voters the republicans were still able to successfully mobilize voters based on a message of protecting black southerners and defending civil rights but the number of republicans who defected from the radicals and supported greeley showed that radicalism was on its last legs so while the election showed that northerners still supported the work of reconstruction it also showed the first indications the republicans were losing their extraordinary power and control in less than a year the second grant administration faced a new challenge a financial panic the railroad boom went bust banks failed iron foundries closed farmers struggled and the new york stock exchange plummeted the railroads that had uilt up the post-war economy started to fold leading to mass unemployment and depression the nation didn't emerge from this financial crisis until 1879. unsurprisingly the depression didn't inspire capitalists to remake the economy with social safety nets for struggling workers of course instead it inspired them to double down on their pull yourself up by the bootstraps mentality the way out of the economic crisis they said would be through hard work independence and deregulation and rich folks worries about an unruly public intensified as quote-unquote armies or populations of homeless jobless men many of them union veterans traveled the country on rail cars leading to anti-vagrancy laws that essentially punished poverty voters reacted in 1874 by destroying the republican majorities in the house in fact 1874 according to eric foner was the greatest reversal of partisan alignments in the entire 19th century in which a 110 seat republican majority turned into a 60-seat democratic majority which is big bonkers one new york newspaper called it not an election but a revolution and as democrats took back the house and the depression were on efforts to reconstruct the south suffered programs like the freedmen's bureau which previously seemed like a vital way to support formerly enslaved people now seemed like a foolish example of wasted tax dollars and government charity quote the laboring man should be as independent as the capitalist declared georgia republican john bryant who himself was a former freedman's bureau agent and that's ridiculous yeah and the continued realizations of corruption among members of the grant administration only made the republicans and by extension their attempts at reconstruction look riddled with corruption and to be clear there certainly was some corruption in the reconstructed southern governments just as there was in northern governments but the difference was that many of those southern governments included newly elected black office holders now corruption and bad government was blamed on the inability of black people to lead and this also provided a great excuse for republicans who could essentially blame any of the problems and reconstruction on black southerners themselves more and more republicans began to reject the larger project of racial equality and representation and instead embrace the idea that the south be governed by the best read white men in america since black americans obviously couldn't cover themselves read the dripping sarcasm yes yes definitely during grant's second term and especially after 1874 the gains in reconstruction began to more or less disintegrate as elizabeth talked about in her episode her excellent episode on the 14th amendment a series of supreme court cases like the slaughterhouse cases and usv crookshank weakened the power of the 14th amendment's promise of equal protection and civil rights the depression led to the failure of the freedmen's savings and trust company a bank that held the life savings of thousands of freed people the bank speculated in railroads and real estate and when the markets tanked all that money which of course wasn't insured because there was no fdic yet that doesn't come around until the new deal all of that money disappeared congress reacted slowly managed to compensate only half of the people who lost money and even then only gave about an average of 18 back to those those people republicans struggled to get a second civil rights bill passed in 1874 though it was eventually passed in the lame duck session before the democrats took the majority in congress 1875. that process was like pulling teeth the bill made racial discrimination in a wide variety of institutions illegal but while grant signed it into law he did very little to enforce it southern democrats emboldened by the federal government's waning attention returned to their appeals to white supremacy to get votes since thousands of former confederates had just gotten their right to hold office back in that amnesty act which invalidated part of the 14th amendment and most had by that point re-earned the right to vote democrats shrunk republican majorities in local and state governments and outright redeemed arkansas in 1874. things only got worse when republicans lost much of their political control in 1874. just before the election in louisiana white supremacists staged a kind of war against local republican officials murdering six and battling local militia and police under the command of none other than former confederate general turned republican james longstreet afterward most southerners assumed more or less correctly that the federal government had lost interest in reconstruction and so really just stopped caring about trying to abide by the laws laid by republican governments eric foner writes that quote unlike the crimes by the ku klux klans hooded writers those of 1875 were committed in broad daylight by undisguised men as if to underscore the impotence of local authorities and democrats lack of concern about federal intervention white supremacist violence often linked directly to the democratic party abounded this might be a good point to remind listeners um that there was such a thing as the party switch yeah and what we are talking about when we talk about the democratic party and the republican party are not the same things as the democratic and republican party of today there was there's been a lot of exclamation point exclamation point no matter what charlie kirk and turning points usa tell you the party switch party really happens yes yes correct because this is one of their talking points that white supremacists worked directly with the democratic party not the same thing as the democratic party of today yes and we could go on and on but we will not black southerners begged republican politicians for help black mississippians wrote to the republican governor begging for help vowing we will not vote at all unless there are troops to protect us the governor then appealed to president grant instead of sending the army grant asked his attorney general to develop a plan but in the same letter wrote this quote the whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the south and are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the government this quote is famous because it really encapsulates northern sentiment about reconstruction as the 1870s wore on northerners were tired of even hearing about these autumnal outbreaks of violence obviously autumnal because it's around the time of elections since nothing ever seemed to stop them the entire process of reconstruction just seemed to suck all of the government's time and attention and tax dollars down into the south many northerners may have felt that this was important and necessary in say 1865 but by 1875 with unemployment high and the economy struggling they were increasingly resentful so remember how this episode was going to be about the election of 1876 well in case you forgot it is things yes things were still somewhat bleak as the presidential election loomed the economy was still struggling and yet another story about corruption in the grant administration broke the republican party struggled to even field a candidate james blaine a pretty famous republican politician seemed like a shoeid but then was hit with allegations that he had done some self-dealing in a railroad business eventually the party landed on rutherford b hayes a union veteran and governor of ohio who was famously described as a third-rate non-entity that is a winning endorsement right it wasn't entirely unknown he was a politician after all but he was a bit bland not too radical and free from scandal the democrats nominated samuel j tilden a long time democratic party operative and governor of new york state as we mentioned at the top of the episode on the night of the election it seemed clear that tilden had it in the bag but sometime on election night someone at republican headquarters ran the numbers on the electoral map and realized that if hayes could somehow carry south carolina florida and louisiana he could win by one point and each of those states still had republicans in control now there are conflicting claims of who this person was but one version claims it was dan sickles yes dan sickles who just never goes away he's like the forest gump of this period of of politics he just he shows up everywhere one-legged just being being crazy a flurry of telegrams was sent to the republican leadership in those states demanding that the states be held for hayes the next morning it was not entirely clear who had won the election tilden had obviously won the popular vote which as we are all painfully aware means basically nothing but four states louisiana south carolina florida and oregon were too close to call leaving 22 votes in doubt members of both parties rushed to all of the disputed states to oversee the ballot counting initial counts in each of the disputed southern states so south carolina louisiana and florida showed tilden winning but also in each of those states democrats and white supremacists had suppressed the republican vote through violence and intimidation and everyone you know on all sides had committed at least a little fraud south carolina for instance in my new favorite fact that i just learned reported a 101 turnout rate with thousands of votes more than there were potential voters in many of the precincts which is not possible except by fraud obviously thousands and thousands of black voters had been kept from the polls in those states which undoubtedly allowed those states to swing for tilden the republican-controlled board of elections in many of those states threw out thousands of fraudulent votes while democrats screamed about fraud and conspiracy an example of how nuts this was again unsurprisingly south carolina if florida was the florida of the 20th century then south carolina was the florida of the 19th century federal troops were still on the ground in south carolina and had been since 1865 but violence was still a problem just months before the 1876 election a dispute over a legal exercise held by a black militia group led to a battle and eventually a massacre in hamburg south carolina in which somewhere around a dozen mostly black men were killed president grant sent additional troops to the state in october to help ensure a fair election and turnout was high on all sides too high as as we've just shown you in the end the ticket was split the democratic gubernatorial candidate wade hampton won but republican rutherford b hayes also won the state supreme court tried to intervene to get the board from certifying their results but the board acted anyway the state supreme court tried to intervene to get the board from certifying the results but the board acted anyway the south carolina supreme court responded by arresting all the members of the board finding them and throwing them all in jail they were out pretty quick in oregon the fight was over just one of the state's electors a republican named john watts watts was an elected postmaster of a little town near portland but the democratic governor of oregon pointed out that article 2 of the constitution stated that quote no person holding an office of trust or profit under the united states shall be appointed an elector so the governor removed watts and replaced him with a democratic elector the republican the other republican electors insisted that the state's vote remain the same three votes for hayes while the new democratic elector insisted that the vote tally was actually two for hayes one for tilden which would cost hayes the election by that one vote each side presented their own signed certificates attesting to the outcome in other words this was a hot mess in early december congress reassembled with a republican-controlled senate and a democratically controlled house both houses assembled their own special committees to investigate the election can you guess what they determined hmm the senate said hayes won and the house said tilden wall one how did you guess so uh you know again unsurprisingly tensions rose as it looked like the mass in oregon was going to be called for haze democrats cried fraud and the possibility um that the whole thing would devolve into violence just increased someone was going to have to count and certify the electoral vote but the constitution didn't actually make it clear who should do that republicans claimed that it should be the president of the senate republican thomas ferry while democrats claimed that it should be done by both houses so what we had here was a constitutional crisis it simply was not clear who should decide who had won the election finally in late january congress passed a bill to create an electoral commission made up of five congressmen five senators and five supreme court justices this worked out in the end to eight republicans set and seven democrats the plan was to have the official count of the electoral college take place in a joint session of congress and that any disputed votes would go to the electoral commission to be adjudicated each disputed vote would be argued like a court case the oral arguments could last for hours and hours eventually after lots of complicated legal stuff that we will not get into the commission held a vote and determined that hayes had won the election this process was repeated for each contested vote i am so glad i was not in that room oh yes so so time consuming and tedious do i of course even need to say that the democrats objected to all of this of course they did as it became clear that the commission was going to keep voting on the party line because again there's eight republicans and seven democrats on on the the commission um democratic congressman found ways to interrupt the count and i think that mitch mcconnell would have been really proud of these attempts they raised a bizarrely unfounded objection to the obviously republican vote from vermont and from wisconsin and ground the proceedings to a halt with a filibuster southerners especially were desperate to get tilden elected one virginian wrote to tilden my poor southern country is looking to you as their only hope for constitutional rights we are looking to you as our political savior by the end of february there still was no president-elect and remember inaugurations used to be held in early march so it was starting to look very perilously like there was not going to be anyone to actually inaugurate which would truly be a problem right but democrats also had to be realistic their chances at getting the commission's vote to change uh and thereby changing the final electoral vote were very slim some democrats started to defect from the party's plan to continue to obstruct the voting instead subtly indicating that they would oppose a filibuster if they could be assured that the hayes administration would remove the remaining federal troops and allow the democrats that had been elected governor and south carolina and louisiana to take office even though it seemed clear that those elections had just had been just as affected by fraud and intimidation as rumors about a deal circulated nervous democrats warned tilden that things looked bad one washington democrat wrote to tilden that there quote is a danger of serious defection among southern democratic leaders certain of hayes friends are making proposals to certain southern democrats and they are entertained and may accept it was a group of republican journalists who got to the heart of what it would take to convince democrats to give up their strategy of obstruction they had befriended a disgruntled democratic operative named andrew keller who helped the republicans determine what concessions would work in addition to the governors in south carolina and louisiana and the removal of the federal troops in those states keller said that they would need hayes to promise that he would remove blacks and northerners from appointed positions and publicly state that his administration would no longer enforce reconstruction laws like the enforcement and civil rights acts they wanted southern democrats in the cabinet and in patronage positions in washington and across the south they wanted funding for railroads in southern states hayes apparently was non-committal about these demands probably in an attempt to make himself look like he was above the frantic negotiations his allies were undertaking just days before the march 5th inauguration date things were still up in the air at the end of february a group of hayes's republican allies from ohio and a group of southerners met at the wormley house hotel in washington the southerners promised that black civil rights would still be protected if federal troops were removed the republicans were split fellow ohio republican and congressman james garfield's diary seems to indicate that garfield was sort of grossed out by the negotiations and reluctant to make a deal but other republicans saw this as the opportunity to get hayes elected and avoid an even larger crisis if there was no president to inaugurate another congressman charles foster wrote to prominent southern democrats promising that hayes would deliver on the southerners demands quote we can assure you in the strongest possible manner of our great desire to have him hayes adopt such a policy as we'll give to the people of the states of south carolina and louisiana the right to control their own affairs in their own way now it's not clear exactly what went down between the meeting at the wormley house and the final day of the electoral count in congress on march 2nd we don't know what happened as lin manuel miranda would say in the room where it happens but what we do know is that some southern democrats did continue to delay the count northern democrats eventually did vote with republicans to certify the results and on march 5th rutherford b hayes was inaugurated president of the united states many of the demands detailed by keller were never acted on and democrats in congress still fought the results so it's not actually clear how much the negotiations that became known as the compromise of 1877 or the corrupt bargain actually made a difference but what we also know is the longer outcome of that election on the same day the final electoral vote was completed in congress lame duck president grant ordered the troops in south carolina and louisiana to return to their barracks and stop overseeing the gubernatorial counts effectively allowing south carolinian wade hampton and louisiana and francis nichols to take office as governors of those states a few days later hayes actually reiterated the order now it's generally stated that hayes removed the last troops from the south and that's not technically accurate but what he did do was tell them to stand down making their presence pointless the result was democratic southern governments in most formerly confederate states also known as home rule and of course the promises from southern democrats that black civil rights would be protected were a whole lot of smoke the democrats used paramilitary groups like wade hampton's red shirts to ensure that black republicans could no longer hold office vote or exercise any political power democratic governments slashed state budgets and stopped state governments from providing things like education and services in louisiana the new government slashed the public education budget so drastically that according to eric foner it was the only state that actually saw literacy rates and whites fall dramatically by the end of the 19th century attempts to build state colleges fizzled in some states where there was a larger white republican population the republican party remained somewhat competitive for another 15 years or so but in the deep south with with much higher black populations and lower white republican populations violence and voter intimidation made the republican party presence essentially disappear new laws made sharecropping the form of farming most accessible to freed people into a new form of slavery as landowners were able to control all of the crop until tenants had paid off all deaths and rents to the landowner's satisfaction and of course landowners were never satisfied it was virtually impossible for black southern men to fight back during the earlier 1870s it was possible for black militias to organize for instance and many black people owned firearms but without the federal government and us army there to enforce the law white supremacist violence always overwhelmed any attempt black people made to fight back no wonder black people began to flee the south in the 1880s becoming exodusters seeking breathing room in places like kansas and oklahoma although white supremacists would eventually find them there too and all the while northern republicans did essentially nothing to stop what amounted to the complete dismantling of the revolutionary reforms of reconstruction foner writes that quote among other things 1877 marked a decisive retreat from the idea born during the civil war of a powerful nation-state protecting the fundamental rights of all american citizens the magazine the nation i think put it the most clearly after hayes election the editors wrote quote the negro will disappear from the field of national politics henceforth the nation as a nation will not have anything more to do with him and it's entirely true with the bargain of 1877 the south was quote unquote redeemed by southern democrats and white supremacists and the era of jim crow began the kkk did remain dormant at least until the 19 teens 1920s but white supremacist violence certainly did not it's just that what people used to do while hidden behind stupid-looking white robes they now did in the open without an ounce of fear that they would be punished after all who would be there to intervene right according to the equal justice initiative at least 4 000 black americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950 and it's impossible to really statistically account for things like intimidation property destruction wage theft and discrimination one of the most heartbreakingly accurate descriptions of reconstruction i think comes from w.e.b du bois the first black historian to earn a phd whose book black reconstruction was absolutely critical in correcting lost cause narratives of this era he wrote quote the slave went free stood a brief moment in the sun then moved back again towards slavery reconstruction was radical and revolutionary and the very party that helped to create that revolution sat back in 1877 comfortably ensconced in the white house and allowed it all to be dismantled by former confederates and white supremacists you