WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.219 It is 4 .00 a .m. on March 2nd, 1877. The United 00:00:06.219 --> 00:00:08.800 States is exactly three days away from Inauguration 00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:12.339 Day, and the country literally has no recognized 00:00:12.339 --> 00:00:14.699 president. Right, none. It's totally up in the 00:00:14.699 --> 00:00:17.559 air. And in Washington, D .C., you've got outgoing 00:00:17.559 --> 00:00:20.480 President Ulysses S. Grant. quietly tightening 00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:22.940 military security around the Capitol because 00:00:22.940 --> 00:00:25.679 out in the states these armed militias are openly 00:00:25.679 --> 00:00:27.859 threatening to march on Washington. Yeah, they 00:00:27.859 --> 00:00:29.719 want to install their preferred candidate by 00:00:29.719 --> 00:00:32.359 force. It's incredibly tense. Exactly. I mean, 00:00:32.420 --> 00:00:34.780 the nation is staring down the very real barrel 00:00:34.780 --> 00:00:37.380 of a second civil war. And this is barely a decade 00:00:37.380 --> 00:00:39.579 after the first one ended. The tension is just 00:00:39.579 --> 00:00:42.079 unbearable. And then suddenly everyone just goes 00:00:42.079 --> 00:00:45.259 home. It's so bizarre. The crisis just evaporates. 00:00:45.420 --> 00:00:47.179 One man takes the oath of office peacefully. 00:00:47.399 --> 00:00:50.640 The armed militias stand down. And today we are 00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:52.700 going to try and answer a question that has haunted 00:00:52.700 --> 00:00:57.420 historians for, well, 150 years. Why? Yeah, it 00:00:57.420 --> 00:00:59.979 is honestly one of the most abrupt and baffling 00:00:59.979 --> 00:01:02.600 deflations of political tension in American history. 00:01:03.200 --> 00:01:05.040 You have a nation fully mobilized for political 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:07.890 violence and then overnight. a complete cessation 00:01:07.890 --> 00:01:10.189 of hostilities. Welcome to the Deep Dive. We 00:01:10.189 --> 00:01:12.390 are speaking directly to you, the listener, and 00:01:12.390 --> 00:01:15.469 today we know exactly what your mission is. You're 00:01:15.469 --> 00:01:18.129 a college history student and you are currently 00:01:18.129 --> 00:01:21.709 staring at a massive stack of sources trying 00:01:21.709 --> 00:01:25.510 to untangle the historiography of the post -Civil 00:01:25.510 --> 00:01:28.049 War era. Which is no small feat, let me tell 00:01:28.049 --> 00:01:30.819 you. Right. Specifically, you're looking at the 00:01:30.819 --> 00:01:32.739 event that supposedly brought reconstruction 00:01:32.739 --> 00:01:37.019 to a close, the Compromise of 1877, or, you know, 00:01:37.219 --> 00:01:39.680 the Wormley Agreement, the Tilden Hayes Compromise, 00:01:39.739 --> 00:01:41.780 the corrupt bargain. Basically, take your pick. 00:01:41.980 --> 00:01:44.219 Yeah, the sheer number of names for this single 00:01:44.219 --> 00:01:46.700 event is your first clue that pinning it down 00:01:46.700 --> 00:01:49.340 is incredibly difficult. And for a history student, 00:01:49.560 --> 00:01:51.500 I mean, that is where the real analytical work 00:01:51.500 --> 00:01:54.040 begins. Absolutely. Our goal today isn't just 00:01:54.040 --> 00:01:56.519 to recite the narrative of the 1876 election. 00:01:56.879 --> 00:01:59.060 You likely have the basic time from your survey 00:01:59.060 --> 00:02:01.359 courses already. Our objective is to dissect 00:02:01.359 --> 00:02:04.239 how historians actually argue about the resolution 00:02:04.239 --> 00:02:06.379 of that election. We're going to look at the 00:02:06.379 --> 00:02:09.120 sources you provided to analyze the main scholarly 00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:11.819 arguments surrounding the validity of this entire 00:02:11.819 --> 00:02:14.789 compromise theory. Okay, let's unpack this. We 00:02:14.789 --> 00:02:17.169 are going to track how the narrative of a secret 00:02:17.169 --> 00:02:20.449 backroom deal was constructed, how it was deconstructed 00:02:20.449 --> 00:02:22.849 by later scholars checking the receipts, and 00:02:22.849 --> 00:02:25.550 how it was eventually entirely reimagined by 00:02:25.550 --> 00:02:27.810 generations of historians looking through different 00:02:27.810 --> 00:02:30.310 global and legal lenses. Yeah, we really want 00:02:30.310 --> 00:02:32.990 to give you the analytical tools to write a killer 00:02:32.990 --> 00:02:35.819 paper. But to understand why historians have 00:02:35.819 --> 00:02:38.400 argued so fiercely over the end of this crisis, 00:02:38.860 --> 00:02:41.120 we have to understand the mechanics of the crisis 00:02:41.120 --> 00:02:43.659 itself, right? We have to go back to the election 00:02:43.659 --> 00:02:48.430 of 1876. We do. And to set the stage. It is impossible 00:02:48.430 --> 00:02:50.789 to overstate the fragility of the United States 00:02:50.789 --> 00:02:54.050 in the winter of 1876. I mean, we are 11 years 00:02:54.050 --> 00:02:56.849 out from Appomattox. Still so recent. Very recent. 00:02:57.310 --> 00:02:59.189 The southern United States is still under federal 00:02:59.189 --> 00:03:01.909 military oversight. Reconstruction is ongoing, 00:03:02.330 --> 00:03:04.669 though the political will in the North to sustain 00:03:04.669 --> 00:03:07.550 it is really waning, largely due to the economic 00:03:07.550 --> 00:03:10.189 devastation of the Panic of 1873. Right. People 00:03:10.189 --> 00:03:13.349 were just tired and broke. Exactly. And against 00:03:13.349 --> 00:03:16.789 this backdrop of racial tension and economic 00:03:16.789 --> 00:03:19.969 depression, we hit a presidential election. You 00:03:19.969 --> 00:03:22.229 have the Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, 00:03:22.569 --> 00:03:24.550 and the Republican candidate, Brotherford B. 00:03:24.650 --> 00:03:26.990 Hayes. So let's look at who these men actually 00:03:26.990 --> 00:03:28.909 were because their profiles explain a lot about 00:03:28.909 --> 00:03:31.370 the deadlock. Samuel J. Tilden is the governor 00:03:31.370 --> 00:03:34.560 of New York. He's incredibly wealthy and he's 00:03:34.560 --> 00:03:37.919 built this massive national reputation as a corruption 00:03:37.919 --> 00:03:41.099 busting reformer. He's the guy who famously took 00:03:41.099 --> 00:03:44.319 down the Tammany Hall political machine and boss 00:03:44.319 --> 00:03:46.800 Tweed. Which is exactly what the Democratic Party 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:49.080 needed at that moment. The incumbent Republican 00:03:49.080 --> 00:03:51.280 administration under Ulysses S. Grant had been 00:03:51.280 --> 00:03:54.180 plagued by massive corruption scandals. The whiskey 00:03:54.180 --> 00:03:56.580 ring, the credit mobiliar scandal. So Tilden 00:03:56.580 --> 00:03:58.639 runs on a platform of cleaning house. And on 00:03:58.639 --> 00:04:00.800 the other side, the Republicans nominate Rutherford 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:03.240 B. Hayes, the governor of Ohio. And Hayes is 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:05.400 essentially chosen because he's safe. Very safe. 00:04:05.479 --> 00:04:07.860 Yeah, he's a respectable Civil War veteran. He 00:04:07.860 --> 00:04:10.419 has a clean record and he hasn't been tainted 00:04:10.419 --> 00:04:12.800 by the grand administration scandals at all. 00:04:13.020 --> 00:04:15.919 He also runs on a platform of civil service reform. 00:04:16.459 --> 00:04:18.600 So you have two reformers going head to head 00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:20.779 in an incredibly polarized country. And when 00:04:20.779 --> 00:04:23.259 the votes are cast on election night, the math 00:04:23.259 --> 00:04:26.240 creates just an unprecedented constitutional 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:28.839 nightmare. It really does. The sources break 00:04:28.839 --> 00:04:30.639 down the foundational facts of this electoral 00:04:30.639 --> 00:04:35.500 math. Tilden, the Democrat, secures 184 uncontested 00:04:35.500 --> 00:04:38.319 electoral votes. He wins the popular vote by 00:04:38.319 --> 00:04:41.360 over 250 ,000 votes. Which is a huge margin for 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:44.779 the time. Huge. And Hayes, the Republican, secures 00:04:44.779 --> 00:04:48.360 165 uncontested electoral votes. But the magic 00:04:48.360 --> 00:04:51.500 number to win the presidency in 1876 is 185. 00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:54.160 Which means Samuel J. Tilden is sitting exactly 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:56.240 one electoral vote away from the presidency. 00:04:56.399 --> 00:04:59.149 Just one. Just one, and Hayes is 20 votes away. 00:04:59.629 --> 00:05:01.250 But, as luck would have it, there happen to be 00:05:01.250 --> 00:05:03.490 exactly 20 disputed electoral votes hanging in 00:05:03.490 --> 00:05:05.329 the balance. Of course there are. Right. These 00:05:05.329 --> 00:05:07.209 disputed votes are coming from four specific 00:05:07.209 --> 00:05:10.110 states. Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and 00:05:10.110 --> 00:05:12.889 Oregon. So the math dictates an absolute zero 00:05:12.889 --> 00:05:16.209 -sum game here. Hayes needs a miracle. He needs 00:05:16.209 --> 00:05:18.970 every single one of those 20 disputed votes to 00:05:18.970 --> 00:05:21.949 win. If Tilden gets even a fraction of one, if 00:05:21.949 --> 00:05:24.230 he gets a single electoral vote from any of those 00:05:24.230 --> 00:05:26.689 states, he's the president. Okay, we really need 00:05:26.689 --> 00:05:29.470 to drill down into how a state's electoral votes 00:05:29.470 --> 00:05:31.889 become disputed in the first place, because this 00:05:31.889 --> 00:05:34.970 isn't just a recount situation like Florida in 00:05:34.970 --> 00:05:36.970 2000. This is a situation where these states 00:05:36.970 --> 00:05:39.389 are literally sending two completely different 00:05:39.389 --> 00:05:41.790 sets of official paperwork to Washington. Yeah, 00:05:41.829 --> 00:05:43.889 it comes down to the chaotic reality of elections 00:05:43.889 --> 00:05:46.500 in the Reconstruction South. In South Carolina, 00:05:46.579 --> 00:05:48.920 Louisiana, and Florida, you had two fiercely 00:05:48.920 --> 00:05:51.519 competing political forces. You had the incumbent 00:05:51.519 --> 00:05:53.680 Republican state governments, which were supported 00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:56.439 by federal troops and newly enfranchised black 00:05:56.439 --> 00:05:58.980 voters. And then you had the Redeemer Democrats. 00:05:59.660 --> 00:06:02.199 These were white Southerners utilizing massive 00:06:02.199 --> 00:06:05.120 campaigns of intimidation, violence, and economic 00:06:05.120 --> 00:06:08.000 coercion, often spearheaded by paramilitary groups 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:10.540 like the Red Shirts or the White League, to suppress 00:06:10.540 --> 00:06:12.819 the black Republican vote. So on election day, 00:06:12.819 --> 00:06:15.680 it is absolute chaos. Ballot boxes are being 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:18.160 stolen, voters are physically blocked from the 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:21.839 polls, and fraud is just rampant on both sides. 00:06:22.019 --> 00:06:24.579 Precisely. After the election, these three southern 00:06:24.579 --> 00:06:26.779 states utilized what were called returning boards. 00:06:27.100 --> 00:06:28.959 These were essentially state -level election 00:06:28.959 --> 00:06:31.079 commissions, heavily dominated by Republicans. 00:06:31.860 --> 00:06:33.939 The returning boards looked at the initial raw 00:06:33.939 --> 00:06:36.899 vote counts, which favored the Democrats, and 00:06:36.899 --> 00:06:39.819 they systematically threw out thousands of Democratic 00:06:39.819 --> 00:06:41.959 ballots. Thousands. Thousands. And they did this 00:06:41.959 --> 00:06:44.120 siting, documented evidence of violence in voters. 00:06:43.819 --> 00:06:46.360 intimidation by white supremacists. By throwing 00:06:46.360 --> 00:06:48.160 out those tainted votes, the returning boards 00:06:48.160 --> 00:06:50.420 officially certified the states for haze. But 00:06:50.420 --> 00:06:53.060 the Democrats in those states simply refuse to 00:06:53.060 --> 00:06:55.519 accept that, right? They claim the returning 00:06:55.519 --> 00:06:57.839 boards are corrupt and are just stealing the 00:06:57.839 --> 00:07:00.379 election for the Republicans. So the Democrats 00:07:00.379 --> 00:07:03.379 hold their own unofficial meetings, draft their 00:07:03.379 --> 00:07:05.600 own electoral certificates declaring Tilden the 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:08.439 winner, and mail those to Washington, too. Exactly. 00:07:08.779 --> 00:07:11.449 And then there is Oregon. Oregon wasn't a southern 00:07:11.449 --> 00:07:13.509 state under reconstruction. It was a bizarre 00:07:13.509 --> 00:07:16.509 technicality. Oregon voted for Hayes, but one 00:07:16.509 --> 00:07:18.930 of the Republican electors happened to be a postmaster. 00:07:19.129 --> 00:07:22.110 Wait, a postmaster? Yes. And the U .S. Constitution 00:07:22.110 --> 00:07:24.490 strictly forbids federal officeholders from serving 00:07:24.490 --> 00:07:27.209 as electors. The Democratic governor of Oregon 00:07:27.209 --> 00:07:29.790 seized on this technicality, disqualified the 00:07:29.790 --> 00:07:32.430 Republican elector, and substituted a Democratic 00:07:32.430 --> 00:07:35.750 elector in his place. Wow. So when Congress convenes 00:07:35.750 --> 00:07:38.310 to count the electoral votes, they open the envelopes 00:07:38.310 --> 00:07:40.910 from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon 00:07:40.910 --> 00:07:42.949 and they literally have dueling pieces of paper. 00:07:43.110 --> 00:07:45.910 One set says Hayes, one set says Tilden and both 00:07:45.910 --> 00:07:48.350 claim to be the legal will of the state. And 00:07:48.350 --> 00:07:50.949 the really scary part is that the Constitution 00:07:50.949 --> 00:07:54.870 does not provide a clear tested mechanism for 00:07:54.870 --> 00:07:57.949 how Congress is supposed to decide Which envelope 00:07:57.949 --> 00:08:01.470 is the real one? Which creates a completely paralyzed 00:08:01.470 --> 00:08:04.810 federal government. To resolve the impasse, Congress 00:08:04.810 --> 00:08:08.389 is forced to invent an entirely new ad hoc legal 00:08:08.389 --> 00:08:11.430 mechanism on the fly. They pass the Electoral 00:08:11.430 --> 00:08:13.689 Commission Act. Yeah, and this act establishes 00:08:13.689 --> 00:08:16.170 a 15 member commission tasked with reviewing 00:08:16.170 --> 00:08:18.649 the evidence from the four contested states and 00:08:18.649 --> 00:08:21.189 making a binding ruling on which electoral certificates 00:08:21.189 --> 00:08:23.529 to accept. The mechanical makeup of this commission 00:08:23.529 --> 00:08:25.629 is fascinating, and it's honestly the key to 00:08:25.629 --> 00:08:28.360 understanding the Democrats rage later on. The 00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:30.279 commission is composed of five members from the 00:08:30.279 --> 00:08:32.379 House of Representatives, five members from the 00:08:32.379 --> 00:08:34.980 Senate, and five justices from the Supreme Court. 00:08:35.259 --> 00:08:36.960 Right. And the partisan breakdown was designed 00:08:36.960 --> 00:08:39.320 to be perfectly balanced with a single tiebreaker. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.279 The House provided three Democrats and two Republicans. 00:08:42.820 --> 00:08:44.820 The Senate provided three Republicans and two 00:08:44.820 --> 00:08:46.840 Democrats. So that's five Democrats and five 00:08:46.840 --> 00:08:49.429 Republicans from Congress. Okay. Perfectly even 00:08:49.429 --> 00:08:52.789 so far. Exactly. From the Supreme Court, they 00:08:52.789 --> 00:08:55.990 selected two known Democratic -leaning justices 00:08:55.990 --> 00:08:58.750 and two known Republican -leaning justices. That 00:08:58.750 --> 00:09:01.049 brings the total to seven Democrats and seven 00:09:01.049 --> 00:09:05.009 Republicans. 14 members. So the final 15th member, 00:09:05.190 --> 00:09:07.809 the ultimate tiebreaker for the presidency of 00:09:07.809 --> 00:09:10.509 the United States, was supposed to be Supreme 00:09:10.509 --> 00:09:12.830 Court Justice David Davis. Right. And Justice 00:09:12.830 --> 00:09:15.649 Davis was highly respected and universally viewed 00:09:15.649 --> 00:09:18.659 as the only true political independent in Washington. 00:09:19.259 --> 00:09:21.960 Both sides genuinely believed he would be an 00:09:21.960 --> 00:09:25.740 impartial judge. But then a massive political 00:09:25.740 --> 00:09:27.820 miscalculation occurred. Well, this part is crazy. 00:09:27.879 --> 00:09:30.059 It really is. Democrats in the Illinois state 00:09:30.059 --> 00:09:32.080 legislature hoping to curry favor with Davis 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:34.379 and secure his vote on the commission suddenly 00:09:34.379 --> 00:09:36.440 elected him to the United States Senate. They 00:09:36.440 --> 00:09:38.580 thought they were buying his loyalty. They absolutely 00:09:38.580 --> 00:09:40.419 did. Instead, they compromised his neutrality. 00:09:40.539 --> 00:09:44.240 Feeling his independence was now hopelessly politicized, 00:09:44.679 --> 00:09:46.500 Justice Davis immediately resigned from the Supreme 00:09:46.500 --> 00:09:48.879 Court to take his Senate seat, and he completely 00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:50.679 recused himself from the Electoral Commission. 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.299 Which leaves a vacant seat on the commission 00:09:53.299 --> 00:09:55.299 that has to be filled by another Supreme Court 00:09:55.299 --> 00:09:57.840 justice. But there are no independents left on 00:09:57.840 --> 00:10:00.559 the court. Every remaining justice is a Republican 00:10:00.559 --> 00:10:04.299 appointee. Yeah. So they select Justice Joseph 00:10:04.299 --> 00:10:07.529 P. Bradley. a Republican. The carefully designed 00:10:07.529 --> 00:10:09.690 bipartisan commission now officially consists 00:10:09.690 --> 00:10:12.710 of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. And 00:10:12.710 --> 00:10:15.169 shocker when the commission sits down to review 00:10:15.169 --> 00:10:18.309 the complex, nuanced, highly disputed evidence 00:10:18.309 --> 00:10:20.769 of fraud and intimidation in Florida, Louisiana, 00:10:21.029 --> 00:10:23.990 South Carolina and Oregon, they vote exactly 00:10:23.990 --> 00:10:27.450 eight to seven along strict party lines to give 00:10:27.450 --> 00:10:30.009 every single one of those 20 disputed votes to 00:10:30.009 --> 00:10:32.610 the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Every single 00:10:32.610 --> 00:10:35.309 vote securing him the presidency by margin of 00:10:35.309 --> 00:10:38.730 185 to 184. I mean that's like a tied championship 00:10:38.730 --> 00:10:41.289 game where the league invents a special referee 00:10:41.289 --> 00:10:44.029 panel at the last minute only for the refs to 00:10:44.029 --> 00:10:46.110 vote exactly along their own team allegiances. 00:10:46.769 --> 00:10:48.669 The reaction from the Democratic Party must have 00:10:48.669 --> 00:10:50.750 been explosive. Oh it was. They feel they've 00:10:50.750 --> 00:10:52.769 been completely defrauded. The Commission, which 00:10:52.769 --> 00:10:54.730 was supposed to be an impartial arbiter, had 00:10:54.730 --> 00:10:57.129 just functioned as a partisan rubber stamp. But 00:10:57.129 --> 00:10:59.549 here is the question for our listener who's trying 00:10:59.549 --> 00:11:02.700 to trace the causality here in their paper. If 00:11:02.700 --> 00:11:05.360 the commission legally resolved it, I mean, if 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:08.399 it was created by an act of Congress and it executed 00:11:08.399 --> 00:11:11.379 its mandate by voting, why was there a crisis 00:11:11.379 --> 00:11:13.159 that required a compromise in the first place? 00:11:13.279 --> 00:11:15.659 Didn't the commission just do its job? Well, 00:11:15.980 --> 00:11:18.299 legally, yes, the commission fulfilled its mandate, 00:11:18.940 --> 00:11:21.659 but political authority requires consent, and 00:11:21.659 --> 00:11:24.039 the Democratic Party was entirely unwilling to 00:11:24.039 --> 00:11:27.080 grant that consent. And they had one final weapon. 00:11:27.679 --> 00:11:29.759 Under the rules of the Electoral Commission Act, 00:11:29.850 --> 00:11:32.889 The Commission's decisions were binding unless 00:11:32.889 --> 00:11:35.490 they were rejected by both the Senate and the 00:11:35.490 --> 00:11:37.070 House of Representatives. Okay, but the Senate 00:11:37.070 --> 00:11:39.509 is controlled by Republicans, so they're perfectly 00:11:39.509 --> 00:11:41.590 happy to accept the Commission's ruling giving 00:11:41.590 --> 00:11:44.049 the presidency to Hayes. Right. But the House 00:11:44.049 --> 00:11:46.629 is controlled by Democrats, and since they can't 00:11:46.629 --> 00:11:48.950 overrule the Commission without the Senate, they 00:11:48.950 --> 00:11:51.269 decide to completely break the machinery of Congress. 00:11:51.730 --> 00:11:55.120 They resort to extreme dilatory tactics. Let's 00:11:55.120 --> 00:11:57.519 explain the mechanics of that. What does a dilatory 00:11:57.519 --> 00:11:59.659 tactic actually look like on the floor of the 00:11:59.659 --> 00:12:03.440 House in 1877? It is the complete weaponization 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:06.860 of parliamentary procedure to grind all legislative 00:12:06.860 --> 00:12:10.500 business to an absolute halt. Democratic representatives 00:12:10.500 --> 00:12:13.720 began initiating endless roll call votes. When 00:12:13.720 --> 00:12:16.179 a roll call was called, Democratic members would 00:12:16.179 --> 00:12:19.000 simply refuse to answer, technically depriving 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:20.879 the House of the quorum necessary to conduct 00:12:20.879 --> 00:12:23.159 business, even though they were physically sitting 00:12:23.159 --> 00:12:26.159 right there in the room. That is so petty, but 00:12:26.159 --> 00:12:29.659 so effective. Highly effective. They would introduce 00:12:29.659 --> 00:12:32.899 endless motions to adjourn. They demanded that 00:12:32.899 --> 00:12:34.940 the entirety of the Constitution be read aloud 00:12:34.940 --> 00:12:38.379 on the floor. Wow. So they are basically filibustering 00:12:38.379 --> 00:12:40.679 the certification of the election. And they took 00:12:40.679 --> 00:12:42.840 it a step further. They started raising completely 00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:45.659 spurious objections to electoral votes from states 00:12:45.659 --> 00:12:47.700 that weren't even in dispute. Wait, really? Like, 00:12:47.799 --> 00:12:50.519 which states? Well, when the county reached Vermont, 00:12:50.799 --> 00:12:53.919 or Wisconsin, states, haze one cleanly without 00:12:53.919 --> 00:12:56.360 any controversy at all, Democrats would suddenly 00:12:56.360 --> 00:12:58.820 submit fake alternative electoral certificates 00:12:58.820 --> 00:13:01.419 and demand that the entire Electoral Commission 00:13:01.419 --> 00:13:04.519 convene again to investigate them. It was a strategy 00:13:04.519 --> 00:13:06.799 of infinite delay. Because the goal here is the 00:13:06.799 --> 00:13:10.179 calendar. Inauguration Day is March 5th. If the 00:13:10.179 --> 00:13:12.200 Democrats can just keep reading the Constitution 00:13:12.200 --> 00:13:14.220 and refusing roll calls until the clock runs 00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:17.379 out on March 5th, Ulysses S. Grant's term ends 00:13:17.379 --> 00:13:20.059 and the United States is left without a legally 00:13:20.059 --> 00:13:22.620 recognized president. And this parliamentary 00:13:22.620 --> 00:13:25.539 sabotage was accompanied by terrifying real -world 00:13:25.539 --> 00:13:28.399 threats. The source material notes the widespread 00:13:28.399 --> 00:13:30.480 talk among Democratic voters that Tilden had 00:13:30.480 --> 00:13:33.279 been robbed. Prominent Democratic newspapers 00:13:33.279 --> 00:13:36.120 were running headlines demanding Tilden or blood. 00:13:36.299 --> 00:13:39.120 Tilden or blood. Wow. Yeah. There were credible 00:13:39.120 --> 00:13:41.600 intelligence reports that armed units of Democratic 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:43.620 supporters were preparing to physically march 00:13:43.620 --> 00:13:46.559 on Washington, D .C. to install Tilden by force. 00:13:47.179 --> 00:13:49.200 The threat of a second civil war was palpable. 00:13:49.399 --> 00:13:51.700 It's the ultimate staring contest. The Democrats 00:13:51.700 --> 00:13:53.620 have the congressional machinery locked down. 00:13:53.960 --> 00:13:55.960 The Republicans have the commission's legal ruling 00:13:55.960 --> 00:13:58.120 and the threat of catastrophic violence is just 00:13:58.120 --> 00:14:00.659 hovering over the entire country. And then the 00:14:00.659 --> 00:14:03.279 staring contest just abruptly ends. The sources 00:14:03.279 --> 00:14:06.139 tell us that at 410 a .m. on March 2nd, with 00:14:06.139 --> 00:14:08.559 just three days left on the clock, the Democratic 00:14:08.559 --> 00:14:12.259 filibuster simply collapses. The president pro 00:14:12.259 --> 00:14:14.460 tempore of the Senate announces that Hayes has 00:14:14.460 --> 00:14:17.620 been elected. The armed militias stand down. 00:14:18.259 --> 00:14:20.960 Hayes is inaugurated peacefully. And the sheer 00:14:20.960 --> 00:14:23.539 abruptness of this capitulation is the catalyst 00:14:23.539 --> 00:14:26.159 for the entire historiography we are analyzing 00:14:26.159 --> 00:14:29.620 today. Why did the Democrats who had the power 00:14:29.620 --> 00:14:32.159 to push the nation into a constitutional abyss, 00:14:32.539 --> 00:14:35.360 just give up. What'd they get in return for handing 00:14:35.360 --> 00:14:37.840 over the presidency? Which brings us to the first 00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:40.840 major hurdle for historians, right? Section two 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:43.059 of your notes, the silent era and the rumor mill. 00:14:43.600 --> 00:14:45.200 Because if you were a college student writing 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:47.820 a paper on this today, your first instinct is 00:14:47.820 --> 00:14:50.250 to go look for the primary sources. You want 00:14:50.250 --> 00:14:52.409 to see the treaty. You want the diary entries 00:14:52.409 --> 00:14:54.970 from the politicians who brokered the deal, the 00:14:54.970 --> 00:14:57.269 secret memos detailing what was traded. And you 00:14:57.269 --> 00:14:59.549 will find absolutely nothing of the sort. Hold 00:14:59.549 --> 00:15:01.830 on, wait. If this was the deal of the century, 00:15:01.990 --> 00:15:04.029 a bargain that literally traded the American 00:15:04.029 --> 00:15:06.889 presidency and ended the era of federal reconstruction, 00:15:07.809 --> 00:15:10.070 how is it possible there are no receipts, no 00:15:10.070 --> 00:15:13.649 diaries, no memos? It is a profound historiographical 00:15:13.649 --> 00:15:16.789 problem known as the paucity of documentary evidence. 00:15:17.159 --> 00:15:20.200 Because the stakes were so high, essentially 00:15:20.200 --> 00:15:23.340 trading the presidency, any negotiations would 00:15:23.340 --> 00:15:26.519 have been highly, highly secret. In the immediate 00:15:26.519 --> 00:15:30.320 aftermath of 1877, there is zero contemporary 00:15:30.320 --> 00:15:32.899 documentary evidence of a negotiated compromise. 00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:36.360 None. None. If you look at the private papers 00:15:36.360 --> 00:15:39.259 of people intimately involved, the silence is 00:15:39.259 --> 00:15:41.659 deafening. Take Abram Hewitt, who was the chairman 00:15:41.659 --> 00:15:44.019 of the Democratic National Committee and deeply 00:15:44.019 --> 00:15:46.639 involved in the crisis. His papers contain no 00:15:46.639 --> 00:15:49.139 evidence of a grand bargain. OK, but what about 00:15:49.139 --> 00:15:51.240 the people literally taking notes in the room? 00:15:51.299 --> 00:15:53.620 Well, look at Milton H. Northrop. He was the 00:15:53.620 --> 00:15:55.419 secretary of the select committee that drafted 00:15:55.419 --> 00:15:58.179 the Electoral Commission Act. In 1901, he wrote 00:15:58.179 --> 00:16:01.279 a highly detailed history of the crisis. He meticulously 00:16:01.279 --> 00:16:03.559 details the debates, the tensions, the voting. 00:16:04.190 --> 00:16:06.350 But he makes absolutely no mention of a backroom 00:16:06.350 --> 00:16:08.690 negotiation that secured Hayes' presidency. So 00:16:08.690 --> 00:16:10.049 if the people in the room weren't writing about 00:16:10.049 --> 00:16:12.470 a deal, where does the narrative of a compromise 00:16:12.470 --> 00:16:15.570 even come from? It emerges from whispers, anecdotes, 00:16:15.710 --> 00:16:18.429 and logical deduction. The sources point to a 00:16:18.429 --> 00:16:20.590 highly revealing account written by a journalist 00:16:20.590 --> 00:16:22.970 and political insider named Henry Watterson. 00:16:23.850 --> 00:16:27.649 In 1913, decades after the event, Watterson published 00:16:27.649 --> 00:16:31.840 an inside history of the 1876 crisis. To illustrate 00:16:31.840 --> 00:16:34.279 the secrecy of the event, he shares a fascinating 00:16:34.279 --> 00:16:36.980 anecdote about a White House dinner party that 00:16:36.980 --> 00:16:39.259 occurred during Grover Cleveland's administration 00:16:39.259 --> 00:16:42.139 in the late 1880s. Okay, so we are already 10 00:16:42.139 --> 00:16:43.759 years removed from the crisis at this point. 00:16:44.539 --> 00:16:47.419 Yes. Watterson describes this dinner where four 00:16:47.419 --> 00:16:50.139 unnamed high -level political insiders from the 00:16:50.139 --> 00:16:53.090 1876 crisis are sitting around the table. They 00:16:53.090 --> 00:16:54.970 start drinking, and they begin trying to outdo 00:16:54.970 --> 00:16:56.669 each other, bragging and dropping hints about 00:16:56.669 --> 00:16:58.830 the salacious secrets they knew about that chaotic 00:16:58.830 --> 00:17:01.710 winter. It's a political parlor game of who knows 00:17:01.710 --> 00:17:03.990 the darkest secret. But did they spill the beans? 00:17:04.470 --> 00:17:06.930 No. Watterson notes that even in that private, 00:17:07.089 --> 00:17:09.390 boastful setting, nobody actually revealed the 00:17:09.390 --> 00:17:12.190 full mechanics of how the crisis ended. Watterson 00:17:12.190 --> 00:17:14.589 himself concludes his 1913 history by stating, 00:17:15.009 --> 00:17:17.440 the whole truth will never be known. That is 00:17:17.440 --> 00:17:19.759 incredibly frustrating for a historian. You have 00:17:19.759 --> 00:17:22.460 a massive historical pivot point and the only 00:17:22.460 --> 00:17:24.799 evidence of a deal is guys at a dinner party 00:17:24.799 --> 00:17:27.119 hinting that they know a secret they won't share. 00:17:27.779 --> 00:17:30.380 But if that's the evidentiary baseline, how does 00:17:30.380 --> 00:17:33.980 the Compromise of 1877 become accepted historical 00:17:33.980 --> 00:17:37.099 fact? It became accepted history because nature 00:17:37.099 --> 00:17:40.519 abhors a vacuum. The lack of evidence paradoxically 00:17:40.519 --> 00:17:44.500 allowed the rumor of a bargain of 1877 to calcify 00:17:44.500 --> 00:17:47.400 into accepted history. simply because it was 00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:49.799 the most plausible way to explain human behavior. 00:17:50.029 --> 00:17:52.609 Political parties do not unilaterally surrender 00:17:52.609 --> 00:17:55.670 the presidency out of a sudden burst of patriotism, 00:17:55.670 --> 00:17:57.750 especially not in the hyper -partisan gilded 00:17:57.750 --> 00:17:59.910 age. Right. Southern Democrats who had spent 00:17:59.910 --> 00:18:02.170 months screaming about fraud and threatening 00:18:02.170 --> 00:18:05.150 violence suddenly recognizing the legal authority 00:18:05.150 --> 00:18:07.490 of a Republican president requires a mechanism 00:18:07.490 --> 00:18:10.150 of explanation. Exactly. It's the logic of deduction. 00:18:10.809 --> 00:18:12.910 Observers assumed a secret deal was struck because 00:18:12.910 --> 00:18:14.869 a secret deal was the only logical framework 00:18:14.869 --> 00:18:17.349 that explained why the Democrats stopped filibustering. 00:18:17.890 --> 00:18:19.529 They assumed the lack of evidence was simply 00:18:19.400 --> 00:18:21.859 proof of how secret the negotiations had to be. 00:18:22.180 --> 00:18:24.440 So if you wake up and the streets are wet you 00:18:24.440 --> 00:18:26.859 assume it rained even if you didn't see the clouds. 00:18:27.140 --> 00:18:30.240 Exactly. And that reliance on plausibility over 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:33.759 hard paper trails persisted for over 70 years. 00:18:34.119 --> 00:18:36.200 It wasn't until the mid -20th century that a 00:18:36.200 --> 00:18:38.500 historian decided to stop relying on dinner party 00:18:38.500 --> 00:18:41.220 gossip and actually attempt to build a concrete 00:18:41.220 --> 00:18:44.259 structural model of what exactly happened in 00:18:44.259 --> 00:18:46.700 those unrecorded back rooms. Which is where the 00:18:46.700 --> 00:18:49.059 historiography takes a massive leap forward. 00:18:49.460 --> 00:18:53.019 In 1951, a historian named C. Van Woodward publishes 00:18:53.019 --> 00:18:56.140 a seminal book called Reunion and Reaction, the 00:18:56.140 --> 00:18:59.430 Compromise of 1876. and the end of Reconstruction. 00:18:59.829 --> 00:19:01.730 And Woodward doesn't just analyze the event, 00:19:01.890 --> 00:19:04.589 he completely brands it. He really does. Woodward 00:19:04.589 --> 00:19:06.769 is the scholar who coined the term compromise 00:19:06.769 --> 00:19:09.589 of 1877. By giving it that specific title, he 00:19:09.589 --> 00:19:11.769 is making a very intentional historical argument. 00:19:11.910 --> 00:19:14.230 He is elevating this messy, desperate electoral 00:19:14.230 --> 00:19:17.349 dispute to the level of the famous nation -shaping 00:19:17.349 --> 00:19:19.309 legislative compromises of the 19th century, 00:19:19.490 --> 00:19:21.670 things like the Missouri Compromise of 1820 or 00:19:21.670 --> 00:19:24.430 the Compromise of 1850. And his theory completely 00:19:24.430 --> 00:19:26.769 changes how historians look at the motivations 00:19:26.769 --> 00:19:29.950 of the people involved. Before Woodward, the 00:19:29.950 --> 00:19:31.849 assumption was always that this was a purely 00:19:31.849 --> 00:19:34.269 political fight, you know, politicians arguing 00:19:34.269 --> 00:19:37.349 over cabinet seats and federal troops. But Woodward 00:19:37.349 --> 00:19:40.150 introduces a massively important new variable 00:19:40.150 --> 00:19:43.890 into the equation, Gilded Age economics. What's 00:19:43.890 --> 00:19:45.910 fascinating here is how Woodward shifts the focus 00:19:45.910 --> 00:19:49.549 from purely political actors to economic and 00:19:49.549 --> 00:19:52.309 industrial motivations, railroads as the real 00:19:52.309 --> 00:19:54.950 currency of power. Woodward posits that the real 00:19:54.950 --> 00:19:57.670 architects of the compromise were Northern Republican 00:19:57.670 --> 00:20:00.549 railroad barons and the emerging business elite 00:20:00.549 --> 00:20:02.670 of the New South. Let's define the New South 00:20:02.670 --> 00:20:04.789 for our listener, because it's crucial to Woodward's 00:20:04.789 --> 00:20:07.069 argument. The Old South was built entirely on 00:20:07.069 --> 00:20:09.990 plantation agriculture and enslaved labor. After 00:20:09.990 --> 00:20:11.970 the Civil War, there was a movement among southern 00:20:11.970 --> 00:20:13.930 elites, championed by figures like journalist 00:20:13.930 --> 00:20:16.690 Henry Grady, to modernize the South. They want 00:20:16.690 --> 00:20:19.089 factories, they want steel mills, and most importantly, 00:20:19.250 --> 00:20:21.549 they want railroads. They want to industrialize 00:20:21.549 --> 00:20:23.579 to compete with the North. Woodward argues that 00:20:23.579 --> 00:20:25.880 these New South industrialists and the Northern 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:29.059 Railroad interests recognized a mutual financial 00:20:29.059 --> 00:20:33.160 opportunity in the political chaos of 1876. He 00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:35.900 posits that these businessmen bypassed the screaming 00:20:35.900 --> 00:20:39.019 politicians and met secretly at Wormley's Hotel 00:20:39.019 --> 00:20:41.980 in Washington, D .C. The famous Wormley Agreement. 00:20:42.220 --> 00:20:44.259 Right. And at this hotel, they hammered out a 00:20:44.259 --> 00:20:47.160 highly specific transactional deal. Woodward 00:20:47.160 --> 00:20:49.920 doesn't just suggest a vague agreement, he itemizes 00:20:49.920 --> 00:20:53.519 it into five distinct points of compromise. Five 00:20:53.519 --> 00:20:55.900 specific promises the Republicans made to the 00:20:55.900 --> 00:20:58.279 Southern Democrats in exchange for abandoning 00:20:58.279 --> 00:21:00.519 the filibuster and handing Hayes the presidency. 00:21:00.809 --> 00:21:03.190 Okay, let's break down Woodward's five bullet 00:21:03.190 --> 00:21:05.369 points, because if you are writing a paper, this 00:21:05.369 --> 00:21:07.390 is the structural foundation of the Standard 00:21:07.390 --> 00:21:10.089 Model of 1877. Definitely. Point number one, 00:21:10.450 --> 00:21:13.009 the removal of all remaining U .S. military forces 00:21:13.009 --> 00:21:15.809 from the former Confederate states. By 1877, 00:21:16.230 --> 00:21:18.089 federal troops were only actively propping up 00:21:18.089 --> 00:21:20.230 Republican governments in Louisiana and South 00:21:20.230 --> 00:21:23.460 Carolina. Florida was already done. The Democrats 00:21:23.460 --> 00:21:25.880 demanded they be removed, officially ending federal 00:21:25.880 --> 00:21:28.000 reconstruction and returning the states to home 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:30.900 rule. Right. Point number two. The appointment 00:21:30.900 --> 00:21:33.599 of at least one Southern Democrat to Hayes's 00:21:33.599 --> 00:21:35.819 presidential cabinet. This would give the White 00:21:35.819 --> 00:21:38.660 South a direct voice in executive patronage. 00:21:39.500 --> 00:21:41.220 And Hayes actually followed through on this. 00:21:41.779 --> 00:21:44.420 He appointed a man named David M. Key of Tennessee 00:21:44.420 --> 00:21:46.940 as postmaster general. Point number three is 00:21:46.940 --> 00:21:49.079 where Woodward's economic thesis really takes 00:21:49.079 --> 00:21:51.960 hold. He argues the South demanded the construction 00:21:51.960 --> 00:21:54.599 of another transcontinental railroad using the 00:21:54.599 --> 00:21:57.099 Texas and Pacific Roads. And this was intimately 00:21:57.099 --> 00:22:00.019 tied to a man named Thomas A. Scott, the powerful 00:22:00.019 --> 00:22:02.940 executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Woodward 00:22:02.940 --> 00:22:05.799 actually argues that Scott was the primary power 00:22:05.799 --> 00:22:08.950 broker. initiating the negotiations at Wormley's 00:22:08.950 --> 00:22:12.369 Hotel. Wait, so a railroad executive is essentially 00:22:12.369 --> 00:22:14.650 brokering the presidency of the United States? 00:22:14.769 --> 00:22:16.910 Under Woodward's model, absolutely. Because building 00:22:16.910 --> 00:22:19.490 a transcontinental railroad in the 1870s required 00:22:19.490 --> 00:22:22.150 massive federal land grants and government -backed 00:22:22.150 --> 00:22:24.849 bonds. Scott needed a compliant Congress and 00:22:24.849 --> 00:22:26.970 a friendly president to underwrite his railroad. 00:22:27.769 --> 00:22:30.349 By facilitating a deal that gave Hayes the presidency, 00:22:30.849 --> 00:22:33.089 Scott believed he was securing the federal subsidies 00:22:33.089 --> 00:22:35.700 his railroad desperately needed. Which flows 00:22:35.700 --> 00:22:39.440 perfectly into point number four, a broad commitment 00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:41.940 to federal legislation to industrialize the South. 00:22:42.700 --> 00:22:45.480 The South wanted federal money for internal improvements, 00:22:45.660 --> 00:22:48.079 you know, dredging harbors, building bridges, 00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:50.160 repairing levees along the Mississippi River. 00:22:50.259 --> 00:22:51.940 They wanted the federal government to bankroll 00:22:51.940 --> 00:22:54.539 the new South. And finally, point number five, 00:22:54.960 --> 00:22:57.259 the most tragic and consequential element of 00:22:57.259 --> 00:23:00.269 the bargain. Woodward argues the Republicans 00:23:00.269 --> 00:23:03.210 explicitly agreed to grant the white South the 00:23:03.210 --> 00:23:05.390 right to manage race relations and deal with 00:23:05.390 --> 00:23:08.470 black citizens without any further northern or 00:23:08.470 --> 00:23:11.589 federal interference. They were agreeing to turn 00:23:11.589 --> 00:23:14.170 a blind eye to civil rights. So you have the 00:23:14.170 --> 00:23:16.690 five pillars. Remove the troupes, appoint a southern 00:23:16.690 --> 00:23:19.730 postmaster, build the Texas and Pacific Railroad, 00:23:20.069 --> 00:23:22.589 pass industrial legislation, and abandon federal 00:23:22.589 --> 00:23:25.420 protection for black southerners. I have to admit, 00:23:25.599 --> 00:23:27.779 when you lay out Woodward's model, it is incredibly 00:23:27.779 --> 00:23:30.240 compelling. It is the ultimate smoke -filled 00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:32.579 room narrative. It really is. It's neat, it has 00:23:32.579 --> 00:23:35.019 five clear bullet points, and it perfectly ties 00:23:35.019 --> 00:23:37.720 up the loose ends. As a student writing a paper 00:23:37.720 --> 00:23:39.960 in the 1960s, this is your gold standard, right? 00:23:40.259 --> 00:23:42.059 But, I mean, doesn't it seem almost too neat? 00:23:42.200 --> 00:23:45.220 It does. When you start trying to map a perfectly 00:23:45.220 --> 00:23:48.579 logical five point contract onto the absolute 00:23:48.579 --> 00:23:52.160 chaos of 19th century politics, it seems overly 00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:56.000 tidy. And that exact skepticism is what drove 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:58.380 the next wave of historiography. OK, so where 00:23:58.380 --> 00:24:02.000 do we go next? In the 1970s, historians began 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:04.960 to take Woodward's five bullet points and cross 00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:07.299 -reference them against the actual legislative 00:24:07.299 --> 00:24:09.880 and economic record of the Hayes administration. 00:24:10.519 --> 00:24:12.380 And they realized that the math of the compromise 00:24:12.380 --> 00:24:16.039 did not add up. This brings us to 1973, when 00:24:16.039 --> 00:24:18.400 historian Alan Peskin published a devastating 00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:21.740 critique titled, Was There a Compromise of 1877? 00:24:22.039 --> 00:24:24.500 Peskin essentially takes out a red pen and starts 00:24:24.500 --> 00:24:26.710 grading Woodward's theory. And his conclusion 00:24:26.710 --> 00:24:29.130 is that this grand five -point economic bargain 00:24:29.130 --> 00:24:31.490 wasn't actually a compromise at all because the 00:24:31.490 --> 00:24:34.349 terms were largely fictional. Exactly. Peskin 00:24:34.349 --> 00:24:36.630 systematically dismantles the transactional nature 00:24:36.630 --> 00:24:38.730 of the deal. He points out that of Woodward's 00:24:38.730 --> 00:24:40.690 five points, three of them were completely unmet. 00:24:40.769 --> 00:24:42.849 They never happened. And the two that did happen 00:24:42.849 --> 00:24:44.650 were not actually concessions squeezed out of 00:24:44.650 --> 00:24:47.400 the Republicans to buy the presidency. OK. Let's 00:24:47.400 --> 00:24:50.279 dig into the three unmet conditions because this 00:24:50.279 --> 00:24:53.619 reveals so much about Gilded Age lobbying. Woodward 00:24:53.619 --> 00:24:56.119 claimed the South was promised Thomas A. Scott's 00:24:56.119 --> 00:24:58.859 Texas and Pacific Railroad. But Peskin looks 00:24:58.859 --> 00:25:01.259 at the congressional record and points out that 00:25:01.259 --> 00:25:03.599 no serious federal effort was ever made during 00:25:03.599 --> 00:25:06.079 the Hayes administration to fund that railroad. 00:25:06.460 --> 00:25:09.000 The mechanics of why it failed are crucial here. 00:25:09.559 --> 00:25:12.319 Thomas A. Scott wasn't the only railroad baron 00:25:12.319 --> 00:25:15.000 in America. He had a massive rival in Callis 00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:17.200 P. Huntington, who controlled the Southern Pacific 00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:20.119 Railroad. Huntington aggressively lobbied Congress 00:25:20.119 --> 00:25:22.619 against Scott's plan. He essentially bought off 00:25:22.619 --> 00:25:25.640 enough politicians to completely thwart the Texas 00:25:25.640 --> 00:25:28.039 and Pacific route. Wow. Yeah. And the Southern 00:25:28.039 --> 00:25:29.920 Pacific ended up building their own line to New 00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:32.180 Orleans without the federal subsidies Scott was 00:25:32.180 --> 00:25:34.539 demanding. So the great economic prize of the 00:25:34.539 --> 00:25:36.559 compromise, the Southern Transcontinental Railroad, 00:25:36.839 --> 00:25:39.059 was never delivered to the South. And what about 00:25:39.059 --> 00:25:42.059 point four, the grand federal legislation to 00:25:42.059 --> 00:25:45.500 industrialize the South? Peskin finds that also 00:25:45.500 --> 00:25:48.380 never materialized. There was no massive influx 00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:50.920 of federal cash to rebuild southern infrastructure 00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:53.680 under Hayes. The northern public was just tired 00:25:53.680 --> 00:25:55.940 of spending money on the South, and Congress 00:25:55.940 --> 00:25:58.859 refused to open the Treasury. Then Peskin takes 00:25:58.859 --> 00:26:01.440 aim at the fifth point, the Republican agreement 00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:04.769 to abandon civil rights. Woodward argued that 00:26:04.769 --> 00:26:07.589 in 1877, the Republican Party formally agreed 00:26:07.589 --> 00:26:09.829 to stop interfering in Southern race relations. 00:26:10.789 --> 00:26:13.450 But Peskin argues this is a profound misreading 00:26:13.450 --> 00:26:16.289 of the timeline. The Republican Party did not 00:26:16.289 --> 00:26:19.029 abandon civil rights efforts in 1877. In fact, 00:26:19.130 --> 00:26:20.869 they continued to fight for federal oversight 00:26:20.869 --> 00:26:22.990 of Southern elections for more than a decade. 00:26:23.170 --> 00:26:25.230 This is a really important mechanical detail. 00:26:25.549 --> 00:26:27.309 How are they still fighting for civil rights 00:26:27.309 --> 00:26:29.329 after Reconstruction ended? You have to look 00:26:29.329 --> 00:26:31.789 at the Federal Elections Bill of 1890, commonly 00:26:31.789 --> 00:26:34.309 known as the Lodge Bill, drafted by Representative 00:26:34.309 --> 00:26:36.730 Henry Cabot Lodge. The mechanics of this bill 00:26:36.730 --> 00:26:40.750 were incredibly strong. It proposed that if 100 00:26:40.750 --> 00:26:43.369 citizens in any district petition the government, 00:26:43.970 --> 00:26:45.950 federal supervisors would be sent in to oversee 00:26:45.950 --> 00:26:48.970 local elections, investigate fraud, and enforce 00:26:48.970 --> 00:26:52.019 voting rights. This was a direct attempt by the 00:26:52.019 --> 00:26:54.519 Republican Party to combat the disenfranchisement 00:26:54.519 --> 00:26:57.619 of black voters in the South 13 years after the 00:26:57.619 --> 00:27:01.299 supposed compromise of 1877 13 years later. Yeah, 00:27:01.319 --> 00:27:03.660 and the Lodge bill passed the house and only 00:27:03.660 --> 00:27:06.940 failed in the Senate by a single vote Peskin 00:27:06.940 --> 00:27:08.839 argues that if the Republicans had truly struck 00:27:08.839 --> 00:27:11.460 a bargain in 1877 to permanently abandon the 00:27:11.460 --> 00:27:13.539 South the white supremacy The Lodge bill never 00:27:13.539 --> 00:27:15.259 would have been written let alone almost passed 00:27:15.500 --> 00:27:17.599 The Republican retreat from civil rights was 00:27:17.599 --> 00:27:20.319 a long agonizing erosion of political will, not 00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:22.779 a sudden switch flipped in a hotel room in 1877. 00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:25.420 So Peskin destroys three of the five pillars. 00:27:26.380 --> 00:27:28.500 The Democrats were supposedly bought off with 00:27:28.500 --> 00:27:31.279 railroads, factories, and the immediate end of 00:27:31.279 --> 00:27:33.599 civil rights enforcement, but they didn't get 00:27:33.599 --> 00:27:35.599 the railroads, they didn't get the factories, 00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:38.640 and the Republicans kept trying to pass civil 00:27:38.640 --> 00:27:42.039 rights bills until 1890. Here's where it gets 00:27:42.039 --> 00:27:44.440 really interesting for our listener. If I'm understanding 00:27:44.440 --> 00:27:47.660 Peskin correctly, Woodward's grand compromise 00:27:47.660 --> 00:27:50.920 was basically a mirage. Yeah, pretty much. It's 00:27:50.920 --> 00:27:52.960 like claiming I bribed you with a pizza, but 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.279 I was already planning to buy pizza and I never 00:27:55.279 --> 00:27:57.279 actually gave you the garlic knots I promised. 00:27:57.359 --> 00:27:59.640 Can we even call that a bargain? Well, Woodward 00:27:59.640 --> 00:28:01.400 defenders would point to the two points that 00:28:01.400 --> 00:28:03.819 were honored, the withdrawal of federal troops 00:28:03.819 --> 00:28:05.799 and the appointment of the Southern postmaster. 00:28:06.359 --> 00:28:09.259 But Peskin addresses those as well. He argues 00:28:09.259 --> 00:28:11.200 they weren't transactional bribes to end the 00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:13.380 filibuster. They were events that were already 00:28:13.380 --> 00:28:15.700 going to happen regardless of the crisis. How 00:28:15.700 --> 00:28:17.519 does he prove that? By looking at the public 00:28:17.519 --> 00:28:20.099 record. Rutherford B. Hayes had actually announced 00:28:20.099 --> 00:28:23.000 prior to the election during his campaign that 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:25.319 he supported the restoration of home rule in 00:28:25.319 --> 00:28:28.519 the South. He believed the era of military occupation 00:28:28.519 --> 00:28:31.559 had run its course. The troop withdrawal wasn't 00:28:31.559 --> 00:28:33.660 a secret concession squeezed out of him in a 00:28:33.660 --> 00:28:36.079 hotel room. It was the execution of his stated 00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:38.920 public platform. Okay, that makes sense. Furthermore, 00:28:39.180 --> 00:28:41.039 appointing a Southern Democrat to the cabinet 00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:44.240 wasn't a corrupt payoff. It was standard political 00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:46.940 bridge building. It was high. Peskin directs 00:28:46.940 --> 00:28:49.059 our attention away from the Southern Democrats 00:28:49.059 --> 00:28:51.900 and towards the Northern Democrats. Specifically, 00:28:52.319 --> 00:28:54.720 he focuses on the Speaker of the House, Samuel 00:28:54.720 --> 00:28:58.589 J. Randall, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. Beskin 00:28:58.589 --> 00:29:00.930 argues that Northern Democrats gained absolutely 00:29:00.930 --> 00:29:03.710 nothing from Woodward's proposed economic terms. 00:29:04.269 --> 00:29:06.009 Speaker Randall did not care if Thomas A. Scott 00:29:06.009 --> 00:29:08.190 got a railroad in Texas. Right, he's from Pennsylvania. 00:29:08.730 --> 00:29:11.009 Exactly. Randall was a political pragmatist. 00:29:11.190 --> 00:29:13.349 He realized that the Democrats had lost the legal 00:29:13.349 --> 00:29:17.349 fight. Samuel J. Tilden had no viable constitutional 00:29:17.349 --> 00:29:20.210 path to successfully challenge the Electoral 00:29:20.210 --> 00:29:22.769 Commission's findings. The filibuster wasn't 00:29:22.769 --> 00:29:25.049 a strategy to win the presidency. It was just 00:29:25.049 --> 00:29:27.829 delay for the sake of delay. And infinite delay 00:29:27.829 --> 00:29:30.230 eventually destroys the government. Precisely. 00:29:30.609 --> 00:29:32.569 Peskin argues that Speaker Randall abandoning 00:29:32.569 --> 00:29:35.490 the filibuster wasn't a quid pro quo. It wasn't, 00:29:35.750 --> 00:29:37.529 I give you the presidency, you give me a railroad. 00:29:38.170 --> 00:29:40.549 It was a pragmatic recognition of limited bargaining 00:29:40.549 --> 00:29:43.099 power. The country was exhausted, the threat 00:29:43.099 --> 00:29:45.359 of violence was becoming uncontrollable, and 00:29:45.359 --> 00:29:47.359 the Democrats simply cut their losses and allowed 00:29:47.359 --> 00:29:49.930 the legal process to conclude. So for our listeners 00:29:49.930 --> 00:29:52.450 structuring their paper, Peskin is the perfect 00:29:52.450 --> 00:29:56.089 example of historiographical revisionism. Woodward 00:29:56.089 --> 00:29:58.730 built this massive, structurally beautiful theory 00:29:58.730 --> 00:30:01.809 based on economic motivations. Twenty years later, 00:30:02.029 --> 00:30:04.190 Peskin comes along with a ledger, checks the 00:30:04.190 --> 00:30:05.829 congressional and economic records, and says 00:30:05.829 --> 00:30:08.490 the structural integrity of this theory is compromised 00:30:08.490 --> 00:30:10.769 because the events simply didn't play out the 00:30:10.769 --> 00:30:14.039 way the theory demands. Peskin systematically 00:30:14.039 --> 00:30:16.579 dismantled the quid pro quo nature of the event. 00:30:16.779 --> 00:30:19.299 He really did. And if Peskin proved the specific 00:30:19.299 --> 00:30:21.839 terms of the deal were largely hollow, the next 00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:23.819 evolution in the historiography stepped in to 00:30:23.819 --> 00:30:26.259 argue that the mechanism of the deal was legally 00:30:26.259 --> 00:30:29.160 irrelevant entirely. Oh, wow. Yeah. This brings 00:30:29.160 --> 00:30:32.000 us to 1980 and the work of constitutional historian 00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:34.900 Michael S. Benedict. Benedict takes a completely 00:30:34.900 --> 00:30:37.779 different analytical approach. He isn't interested 00:30:37.779 --> 00:30:40.380 in tracking railroad subsidies or cabinet appointments. 00:30:40.680 --> 00:30:42.900 He looks at the constitutional framework of the 00:30:42.900 --> 00:30:45.720 United States. He accepts that sure, an informal 00:30:45.720 --> 00:30:48.299 agreement, handshakes, and backroom talks probably 00:30:48.299 --> 00:30:50.900 happen at Wormley's hotel, politicians talk, 00:30:51.220 --> 00:30:54.480 but he completely strips the compromise of 1877 00:30:54.480 --> 00:30:57.819 of its mythical nation -altering status. Benedict 00:30:57.819 --> 00:31:01.079 forces us to evaluate what the word compromise 00:31:01.079 --> 00:31:04.019 actually means in a historical legal context. 00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:06.180 If we connect this to the bigger picture, think 00:31:06.180 --> 00:31:09.450 of the compromises Woodward compared 1877 to, 00:31:09.769 --> 00:31:12.450 the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise 00:31:12.450 --> 00:31:16.109 of 1850, or even 1824 and 1861. What did those 00:31:16.109 --> 00:31:18.490 events actually entail? Well, they were pieces 00:31:18.490 --> 00:31:20.690 of legislation. They had a text, they were debated 00:31:20.690 --> 00:31:22.349 on the floor of Congress, they were subjected 00:31:22.349 --> 00:31:24.430 to a roll call vote, and they were signed into 00:31:24.430 --> 00:31:26.890 law by the president. They had binding constitutional 00:31:26.890 --> 00:31:29.309 weight. Exactly. They altered the legal landscape 00:31:29.309 --> 00:31:32.430 of the nation. The Compromise of 1877. Benedict 00:31:32.430 --> 00:31:35.289 points out that it had absolutely no legal effect. 00:31:35.430 --> 00:31:37.490 There was no treaty. There was no legislation 00:31:37.490 --> 00:31:40.269 passed at Wormley's Hotel. The informal agreements 00:31:40.269 --> 00:31:42.490 made by businessmen and politicians in a private 00:31:42.490 --> 00:31:45.329 room had zero binding power on the United States 00:31:45.329 --> 00:31:48.119 government. So how does Benedict explain Hayes 00:31:48.119 --> 00:31:51.619 becoming president? He points to the actual documented 00:31:51.619 --> 00:31:54.720 constitutional mechanics. In formal legal terms, 00:31:54.859 --> 00:31:57.700 the election of 1876 was decided by the official 00:31:57.700 --> 00:32:00.160 vote of Congress to accept the recommendations 00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:02.519 of the Electoral Commission. That is the only 00:32:02.519 --> 00:32:04.779 mechanism that mattered. Congress passed a law 00:32:04.779 --> 00:32:07.279 creating the 15 -member commission. The commission 00:32:07.279 --> 00:32:10.119 reviewed the evidence and voted 8 to 7. Congress 00:32:10.119 --> 00:32:13.039 then tabulated those votes. That is the legal 00:32:13.039 --> 00:32:15.440 reality of how Hayes became president. But what 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:18.240 about the filibuster? The hotel meeting supposedly 00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:20.339 ended the filibuster, which allowed the legal 00:32:20.339 --> 00:32:23.319 counting to finish. Benedict diminishes the institutional 00:32:23.319 --> 00:32:26.519 threat of the filibuster. He notes that the dilatory 00:32:26.519 --> 00:32:29.480 tactics in the House were largely a chaotic protest 00:32:29.480 --> 00:32:32.380 by a faction of angry Democrats, and they were 00:32:32.380 --> 00:32:34.279 happening against the wishes of the Democratic 00:32:34.279 --> 00:32:36.799 leadership like Speaker Randall. Oh, so they 00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:39.859 didn't even have full party support. Right. Benedict 00:32:39.859 --> 00:32:41.859 argues that the filibuster was already running 00:32:41.859 --> 00:32:44.519 out of steam. There were already sufficient votes 00:32:44.519 --> 00:32:46.500 in Congress to push the Commission's findings 00:32:46.500 --> 00:32:49.640 through. The threat of the filibuster was overblown. 00:32:49.779 --> 00:32:53.240 It was noisy political theater, not a legitimate 00:32:53.240 --> 00:32:56.160 institutional roadblock that required a grand 00:32:56.160 --> 00:32:58.619 historical compromise to overcome. So what does 00:32:58.619 --> 00:33:00.920 this all mean for our listener? If they are writing 00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:03.599 a history paper, they need to distinguish between 00:33:03.599 --> 00:33:06.160 informal political appeasement and actual legal 00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:09.160 compromise. Benedict is telling you to separate 00:33:09.160 --> 00:33:11.420 the political theater from the actual constitutional 00:33:11.420 --> 00:33:14.539 machinery. The informal backroom talk didn't 00:33:14.539 --> 00:33:16.819 make Hayes president. The legal framework of 00:33:16.819 --> 00:33:19.059 the Electoral Commission Act did. It's a powerful 00:33:19.059 --> 00:33:22.200 argument for prioritizing institutions over backroom 00:33:22.200 --> 00:33:25.240 drama. But history doesn't stop evolving. As 00:33:25.240 --> 00:33:28.160 we move into the 21st century, the historiographical 00:33:28.160 --> 00:33:31.380 lens shifts yet again. Historians grew frustrated 00:33:31.380 --> 00:33:34.279 with debating the minutiae of railroad legislation 00:33:34.279 --> 00:33:37.000 and constitutional counting procedures. They 00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:39.200 realized that by focusing so heavily on Washington, 00:33:39.319 --> 00:33:42.539 DC, previous historians had missed the profound 00:33:42.539 --> 00:33:45.000 psychological terror that actually drove the 00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:48.339 crisis. Which brings us to 2012 and a historian 00:33:48.339 --> 00:33:51.380 named Greg Downs who published a wildly influential 00:33:51.380 --> 00:33:54.359 piece called The Mexicanization of American Politics. 00:33:54.940 --> 00:33:57.039 This is where the historiography goes global 00:33:57.039 --> 00:33:59.940 and it is fascinating. Downs looks at Woodward, 00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:02.380 Peskin and Benedict and essentially argues that 00:34:02.380 --> 00:34:04.359 they are all suffering from American tunnel vision. 00:34:04.839 --> 00:34:07.740 They are treating 1876 like a normal albeit highly 00:34:07.740 --> 00:34:10.360 disputed democratic election. They are analyzing 00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:12.380 it through the framework of a stable republic. 00:34:12.980 --> 00:34:15.159 Downs argues that to understand the absolute 00:34:15.159 --> 00:34:18.239 panic of 1876, you cannot just look at the Electoral 00:34:18.239 --> 00:34:20.280 College. You have to look at how Americans viewed 00:34:20.280 --> 00:34:22.239 the rest of the world, and specifically what 00:34:22.239 --> 00:34:24.219 was happening south of the border in Latin America. 00:34:24.619 --> 00:34:28.070 This concept of Mexicanization is the key. Downs 00:34:28.070 --> 00:34:30.949 frames the event not as a tidy negotiated compromise, 00:34:31.329 --> 00:34:34.030 but as a desperate attempt at state stabilization 00:34:34.030 --> 00:34:36.809 in an era of state fragility. To understand this, 00:34:36.869 --> 00:34:38.550 you have to look at what American newspapers 00:34:38.550 --> 00:34:41.269 were actually reporting on in the 1870s regarding 00:34:41.269 --> 00:34:44.409 the Mexican Republic. Mexico had been experiencing 00:34:44.409 --> 00:34:47.590 periods of extreme violent political instability. 00:34:47.969 --> 00:34:50.809 In 1876, the exact same year as the Hayes -Tilden 00:34:50.809 --> 00:34:53.510 dispute, Mexico held a presidential election. 00:34:53.969 --> 00:34:56.929 The incumbent, Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, claimed 00:34:56.809 --> 00:35:00.070 victory, but a military leader named Porfirio 00:35:00.070 --> 00:35:02.969 Diaz claimed the election was fraudulent. Sounds 00:35:02.969 --> 00:35:05.849 familiar. Very. But Diaz didn't file a lawsuit. 00:35:06.349 --> 00:35:08.949 He initiated the plan of Tuxtepec, launched a 00:35:08.949 --> 00:35:11.050 military rebellion, and physically marched his 00:35:11.050 --> 00:35:13.250 army on Mexico City. So you literally have a 00:35:13.250 --> 00:35:15.110 situation in Mexico where an election dispute 00:35:15.110 --> 00:35:17.550 results in two men claiming to be the legitimate 00:35:17.550 --> 00:35:19.829 president, backed by armed factions fighting 00:35:19.829 --> 00:35:23.400 it out in the streets. Yes. The concept of dual 00:35:23.400 --> 00:35:26.579 presidencies settled by military force was a 00:35:26.579 --> 00:35:29.239 horrifying reality just across the border. And 00:35:29.239 --> 00:35:32.380 Americans in 1876 were watching this unfold while 00:35:32.380 --> 00:35:35.300 staring down the exact same barrel. They just 00:35:35.300 --> 00:35:37.820 survived a horrific civil war that killed hundreds 00:35:37.820 --> 00:35:40.199 of thousands of men. Now they have two men, Hayes 00:35:40.199 --> 00:35:42.500 and Tilden, both with claims to the presidency. 00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:44.639 They have returning boards throwing out votes. 00:35:44.739 --> 00:35:46.800 They have armed democratic militias threatening 00:35:46.800 --> 00:35:50.039 to march on Washington. Ulysses as Grant is tightening 00:35:50.039 --> 00:35:52.969 military security. The American public is utterly 00:35:52.969 --> 00:35:55.190 terrified that the United States is about to 00:35:55.190 --> 00:35:57.730 be Mexicanized. They are terrified that the American 00:35:57.730 --> 00:36:00.230 democratic experiment is failing and that we 00:36:00.230 --> 00:36:02.289 are about to devolve into a system where elections 00:36:02.289 --> 00:36:05.250 are just pretexts for civil wars. Dowdgers argues 00:36:05.250 --> 00:36:07.710 that this sheer existential terror is what actually 00:36:07.710 --> 00:36:09.599 ended the crisis. He notes that the lobbying 00:36:09.599 --> 00:36:12.239 pressure to abandon Tilden and end the filibuster 00:36:12.239 --> 00:36:14.579 didn't just come from greedy railroad executives 00:36:14.579 --> 00:36:16.780 looking for subsidies. The pressure came from 00:36:16.780 --> 00:36:19.239 prominent, dedicated Tilden supporters themselves. 00:36:19.579 --> 00:36:21.699 Like who? Men like Charles Francis Adams Sr. 00:36:21.800 --> 00:36:24.900 and Alexander Stevens. These were men who desperately 00:36:24.900 --> 00:36:27.619 wanted a democratic victory. But they feared 00:36:27.619 --> 00:36:29.480 a collapse of the state more than they wanted 00:36:29.480 --> 00:36:31.920 Tilden in the White House. They were terrified 00:36:31.920 --> 00:36:34.219 that pushing the dispute past Inauguration Day 00:36:34.219 --> 00:36:36.940 would lead to dual presidencies, which would 00:36:36.940 --> 00:36:39.510 instantly ignite a second civil war. That is 00:36:39.510 --> 00:36:41.650 an incredible paradigm shift. It's like looking 00:36:41.650 --> 00:36:44.070 at a chess board and arguing over why a player 00:36:44.070 --> 00:36:46.969 sacrificed their queen, only to realize the players 00:36:46.969 --> 00:36:49.050 weren't making a strategic trade at all. They 00:36:49.050 --> 00:36:51.190 just saw the board was about to catch fire and 00:36:51.190 --> 00:36:53.550 wanted to end the game immediately. I love that 00:36:53.550 --> 00:36:55.750 analogy. And Dals writes something profound that 00:36:55.750 --> 00:36:58.570 summarizes this shift. He argues that traditional 00:36:58.570 --> 00:37:00.949 historiography focuses too heavily on electoral 00:37:00.949 --> 00:37:04.250 democracy and ignores the central role of violence 00:37:04.250 --> 00:37:07.070 in broadly defining what politics is. For our 00:37:07.070 --> 00:37:08.610 listener, this is a huge paradigm shift. paradigm 00:37:08.610 --> 00:37:11.949 shift. You are viewing 1877 not as a corrupt 00:37:11.949 --> 00:37:14.989 bargain of greedy men but as a traumatized nation 00:37:14.989 --> 00:37:17.090 pulling back from the brink of a second civil 00:37:17.090 --> 00:37:20.090 war. The sheer terror of violence dictated the 00:37:20.090 --> 00:37:22.349 political outcome more than any backroom deal 00:37:22.349 --> 00:37:25.329 about cabinet appointments. It drastically reshapes 00:37:25.329 --> 00:37:28.300 how we judge the actors involved. But regardless 00:37:28.300 --> 00:37:30.980 of how historians categorize the end of the crisis, 00:37:31.579 --> 00:37:34.079 you know, Woodward's bargain, Peskin's pragmatism, 00:37:34.739 --> 00:37:37.840 or Downes' panic, the real world results on the 00:37:37.840 --> 00:37:40.539 ground were absolute and devastating. Which brings 00:37:40.539 --> 00:37:43.179 us to the tragic aftermath and the definitive 00:37:43.179 --> 00:37:46.110 end of Reconstruction. Because history isn't 00:37:46.110 --> 00:37:48.989 just a debate over theories, right? It's an accounting 00:37:48.989 --> 00:37:51.809 of human costs. We need to look at the cause 00:37:51.809 --> 00:37:53.869 and effect detailed in the sources regarding 00:37:53.869 --> 00:37:56.789 disenfranchisement and the redeemers completely 00:37:56.789 --> 00:37:59.769 impartially. Exactly. When Rutherford B. Hayes 00:37:59.769 --> 00:38:01.769 took the oath of office, he immediately followed 00:38:01.769 --> 00:38:03.730 through on his previously announced policy of 00:38:03.730 --> 00:38:07.610 restoring home rule. In April of 1877, he officially 00:38:07.610 --> 00:38:09.489 ordered the withdrawal of the last remaining 00:38:09.489 --> 00:38:11.489 federal troops from their protective duties at 00:38:11.489 --> 00:38:13.909 the state houses in South Carolina and Louisiana. 00:38:14.059 --> 00:38:16.400 Remember, President Grant had already pulled 00:38:16.400 --> 00:38:18.639 them from Florida. With those troops confined 00:38:18.639 --> 00:38:20.880 to their barracks, the era of federal reconstruction 00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:25.789 officially ended. As soon as the federal troops 00:38:25.789 --> 00:38:28.030 stood down, the Republican state governments 00:38:28.030 --> 00:38:30.889 in the South collapsed. White Republicans fled 00:38:30.889 --> 00:38:33.550 the region entirely, and the Redeemer Democrats 00:38:33.550 --> 00:38:36.309 took absolute control of the state legislatures. 00:38:36.769 --> 00:38:39.070 This cemented what became known as the Solid 00:38:39.070 --> 00:38:42.309 South, a region entirely dominated by the Democratic 00:38:42.309 --> 00:38:44.829 Party for nearly a century. And the human cost 00:38:44.829 --> 00:38:47.329 of this political stabilization fell squarely 00:38:47.329 --> 00:38:49.710 on the shoulders of Black citizens. The source 00:38:49.710 --> 00:38:52.429 material notes that Black Republicans were deeply 00:38:52.429 --> 00:38:55.489 and rightfully betrayed. They lost the political 00:38:55.489 --> 00:38:57.969 legitimacy and physical safety that the federal 00:38:57.969 --> 00:39:00.389 military had provided. Now, it's important to 00:39:00.389 --> 00:39:03.489 note for historical nuance that the total disenfranchisement 00:39:03.489 --> 00:39:06.250 of Black Southerners wasn't instantaneous. Right. 00:39:06.269 --> 00:39:08.809 It wasn't a switch that flipped in 1877 and suddenly 00:39:08.809 --> 00:39:10.349 everyone lost their rights the next morning. 00:39:10.469 --> 00:39:13.659 It was a systematic grinding process. Until the 00:39:13.659 --> 00:39:16.539 very end of the 19th century, some Black Republicans 00:39:16.539 --> 00:39:19.519 continued to hold local offices. There were even 00:39:19.519 --> 00:39:22.280 brief localized periods of what were called fusion 00:39:22.280 --> 00:39:24.719 governments. What were those? This was when white 00:39:24.719 --> 00:39:27.940 populists, usually poor farmers, frustrated with 00:39:27.940 --> 00:39:30.420 elite Redeemer Democrats, would form temporary 00:39:30.420 --> 00:39:32.579 political alliances with Black Republicans to 00:39:32.579 --> 00:39:35.079 win local elections. A prominent example was 00:39:35.079 --> 00:39:38.500 in North Carolina in the 1890s. But those fusion 00:39:38.500 --> 00:39:40.860 movements were ultimately crushed. The Wilmington 00:39:40.860 --> 00:39:43.780 Insurrection of 1898 in North Carolina is a horrific 00:39:43.780 --> 00:39:47.079 example where a white supremacist mob literally 00:39:47.079 --> 00:39:50.500 overthrew a legitimately elected biracial fusion 00:39:50.500 --> 00:39:53.579 government by force. That violence reflects the 00:39:53.579 --> 00:39:56.909 broader trajectory set in motion in 1877. The 00:39:56.909 --> 00:39:58.730 federal government had essentially signaled that 00:39:58.730 --> 00:40:00.630 it was no longer going to intervene to protect 00:40:00.630 --> 00:40:02.650 the constitutional rights of Black Southerners. 00:40:03.070 --> 00:40:05.570 And by the early 1900s, the Redeemer Democrats 00:40:05.570 --> 00:40:07.889 had completely rewritten their state constitutions. 00:40:08.510 --> 00:40:10.730 Through a combination of explicitly discriminatory 00:40:10.730 --> 00:40:13.909 legal mechanisms, like poll taxes, literacy tests, 00:40:13.949 --> 00:40:16.909 and grandfather clauses, combined with extrajudicial 00:40:16.909 --> 00:40:19.230 violence, African Americans were effectively 00:40:19.230 --> 00:40:21.650 disenfranchised across the South. This raises 00:40:21.650 --> 00:40:24.250 what is perhaps the most profound question of 00:40:24.250 --> 00:40:27.940 the entire historiography. How do we as students 00:40:27.940 --> 00:40:30.440 of history weigh the avoidance of a national 00:40:30.440 --> 00:40:33.579 political crisis against the catastrophic sacrifice 00:40:33.579 --> 00:40:36.800 of civil rights for millions of citizens? If 00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:39.260 Greg Downs is right and the nation abandoned 00:40:39.260 --> 00:40:41.920 Tilden to avoid a chaotic collapse, the price 00:40:41.920 --> 00:40:44.679 of that stabilization was Jim Crow. And this 00:40:44.679 --> 00:40:46.719 raises an important question. How do we look 00:40:46.719 --> 00:40:48.860 at the legacy of that stabilization stretching 00:40:48.860 --> 00:40:52.119 into the 20th century? Fast forward to 1948, 00:40:52.480 --> 00:40:54.739 President Harry Truman proposed the first comprehensive 00:40:54.739 --> 00:40:57.320 Presidential Civil Rights Act in American history. 00:40:57.840 --> 00:40:59.719 It included federal anti -lynching provisions, 00:41:00.239 --> 00:41:02.300 voter rights protections, and the elimination 00:41:02.300 --> 00:41:04.659 of segregation in interstate travel. And the 00:41:04.659 --> 00:41:07.239 historian Taylor Branch describes Truman's 1948 00:41:07.239 --> 00:41:09.679 proposal with a fascinating phrase. He calls 00:41:09.679 --> 00:41:14.219 it a repeal of 1877. A repeal of 1877. Think 00:41:14.219 --> 00:41:16.369 about the gravity of that statement. It took 00:41:16.369 --> 00:41:18.670 over 70 years for the executive branch to even 00:41:18.670 --> 00:41:21.110 attempt to reassert the constitutional protections 00:41:21.110 --> 00:41:23.289 that were abandoned in the wake of the Hayes 00:41:23.289 --> 00:41:25.570 -Tilden election. Okay, let's bring this all 00:41:25.570 --> 00:41:28.610 together for your paper. You now have a comprehensive 00:41:28.610 --> 00:41:31.130 roadmap of how historians have argued over this 00:41:31.130 --> 00:41:34.289 pivotal moment. You started in the silent era, 00:41:34.670 --> 00:41:37.050 realizing that a lack of documentary evidence 00:41:37.050 --> 00:41:40.010 birthed a plausible rumor. You moved to Woodward, 00:41:40.210 --> 00:41:42.670 who built the standard model of a grand economic 00:41:42.670 --> 00:41:45.269 bargain at Wormley's Hotel. Then you journeyed 00:41:45.269 --> 00:41:48.130 into the 1970s with Alan Peskin, who brought 00:41:48.130 --> 00:41:50.190 up the congressional ledger and proved the terms 00:41:50.190 --> 00:41:52.949 of Woodward's deal were hollow, suggesting that 00:41:52.949 --> 00:41:56.679 pragmatic politics ended the crisis. Right. Then 00:41:56.679 --> 00:41:59.019 Michael S. Benedict shifted your focus to legal 00:41:59.019 --> 00:42:01.320 realities, demonstrating that the Electoral Commission 00:42:01.320 --> 00:42:04.559 Act was the true constitutional mechanism. And 00:42:04.559 --> 00:42:06.699 finally, Greg Downs suggested that the crisis 00:42:06.699 --> 00:42:09.159 was resolved by a traumatized nation terrified 00:42:09.159 --> 00:42:12.340 of descending into Mexicanization. This historiography 00:42:12.340 --> 00:42:14.619 is a masterclass in how this study of history 00:42:14.619 --> 00:42:18.639 is never static. Exactly. I want to leave you 00:42:18.639 --> 00:42:21.139 with one final thought to mull over as you begin 00:42:21.139 --> 00:42:25.300 outlining your paper. The debate over 1877 teaches 00:42:25.300 --> 00:42:28.760 us that history is rarely a closed case. But 00:42:28.760 --> 00:42:31.400 consider this. If the exact nature of the agreement 00:42:31.400 --> 00:42:34.019 that decided a U .S. presidency and fundamentally 00:42:34.019 --> 00:42:36.579 altered the rights of millions of citizens can 00:42:36.579 --> 00:42:39.820 still be debated 150 years later, what informal 00:42:39.820 --> 00:42:42.239 agreements are shaping our world today that future 00:42:42.239 --> 00:42:45.909 historians will struggle to prove? In our era 00:42:45.909 --> 00:42:48.329 of encrypted messaging and vanishing emails, 00:42:48.829 --> 00:42:50.909 what deals are being struck today that we won't 00:42:50.909 --> 00:42:53.369 know about for a century? That is a brilliant 00:42:53.369 --> 00:42:56.090 and genuinely unsettling point. The paper trails 00:42:56.090 --> 00:42:57.369 aren't getting clearer, they're just getting 00:42:57.369 --> 00:42:59.510 better at disappearing. To our listener, thank 00:42:59.510 --> 00:43:01.329 you for sharing your stack of sources with us, 00:43:01.369 --> 00:43:03.809 and we hope this helps you crush that historiography 00:43:03.809 --> 00:43:06.309 paper. Keep digging, keep questioning, and we'll 00:43:06.309 --> 00:43:07.510 see you on the next Deep Dive.