Clinton vs. Trump? Try Hayes vs. Tilden…at Morristown’s Macculloch Hall

Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.
...then try Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.
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Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton for all the marbles.
If you think Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton has been rough and tumble…

By Peggy Carroll

So you think this election year is the craziest, most bizarre in the nation’s history?

Think again.

Flip back the pages of your history book to 1876 and find the story of that year.

The first count after the Nov. 7 election showed Democrat Samuel Tilden, governor of New York,  won the popular vote (4,204,020 to 4,036,512) and the all-important Electoral vote  – 184 to 165. Newspapers around the nation reported he had won.

And yet, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio, was sworn in as 19th President.

At issue: 20 disputed electoral votes from three states in the South and in Oregon.

For the four months between the election and Inauguration Day (then March 5) and even up to two days before,  it was not clear who was going to take the oath of office.

The events of these days still are a matter of controversy. The resolution, many historians believe,  created problems in voting rights and racial discrimination that still haunt the 21st century.

The story of that election – and the political fires it ignited – is told in an exhibit at the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum on view through Nov. 20, 2016. Its focus: The role of Thomas Nast, the celebrated political cartoonist and Morristown resident, during the heated debate on who actually had won.

Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.
…then try Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.

Ryan Hyman, the Museum’s F.M. Kirby Curator of Collections, has culled 19 highly charged cartoons, all from those contentious months, from the Museum’s extensive Nast archives, to show how he helped influence the outcome.

Nast was a staunch Republican, a great admirer of Ulysses S. Grant, who then was completing his second term as President. It was Nast who first created the famous political symbols: The Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey. In  his Morristown home, the hinges on a swinging door between dining room and kitchen were shaped like an elephant’s head.

So it was clear, Hyman said, that he would support Hayes’ cause.

“Perhaps more significantly,” he explained, “the artist was an ardent Tilden critic. He disliked Tilden’s affiliation with the New York Democratic machine.”

In a series of cartoons published at the height of the controversy, Hyman said,  Nast called into question Tilden’s integrity, linked him to the corruption of the New York machine under Boss Tweed (a virulent enemy of Nast’s), and raised serious questions about Tilden’s stance on federal fiscal policy.

Nast had a strong platform to air his opinions. His commentary was nationally syndicated.

“It very likely influenced the outcome in favor of Hayes, “ Hyman said.

He also has something to say about what came to be known as the Compromise of 1877.

Hayes ended up winning by one electoral vote.

Hyman will explain what happened, and why, in talks scheduled before this year’s election.

He will lead a special tour of the exhibit at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 6. He also will conduct a class at  for the Great Horizons community adult school program at the Morris Museum and he will talk  on Thomas Nast Historical Icons at the Senior Services Center of the Chathams (58 Meyersville Road) at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 28.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

The year 1876 was the nation’s centennial. But it was a nation still fractured by the devastation of the Civil War. It was  the era of “Reconstruction,” with federal troops stationed in some states that had been in the former Confederacy.

The presidential election was the first since 1852 in which the Democratic candidate won a majority of the popular vote. It also was the only election in which a candidate for president received more than 50 percent of the popular vote, but was not elected president by the Electoral College, and one of four elections (in addition to 1824, 1888, and 2000) in which the person who won the most popular votes did not win the election.

It remains the election that recorded the smallest electoral vote victory.

Immediately after the election, there were claims of voting irregularities in Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana and Oregon.

In Florida (with 4 electoral votes), Louisiana (with 8), and South Carolina (with 7), reported returns favored Tilden, but election results in each state were marred by fraud and threats of violence against Republican voters.

One of the points of contention revolved around the design of ballots. ( Shades of hanging chads?)

DID HE BRING DOWN RECONSTRUCTION? Morristown political cartoonist Thomas Nast.
DID HE BRING DOWN RECONSTRUCTION? Morristown political cartoonist Thomas Nast.

At the time, parties would print ballots or “tickets” to enable voters to support them. To aid illiterate voters, the parties would print symbols on the tickets.

In this election, many Democratic ballots were printed with the Republican symbol, Abraham Lincoln, on them. The Republican-dominated state electoral commissions subsequently disallowed a sufficient number of Democratic votes and awarded their electoral votes to Hayes.

In Oregon,  (one electoral vote) the vote of a single elector was disputed. The state voters favored Hayes, but the state’s Democratic governor, La Fayette Grover, claimed that one elector, former postmaster John Watts, was ineligible he was a “person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States.”

Grover then substituted a Democratic elector in his place. The vote eventually went to Hayes.

In late January 1877,  Congress formed a 15-member Electoral Commission to settle the question. Five members were selected from each house of Congress, and they were joined by five members of the Supreme Court.

With Inauguration Day rapidly approaching, the Commission, by a vote of 8-7, strictly along party lines, gave all the contested votes to Hayes.

Then came the compromise. The Democrats agreed to accept Hayes. In return, the Republican leaders agreed to end Reconstruction and withdraw Federal troops from the still occupied southern states – South Carolina and Louisiana.

There are historians who say that the compromise allowed the southern states to revert and negate the gains made by African Americans after the Civil War, making way for what were called “Jim Crow” laws.

PS: The Museum offers a home school series for student from 10 to 16 years old focused on Nast’s political cartoons and how the U.S. Constitution outlines election procedures, lists presidential responsibilities and outlines who has the right to vote. Sessions meet in the afternoons of Monday, Oct. 17, and Monday Nov. 14. Price: $10 per child.

For information on museum hours and fees, visit maccullochhall.org or call 973-538-2404.

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