The Glenn Beck Program - America’s Centennial and the 1876 Election Crisis | The American Story | Ep 20

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

In 1876, as America turns 100, Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call, Philadelphia dazzles millions at the Centennial Exposition, and the Wild West forges legends from Custer’s Last Stand, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok. But the year’s greatest drama unfolds at the ballot box when Democrat Samuel Tilden wins the popular vote while disputed returns leave Republican Rutherford B. Hayes one electoral vote from the presidency. With rival electors, accusations of fraud, racial violence, and a constitutional crisis threatening the nation, Congress creates an unprecedented Electoral Commission to decide who will become president and whether America’s fragile postwar republic can survive. GLENN'S SPONSORS: American Financing: American Financing can show you how to put your hard-earned equity to work and get you out of debt. Dial ⁠800-906-2440⁠, or visit ⁠https://www.americanfinancing.net⁠. Mercury One: Learn about the REAL history of America. Become a Founding Member of the Sacred Honor Society at the American Journey Experience for $17.76 TODAY! Chapter: When it comes to Medicare, Chapter puts you first. Dial #250 and say the key word "Chapter". Real Estate Agents I Trust: When you’re buying or selling a home, you need a real estate agent you can trust. Visit https://realestateagentsitrust.com/ to find the top-selling real estate agents in your area. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's March 10th, 1876. Inside a cramped laboratory in Boston, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell hunches over a tangle of wires and a liquid transmitter. For months, he and his assistant Thomas Watson had chased an impossible dream, sending the human voice across wires as clear, continuous sound. Failures had piled up.

Rival inventors were racing to solve the same problem, but today is the breakthrough day. Alexander Graham Bell's life had been shaped by sound, silence, and relentless curiosity. He was born in Scotland, he grows up in a family of speech experts. His father creates a groundbreaking system to help deaf people communicate. Young Alexander absorbs every lesson about how voices work and how they fail. His mother is deaf, which deepens his obsession with acoustics. Personal tragedy strikes when both of his brothers die of tuberculosis, so in 1870, the family

family moves to Canada in search of a healthier climate. A year later, Bell moves to the United States and settles in Boston, teaching at a school for deaf children and training other instructors in speech methods. In Boston, Bell also experiments with harmonic telegraph trying to send multiple messages at once over a single wire using different sound frequencies. He's hired a skilled mechanic named Thomas Watson, and together they push beyond the telegraph entirely, imagining a device that actually would carry a voice. In February 1876, Bell files his patent application for an improvement in telegraphy

at the U.S. patent office just before a rival, Leisha Gray, submits a similar idea. Three weeks later, on March 7th, Bell is granted a U.S. patent that becomes one of the most valuable patents ever issued. It is the legal foundation for the telephone empire that would follow. Now, March 10th, Bell and Watson test their latest version in separate rooms connected by wire. Bell leans towards the transmitter and says, Mr. Watson hears every syllable. He rushes in, stunned.

Bell has just completed the first successful telephone call. He records the moment in his laboratory notebook with quiet triumph. To my delight, he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. Later that year, still glowing from the breakthrough, Bell writes to his father with a prophetic certainty. The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas, and friends will converse with each other without leaving home. It feels almost inevitable that this world-changing moment arrives in 1876. This is America's centennial year.

The nation marks 100 years since the Declaration of Independence, A century already packed with technological change, including the Mechanical Reaper, Steam Engine, Railroad, and Telegraph. The Centennial Year also overflows with many of the world's most famous legends of the American Wild West, and it brings the most contentious, trying presidential election in the country's 100-year history, one that would threaten the Republic itself. This is the American story, the beginning. adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 20, the 1876 election crisis.

In May 1876, America threw itself a major birthday party and invited the world. Philadelphia became the nation's showroom, the centennial exposition, the first World's Fair ever held in the U.S. It spread across 285 acres at 5,000. Fairmount Park. 200 buildings were constructed for the event, and the centerpiece was the main hall, which covered 35 acres stretching one-third of a mile in length, the largest building ever constructed at the time. On opening day, more than 186,000 people poured in through the gates. Emission was 50 cents, that's about $15 today. President Grant presided over the opening ceremony, standing at the center of an America that was still healing from the Civil War, and, stepping confidently into the future.

Inside the fairgrounds, visitors had their senses overwhelmed with new sights and sounds. They saw the first public demonstration of typewriters, sewing machines, and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone carrying a human voice across a room. They tasted root beer and popcorn for the first time. They gawked at displays of scientific and industrial power that seemed to announce the Republic was alive, well, and accelerating toward the next century. The engrossed parchment of the original Declaration of Independence was transported from Washington, D.C. and displayed under glass. Also displayed were the massive hand and torch of the future Statue of Liberty,

well before the full statue rose in the New York Harbor. And in anticipation of the Centennial, a new Liberty Bell was cast from four melted-down revolutionary and Civil War cannons. That Centennial Bell replaced the original Liberty Bell in the Tower of Independence Hall. It remains there today. When the fair closed its gate six months later, 10 million people had visited. But here was what was missing from the brochure. While the Centennial Expo was all the rage in the eastern half of the country,

battles raged in the West in an environment that was so far removed from Philadelphia, it would have seemed like it was on another planet. The U.S. government had decided that the last free-roaming Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Bands would go on to reservations, one way or another. At the center of the resistance stood two of the most important native leaders in American history. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse is one of my favorite people in history. He was a Lakota Sioux Warrior, and he was a legend among his people for the courage and the skill that he had in battle.

He didn't sign treaties, he avoided white society, and he rejected reservations. life. He wanted really only one thing, to keep living the old way by hunting buffalo, moving with the seasons, and raising his family on the open land. Sitting Bull, born into another band of Lakota Sioux, he was a warrior, a political leader, and a spiritual figure. He completely rejected treaty negotiations and believed those who signed them spoke only for themselves. Sitting Bull's dispute with the U.S. was about sovereignty, the right to live and hunt and worship and to move freely in the plains.

In the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government recognized the Black Hills of South Dakota as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. It was set aside for the exclusive use of the Sioux people. But in 1874, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into those sacred hills and confirmed what everybody had already suspected. There was gold.

Miners flooded in. Well, now to the Sioux, the Black Hills were sacred. To Washington, they were suddenly valuable. When the government tried to buy the land and the Sioux refused the offer, the U.S. issued an ultimatum. Every band must be on a reservation by the end of January 1876 or be treated as hostile. General Philip Sheridan, hardened by the Civil War

and famous for his successful campaigns against the Confederates, help drive the policy of compelling native bands into reservations. In the spring of 1876, Sheridan sent three columns converging on the Powder River country. General George Crook coming up from the south, Colonel John Gibbon from the west, and General Alfred Terry from the east. Most of Terry's force was of the seventh cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Custer. The mission was blunt, find the free bands of Sue, and force them in or finish them. The first real test came on June 17th.

It was along the Rosebud Creek in present-day Montana. Crook's column, roughly 1,000 troops, was moving north when hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, led by Crazy Hors, struck hard. For six hours, the fight rumbled across the rolling prey. The Indians pressed every advantage of terrain and numbers. Crook's men ultimately held, but they were battered,

and on low supplies. Strategically, Crazy Ors had won the day. Crook returned to his base camp in Wyoming to resupply, but in doing so, he failed to communicate the size of the Indian force to the two other commanders in Sheridan's campaign. Meanwhile, the victorious Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were soaring with confidence. They rode in to join the Great Village already forming

on the Little Big Horn River. Eight days later, Custer found the village that General Crook had finished. to reach. Custer was 36 years old, but he already carried the aura of a legend and the instincts of a gambler. Born in Ohio, he graduated last in his West Point class at 1861, but then he rocketed upward through the ranks during the Civil War thanks to his daring and bravery. But he also could be reckless. He became known for his so-called Custer Luck after having 11 horses shot out from underneath him during the Civil War battles and only receiving one small

small wound from an artillery shell during the entire war. He came to rely too much on his luck. He was ambitious and convinced that swift, aggressive action always carried the day. Custer was also flamboyant, obsessed with his looks. He liked to wear a black velvet uniform and gold lace and a red scarf around his neck. He had long flowing blonde hair that he perfumed with cinnamon oil. By the morning of June 25th, Custer Scouts located one of the largest Indian encampments ever seen on the plains. Perhaps 7 to 10,000 people plus, 1,500 to 2,000 warriors stretched for miles along the Little Bighorn River. Custer Scouts warned him that the village was enormous, and also that the cavalry's presence had likely been detected by Crazy Horses' men.

But Custer feared the entire village would scatter. if he waited much longer. So he attacked. Then he divided his command. Major Marcus Reno was ordered to strike the village from the south. Captain Frederick Bentin was sent off to scout the left. Custer took his remaining 210 men north, apparently intending to hit the village from another direction.

Custer's decision, as we all know now, proved fatal. He way underestimated the size. of Crazy Horse's force and overestimated his own genius. Reno's attack collapsed first. His men crossed the river, advanced towards the village, and then were hit by fierce resistance. Reno halted, dismounted, formed a skirmish line, and then fired into the onrushing warriors, but Crazy Horse's men just kept attacking. Reno's men, they retreated into a grove of trees by the river, but soon the retreat turned chaotic.

Soldiers scrambled back across the river and climbed the bluffs, losing men along the way. Captain Bentin arrived and joined Reno on the bluffs where they dug in. Custer, however, never came back. Custer and his men made their final fight on the knoll overlooking the Little Big Horn River, now called Last Stand Hill. He was surrounded by hundreds of Crazy Horses warriors, and they were all killed within minutes. By the battles end, Custer, and every single one of the 210 troops that were with him were dead. Among them were his two younger brothers, his brother-in-law, his 18-year-old nephew.

Their bodies were later found stripped and many mutilated in accordance with tribal custom. For the Lakota and the Cheyenne, Little Bighorn was a stunning victory, a defense of their families, their land, their freedom against an invading military force. But for the U.S. government, it was the worst defeat the army had suffered in the long struggle on the plains. It was a national shock, and it landed right in the middle of the centennial celebration. The aftermath of the battle proved devastating for Native nations. Instead of slowing U.S. expansion, Custer's defeat hardened American opinion. The government poured more troops into the field.

The Lakota and Cheyenne band scattered under this pressure. Sitting bull, he eventually fled to can. Canada. Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877 and was killed later that year at Fort Robinson. The U.S. continued its battle against the Sioux in the Black Hills until the government confiscated the land in 1877. To this day, the ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the U.S. government and the Sioux Nation. Legendary Director Ridley Scott returns in IMAX. Disappeared. Go!

Out there. It's kill or be killed. Jacob Allorty. There are people out there. They need our help. Josh Brolin. Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley.

Okay, tough guy. And Guy Pearce. Arm up! The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott, now playing in theaters. When was the last time you heard about Lahaina? Three years ago, right? The deadliest American wildfire in the century turned that beautiful Hawaiian town into ash.

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In the summer of 1876, while the rest of America lit fireworks for its 100th birthday, a different kind of American story was born. It was summer that turned a handful of men into the permanent cast of America's Wild West legend. This was the America of rough cowboys and outlaw gangs, saloon gamblers, and trigger-happy lawmen, men who became legends because newspapers, dime novels, and later Hollywood, couldn't get enough of their stories.

One man who understood the power of a story was the outlaw, Jesse James. Jesse and his brother Frank had grown up in Clay County, Missouri, in a slaveholding family. During the Civil War, Frank rode with the Confederate guerrillas. Jesse, still a teenager, eventually joined his older brother. And in 1864, their guerrilla force ambushed two dozen Union soldiers who were headed home on leave and executed them. When the Civil War finally ended, the James Brothers' life of crime was just getting warmed up. They quickly joined forces of the Younger brothers, Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger. They robbed banks and trains and stagecoaches, and sometimes they killed.

Jesse James wrapped his crimes in politics. He presented himself as a Confederate Avenger, a victim of radical Republicans, even a kind of Robin Hood. A Missouri newspaper editor, former Confederate John Newman Edwards, befriended Jesse and helped him spin this myth in the press. It was actually brilliant branding, but almost entirely false. The Robin Hood myth obscured the reality that Jesse James was a serial murderer. There was no evidence that he was handing sacks of cash out to poor farmers.

He robbed for money, robbed for fame, he robbed for the thrill of seeing his name in print. On the evening of July 7, 1876, the James Younger game picked up a lonely stretch of railroad track called the Rocky Cut, and it was near Outerville. Missouri. They captured the railroad's night guard, took his lantern, and used it to flag down the train. When the engine slowed, the gang swarmed the train, robbed both safes, and vanished into the night with $15,000. The gang paused nearby to divide the take before scattering, and it looked like another clean score exactly the kind of robbery that helped turn criminals into folklore. But a man named Hobbs Carey, who was new with the gang. He couldn't keep his mouth shut.

Within days, he was in custody and named every participant in the robbery. Meanwhile, a different kind of legend was being forged a few hundred miles west in Kansas. Wyatt Earp, he was born in Illinois. He lived in Iowa as a boy, and as a young man, he drifted through frontier towns, worked around saloons and gambling houses, and he had his own brushes with the law, including stealing horses in the Oklahoma Territory. To avoid arrest, he fled to Kansas. He followed one of his brothers to Wichita, where Earp became a police officer.

He was tough, he was no nonsense, good with both the pistol and his fist. His friend and fellow officer Batmasterson said, There were few men in the West who could whip Earp in a rough and tumble fight. But that also meant Earp was combustible. In April 1876, he got into a fist fight with a political rival of his boss. He pummeled the man. But the city council declined to rehire him. him because of his violent behavior.

Earp didn't argue. He packed up and went to Dodge City, Kansas. Within a month, he became the deputy town marshal. Dodge City was where the Texas cattle drives ended and the saloons never closed. There was a constant flow of booze gambling and violence. Earp's dangerous work patrolling Dodge City helped build the image that followed him forever, the calm lawman facing down the chaos of the frontier. Wyatt Earp's famous gunfight at the O.K.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, wouldn't happen until five years later.

But his time cleaning up Dodge City was plenty to seed the legend. He had served as deputy in Dodge City under the Marshals, never as the Marshal himself. But as the Earp legend grew, it glossed over the fact, as legends often do. While Earp was beginning his Dodge City chapter, another legend was nearing his fight. scene. Wild Bill Hickcock. He had been born James Butler Hickcock in 1837. He had been a Union Army scout and a spy, a lawman, a gambler, and a gunfighter. He wore long hair, always carried pistols, and had killed several men, some in fairfights, some in the murky gray area that dime novel writers quickly turned into heroic shootouts. His most famous gunfight came years

earlier in Springfield, Missouri in 1865, Hickok had a dispute with a former Confederate soldier named Davis Tut over gambling debt. The men had faced each other across the town square. Witnesses disagree about who fired first, but Tutt shot missed, wild bills did not. This was the origin of what became a staple of countless Western novels, TV shows, and movies. the image of a cool gunfighter standing in a dusty street, facing down the enemy in a quick-draw showdown. Most real-life gunfights in the West were ambushes or barroom brawls that ended with somebody getting shot in the back.

By 1876, Wild Bill was now 39 years old. His eyesight was failing, his glory days were fading, and when word of gold in the Black Hills reached him, he headed for Deadwood. It was an illegal mining camp on Sue Lange. in present-day South Dakota. Deadwood had exploded overnight into a muddy, lawless pit

full of dreamers and desperate men. Hickok became a regular at the number 10 saloon, barely scraping by as a card player, but on the afternoon of August 2nd, he sat at his usual poker table. Hickok always sat with his back to the wall. But that day, he took the only open seat, which left his back exposed to the saloon door.

A man named Jack McCall entered. He would claim that Wild Bill had killed his brother years earlier, which turned out to be false. McCall walked right behind Hickok, drew his pistol and shot him there in the back of the head. While Bill died instantly slumping over his cards, a pair of aces and a pair of eights, later to be remembered as the dead man's hand. The fastest gun in the West had been killed from behind by a nobody. A month later, the James Younger gang struck again. Eight men trotted into the quiet town of Northfield, Minnesota.

Frank and Jesse James, the three younger brothers and three other accomplices. Three of the men waited by a nearby bridge while two men watched the town square. Frank James and the remaining two men walked into the first National Bank just after two o'clock in the afternoon, and they ordered the cashier, Joseph Haywood, to open the vault. Well, Haywood stalled. He claimed the vault was on a time lock and refused even after they pistol whipped him and held a knife to his throat.

Outside, a hardware store owner named J.S. Allen had just left the bank. He saw what was happening and shouted the alarm. They're robbing the bank! Citizens grabbed rifles and poured fire on the gangsters from windows and doorways, and within minutes, two of the robbers lay dead in the street and two others were wounded,

although they escaped. Inside the bank, the robbers grabbed the only money they could find. $26. Before fleeing, Frank James turned and shot Joseph Haywood in the head. The James Younger gang scattered into the Minnesota countryside. Jesse and Frank slipped away to the south and eventually made it home to Missouri. The younger brothers were eventually caught, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. Jesse James kept running until 1882 when Robert Ford, one of his new gang members,

shot him in the back of the head. Jesse was 34. Shortly after Jesse was killed, Frank James turned himself in, but in three separate criminal trials, no jury would convict him, so he was freed. He gave up crime and died in 1915 at the age of 72. The summer of 1876, it gave America three enduring Western myths,

the outlaw as a folk hero, the tough civilizing lawman, and the tragic celebrity. gunslinger. The real sources of these legends were complicated, violent, and all too human. But once these stories took hold, America never let them go. Right now, for a limited time, everyone's part of the Buick team, even you. Buick's employee pricing for you event is on now. Get a purchase credit of up to $3,168 on a $26 Buick Envision. Surround yourself with signature Buick refinement from an available

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last of his eight years in office. The nation was weary of reconstruction in the South and scandal in Washington, and the two leading candidates, James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling, were tainted with corruption rumors. So Republicans went with a safer choice. Ohio governor, Rutherford B. Hayes. He was a union veteran, wounded in the Civil War, a former congressman, and a reform-minded governor who had just won his third term in Ohio. Hayes had a rare reputation in politics. He's for quiet competence and personal honesty. A couple of weeks later, it was the Democrats' turn in St. Louis, Missouri. The first major party convention ever held west of the Mississippi,

and their choice was Samuel J. Tilden, who was the governor of New York. And its governor, Tilden, had helped bring down boss tweed's corrupt political machine and expose the Canal Ring financial scheme. Tilden was also touted as a reformer. On Election Day, the story looked pretty simple at first. Tilden won the national popular vote by over 250,000 votes, and he appeared to be on the verge of victory in the Electoral College, with 184 votes to 165 for Hayes.

But an unusual twist had changed the math for this election. Residents of the Colorado Territory had voted for statehood that summer. On August 1st, Colorado officially became the 38th state, dubbed the Centennial State. Without Colorado's omission before the election, 184 electoral votes would have been enough to win. But with Colorado in the Union, the total rose to 369 electoral votes, and the magic number to win became 185.

Tilden was one short. As election night returns arrived at the Hayes home in Columbus, Ohio, the family's mood dimmed. When they heard Tilden was well on his way to carrying New York, Hayes believed he had lost. Early morning newspapers said the same thing. Some editions proclaimed Tilden the winner. But 19 electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina,

plus one disputed vote from Oregon, remained unresolved. If Hayes had taken all four of these contested states, he'd win the White House by a single electoral vote. Now, since Hayes thought he had lost, he didn't personally lead the charge to question the results. The Republican leaders did. But then a telegram arrived from his friend William Denison. He was a former governor of Ohio, and Denison told him,

You are undoubtedly elected next president of the U.S. Desperate attempts are being made to defeat you in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. But they will not succeed. After that message, Hayes stopped talking about conceding. The reason Republicans believed there was a case was not imaginary. There were real voting irregularities across several southern states. Repeat voters stuffed the ballot boxes. Fraudulent ballots were printed to trick illiterate black voters into voting for Democrats.

And even though President Grant had largely destroyed the Ku Klux Klan prior to 1876 in the election, violence and intimidation against black voters and white Republicans throughout the South was still commonplace. Before Election Day, the U.S. Marshall in the Northern District of Mississippi sent this warning to the Republican National Committee Chairman. I am in possession of facts which warrant me in saying that the election in the northern half of this state will be a farce. Colored and white Republicans will not be allowed to vote in many of the counties. The Tilden clubs are armed with Winchester rifles and shotguns and declare that they will carry the election at all hazards. In several counties of my district leading white and colored Republicans are now refugees, asking for protection. A reign of terror such as I have never before witnessed exists in many of my district.

many large Republican counties to such an extent that Republicans are unable to cope with it. If it were not for rifles and shotguns, this state would give Hayes from 20,000 to 30,000 majority. But fraud did not belong only to one side, and Hayes warned his Republican allies. We are not to allow our friends to defeat one outrage and fraud by another. There must be nothing crooked on our part. All eyes now fell on the state canvassing boards. These boards. had the power to decide which returns were valid and which were not. In Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, Republicans held majority control of those boards. Both parties rushed representatives South to monitor the recount.

Republicans watch for intimidation and suppression. Democrats watch for Republican manipulation. And everyone on all sides claimed to be defending democracy. President Grant moved to protect the canvassing boards. He wrote to General William T. Sherman ordering federal troops to protect the boards so they could do their work without intimidation. Here's what Grant said. Should there be any grounds of suspicion of fraudulent counting on either side, it should be reported and denounced at once. No man worthy of the office of president would be willing to hold the office, if counted in,

placed there by fraud. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result. But the country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns. The Republican-controlled boards went to work. They disqualified returns from counties and parishes where they found evidence of violence against black voters. Democrats cried foul. Republicans insisted they were just enforcing the law. Well, despite Hay's plea for nothing crooked, bribes promises of political patronage circled on both sides. Two years after the the election, a congressional investigation uncovered coded telegrams between Samuel Tilden's agents in Tallahassee and Colonel W.T. Pelton in New York. Peltin was a secretary of the Democratic

National Committee. He also happened to be Samuel Tilden's nephew. He even lived in Tilden's house, and in those telegrams, investigators found discussions of bribe amounts. In the end, all three of the contested state canvassing boards, certified Republican electors for Hayes. But that crisis was far from over. The electoral votes still had to be counted in Congress, according to the Constitution, and Democrats from the disputed states sent their own competing results to Washington. Two versions of reality now arrived at the same door. As rumors of violence swirled in D.C., Congress faced a question. The Constitution hadn't answered this clearly. What happens when a presidential election produces rival-certified results

and neither side trusts the other to count them. The country that had just celebrated its centennial now faced a major constitutional crisis. So Congress took the extraordinary step, unprecedented in American history. With the clock running out on Grant's presidency, lawmakers reached for a unique workaround to prevent the nation from sliding into chaos.

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Pound 250, chapter. America was rushing towards a constitutional cliff. It had never faced this before. The 1876 presidential election had happened two months earlier, and there still was no clear winner. According to the Constitution, each state would have to send its electoral votes under seal to the President Pro Tem of the Senate, listing the popular vote totals for President and Vice President. Then came the line that suddenly tripped everybody up. Quote, the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall be counted.

But counted? By whom exactly? That was the question nobody had bothered to answer clearly. Republicans insisted the president of the Senate could do it alone. Democrats who controlled the House said the entire Congress should decide. The Constitution was silent on the matter. Now, normally the president of the Senate is the U.S. vice president, but that was also part of the problem in this case.

Grant's vice president, Henry Wilson, died more than a year earlier after a stroke. The man now sitting in the president's chair of the Senate was Senator Tom Ferry, of Michigan. He was a Republican. But he was not the U.S. Vice President. Senator Ferry saw the ambiguity in the Constitution and refused to make the call on his own. He didn't believe he had the clear authority to break the deadlock by himself. In the meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, both careful lawyers, stayed above the fray. They let their lie lie lieutenants and state party machines do the fighting while they receive the regular briefings from a safe distance. Democrats had the majority in House, Republicans headed in the Senate. In late January 1877, after frantic negotiations, Congress

passed and President Grant signed, the Electoral Commissions Act. It created a 15-member panel, five senators, five representatives, and five Supreme Court justices who had finally resolved the election. The Senate chose three Republicans and two Democrats. The House chose three Democrats and two Republicans. One of them was the future President James Garfield. For the Supreme Court justices on the commission, Congress appointed two Democrats and two Republicans stipulating that those four would then choose the fifth justice. Many just assumed it would be Justice David Davis of Illinois, widely viewed as the closest the court had to a genuine independent. The idea was for the commission to have a total of seven Democrats, seven Republicans,

and with the independent Davis as the swing vote. But the Illinois legislature had just elected Davis, to the U.S. Senate, so he declined the commission's seat and soon resigned from the Supreme Court. The four justices turned instead to Justice Joseph Bradley. He was a Republican-leaning Justice appointed by President Grant. That meant the commission was now eight Republicans and seven Democrats. Its decisions could only be overturned if both the House and the Senate voted to reject them. Given the split control of Congress, that was never going to happen. The commission held its first meeting on January 31st

inside the Supreme Court chamber, which at the time was located in the U.S. Capitol building. Hearings began the next day. Representative James Garfield kept a personal diary of the proceedings, logging the careful legal arguments and constant partisan pressure in the room. They considered the states one at a time, starting with Florida, then Louisiana, Oregon, South Carolina.

Each side got two hours per state to argue its case. It took the commission roughly, roughly a week per state to deliberate. By the end, every final vote was eight to seven, right along party lines. All for Hayes. Democrats erupted. They had voted for the commission and agreed

to accept its decisions, but now they filibustered. And the final congressional proceedings trying to prevent Hayes from being certified the winner was on. And the clock was ticking towards March 4th, inauguration day. While the filibuster played out on the floor, quieter conversations happen offstage. Representatives of Hayes and Tilden held several meetings in Washington,

and the result of these talks is often called the Compromise of 1877, though there is no evidence that any specific deal was ever struck, but whatever was discussed, it seemed to help bring the chaos to a close. After days of exhausted debate, the Senate finally confirmed Hayes at 4.10 a.m. on March 2nd, just 48 hours before the inauguration. Although eight members of the commission had voted to uphold the Hayes result, Justice Joseph Bradley was singled out for the harshest treatment by the Democrats.

They had expected him to play an independent role. The New York Sun even accused him of changing his mind after Republican visitors pressured him at his house laid on the night before the final vote. That fall, Bradley published a letter branding the charge a slander and a falsehood, insisting that he had no such visitors at his house during the commission's work. He wrote, I had no private discussion whatever on the subjects at issue

with any person interested on the Republican side and but very few words with any person. I earnestly endeavored to come to a right decision, free from all political or other extraneous considerations. About his decision in favor of the Hayes results, Bradley added, The more I have reflected on it since, the more satisfied have I become that it was right. Then came the final wrinkle.

March 4th. It fell on a Sunday that year, so the public inauguration would happen Monday the 5th, but President Grant and his Secretary of State worried that the 24-hour gap could be exploited by the Democrats, still determined to install Tilden as the president. So Hayes was privately sworn in

at the White House on Saturday, March 3rd. Then the public ceremony proceeded both without incident on Monday the 5th. Both Democrats Supreme Court justices who had been on the Electoral Commission refused to attend. Perhaps no American was more relieved by Hayes taking over than President Grant. He wrote, The day that brought about the result and enabled me to leave the White House as I did, I regard as one of the happiest in my life.

Personally, I was weary of office. I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the president. Shortly after Hayes took office, he demonstrated a very rare quality for a politician by promising to serve only one term. And he kept that promise. A common misconception is that part of the deal to get Democrats to agree to the Hayes presidency was that he would remove the last of the Union troops from the South. When Hayes was sworn in, Union troops were still stationed at the state capital buildings of Louisiana and South Carolina. Hayes moved them to barracks in those states, but he did. not withdraw them completely.

In writing about that decision later, Hayes said, My judgment was that the time had come to put an end to bayonet rule. I saw things done in the South which could only be accounted for on the theory that the war was not yet ended. Many Southern people evidently felt that they were justified in acts which could only be justified in time of war towards the common enemy. My object was to end the war, to restore confidence in the South in the justice and goodwill of a Republican administration. The army was withdrawn because I believed it a constitutional duty and a wise thing to do. America ended its centennial year with a crisis that almost shattered the peace, which was still fragile even 12 years after the Civil War.

The Republic, it had been tested, once again, but it had not been broken. It was proof that the U.S. system of government, as partisan and painfully slow as it is, could hold up in a dire situation and devise the state. is a solution. The storm may rage, but the foundation is strong. It's a recurring theme in the ongoing always messy, yet ever seemingly hopeful saga of freedom in the United States of America. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.