Reconstruction and the Gilded Age 173forming American life. As the Republican governor of South Carolina
remarked, “The North is tired of the Southern question.”
But the Grant administration ended on a happy note in 1876. The
nation celebrated the centennial year of the Republic—one hundred
years of inde pendence under a government that had continued to evolve
as a democracy in which adult male suffrage had been achieved and a
society created that was undergoing rapid industrialization.
It was also a presidential election year. The Republicans decided
against nominating James G. Blaine, because of the suspicions recently
raised against him. Instead, they chose Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio
for President and William A. Wheeler of New York for Vice President.
The scandals of the Grant administration, to say nothing of the Panic
of 1873 , did not bode well for a Republican victory at the polls, and that
is why the party picked someone untainted by scandal. Hayes enjoyed
an “unblemished reputation” and so he won the nomination.
The Democrats decided on Samuel J. Tilden of New York, one of
the richest corporate lawyers in America, who had prosecuted and bro-
ken up the Tweed Ring. They named Thomas A. Hendricks of Indi-
ana as his running mate. And the November election pretty much
validated what had been predicted. Tilden received 250 , 000 more pop-
ular votes than Hayes. He also won the “Redeemed” southern states
along with New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana for a total
of 184 electoral votes.
Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina still lingered as Republican
enclaves, but the white population was determined to reassert control.
There was a good deal of fraud and intimidation in the voting in these
states, and consequently two sets of electoral returns were reported
from each: one declaring Tilden the winner, the other Hayes. The re-
sults from the Oregon contest were also in dispute. Of all these dis-
puted votes Tilden only needed a single electoral vote from one of these
states to win the presidency. Hayes needed them all.
So Congress decided to allow a special committee to decide which
votes should be counted. This Electoral Commission would consist of
five members from the House and the Senate and five justices from the
Supreme Court. Of these fifteen, seven would be Republican and seven
Democratic. The fifteenth member was expected to be Justice David