By one vote Book

The centennial presidential election of 1876 is one of the most classic - and tragic - in American history, in that it was blatantly stolen by the "winning" party and that the victorious candidate promised to abandon Reconstruction and black voters in exchange for the losing party's collusion. Both of the two major national parties behaved badly in this contest: the Democrats used violence and ballot-box-stuffing in the South, while Republicans used the bloody shirt of Civil War rhetoric and anti-Catholicism to win the Midwest. When the electoral returns came in that November, Republican wire-pullers Dan Sickles and Chester Arthur got Republican officials to "canvass" (fix) the Electoral College returns in three violently disputed Southern states, while the Democrats used lawsuits, parliamentary delaying tactics, and even bribery to counter the Republicans' machinations. Ultimately, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the election, but it's unlikely, Holt argues, that his opponent Samuel Tilden - a multi-millionaire railroad financier - would have behaved any differently in office. The real significance of the election lay in how many people participated: 81 percent of eligible voters came to the polls, a standing record in American politics, and voter turnout remained high in presidential elections for the next twenty years, in part (as Mark Summers has shown) because both parties claimed thereafter that their opponents had either stolen or been planning to steal the previous election. Politics is often just a matter of organizing people on the basis of their grievances. Holt tells this story clearly and thoughtfully, but one can't say his book is a delight to read, as the author never met a fact he didn't like. He's much better in his shorter books. Still, it's good to see a talented historian do this fraught political contest proper justice.