- Date:
- 1877
- Location:
- United States
Electoral Commission
-
What was the Electoral Commission of 1877?
The Electoral Commission was a group Congress created in 1877 to resolve the presidential election dispute between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden.
Tilden led Hayes with 184 electoral votes to 165, with 185 needed to win. Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, with 19 electoral votes, were in doubt.
The Commission had five members from the House, five from the Senate, and four from the Supreme Court. The deciding vote went to Justice Joseph P. Bradley, a Republican.
All the votes followed party lines, 8–7, with Hayes winning. Congress declared Hayes the victor. Hayes's allies promised to remove federal troops from the South.
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Why was the Electoral Commission created in 1877?
Amidst the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Congress created the Electoral Commission on January 29, 1877. Tilden had 184 electoral votes, just one shy of winning, while Hayes had 165. Nineteen electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina were in doubt, as was one vote in Oregon.
With Congress divided and threats of another civil war looming, the Electoral Commission was formed to resolve the conflicts. It consisted of five members each from the House, Senate, and Supreme Court. The commission ultimately voted to award the contested electoral votes to Hayes, resulting in a narrow 185-184 victory.
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How did the Electoral Commission help decide the 1876 presidential election?
The Electoral Commission was created by Congress in 1877 to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden.
Tilden had 184 electoral votes, one short of the 185 needed to win, while Hayes had 165. Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, with 19 electoral votes, were in doubt.
The Commission had five members from the House, five from the Senate, and five from the Supreme Court. The commission voted 8–7 in favor of Hayes. The final vote was reported to Congress on February 23.
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Who were the members of the Electoral Commission and how were they chosen?
Amidst the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, Congress created the Electoral Commission in 1877 to resolve the issue.
The Commission had five members from the House of Representatives, five from the Senate, and four from the Supreme Court. The congressional and court contingents were evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.
The four associate justices were to name a fifth, with the understanding it would be David Davis. However, the Republican-controlled legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the state’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, and he refused the commission appointment. Thereupon the four justices picked their colleague Joseph P. Bradley.
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What was the outcome of the Electoral Commission's decision?
The Electoral Commission was created by Congress in 1877 to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. The commission consisted of five members from the House of Representatives, five from the Senate, and five from the Supreme Court.
After much deliberation, the commission voted strictly along party lines, 8–7, in favor of Hayes. The decision was met with outrage and bitterness by some Northern Democrats, but Hayes was sworn in without incident. Southern Democrats were more content with the outcome because Hayes promptly withdrew federal troops from states still under military occupation, thus ending the era of Reconstruction.
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How did the Electoral Commission of 1877 impact future U.S. presidential elections?
The Electoral Commission formed in 1877 to resolve the contested presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. The commission's decisions, which favored Hayes, sparked outrage among Northern Democrats but were accepted by Southern Democrats due to promises of withdrawing federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.
The 1877 Electoral Commission had no long-lasting structural impact on future presidential elections, but it did set a precedent for resolving disputed elections through a congressional commission. The resolution of the 1876 election led to the end of Reconstruction and the rise of the "Solid South," dominated by the Democratic Party.
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Electoral Commission, in U.S. history, commission created by Congress in 1877 to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden.
For the first time since before the Civil War the Democrats had polled a majority of the popular vote, and preliminary returns showed Tilden with 184 electoral votes of the 185 needed to win, while Hayes had 165. Three states were in doubt: Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, with 19 electoral votes among them. The status of one of Oregon’s three electors—that had already been given to Tilden—was also in question. Hayes and most of his associates were ready to concede when a New Hampshire Republican leader, William E. Chandler, observed that if Hayes were awarded every one of the doubtful votes, he would defeat Tilden 185–184. Both parties claimed victory in all three Southern states and sent teams of observers and lawyers into all three in hopes of influencing the official canvass.
The responsibility for resolving the conflicting claims rested with Congress—which was more evenly divided between the parties than it had been in decades. The U.S. Constitution provided that each state send its electoral certificate to the president of the Senate, who “shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.” But it shed no light on whether Congress might, in a disputed election, go behind a state’s certificate and review the acts of its certifying officials or even if it might examine the choice of electors. If it had such powers, might it delegate them to a commission?
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The impasse continued on December 6, the appointed date for electors to meet in the states. When Congress convened the next day there were rival reports from the doubtful states. For more than six weeks maneuvering and acrimony prevailed in Congress and out, punctuated by threats of civil war. Finally, on January 29, 1877, Congress created an Electoral Commission to pass on the contests. The Commission was given “the same powers, if any,” possessed by Congress in the matter, and its decisions were to be final unless rejected by both houses.
The Commission was to have five members from the House of Representatives, five from the Senate, and four members from the Supreme Court. Congressional and court contingents were divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and the four associate justices were to name a fifth, tacitly but universally understood to be the noted independent from Illinois, David Davis. At this stage the Republican-controlled legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the state’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, and he refused the commission appointment, although he stayed on the Supreme Court until March 3. Thereupon the four justices picked their colleague Joseph P. Bradley, a Republican whose record made him acceptable to the Democrats.
Bradley leaned toward Tilden’s convincing claim to the Florida vote, the Commission’s first action, but Republican pressures swayed him, and the Florida tally went to Hayes, who had almost certainly lost it in fact. Thenceforward all votes followed Florida, on a straight party-line 8–7 basis. (Hayes’s claim to Oregon was clearly legitimate, and fraud and intimidation by both parties had been widespread in Louisiana and South Carolina.) The final vote was reported to Congress on February 23.
After a week of ominous bluster, which Tilden did much to quiet among his aggrieved followers, a tumultuous session of Congress convened March 1 to count the electoral vote and after 4 am the next day declared Hayes elected; he was sworn in on the following day.
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The verdict was received bitterly by Democrats in the North and philosophically by those in the South, who had been promised by Hayes’s allies that federal troops would be removed promptly from the former Confederate states, as in fact they were before the end of April. The threats of violence that had recurred throughout the dispute came to naught, giving a welcome sense of assurance to both factions that, even so soon after the Civil War, self-government and domestic peace were not incompatible.