The Spirit of '76
TYLER, GUS
Countdown '76 THE SPIRIT OF '76 BY GUS TYLER By way of preface, this is how the post-Bicentennial dialogue ran: "What did you do on the Fourth of July weekend?" a young friend asked me. "I...
...Corruption in high places is a major issue...
...A hundred years ago, they say, we were an exuberant nation with our eyes full of stars—and stripes...
...But Tilden was "counted out...
...According to some commentators who have been opining de profundis of late about the contrasts between our hapless Bicentennial moment and the happy mood of the American Centennial, 1876 was a vintage year...
...Finally, the Republican party itself was deeply divided into factions called Half-Breeds, Stalwarts, Radicals, and Reformers...
...Of the Justices, two were Republicans, two were Democrats and only one, David Davis, was nonpartisan...
...As a result of these shenanigans, Hayes claimed a majority of one electoral vote...
...But there are important differences, too...
...the country, in a moralistic mood, was in search of moral men...
...He never was a President...
...The Democrats refused to allow what they saw as a flagrant steal of the election, and insisted on counting the originally chosen electors...
...the Democrats united and up...
...He failed...
...Socialists and Anarchists were spending their time screaming at each other, generally in German...
...To avoid such a catastrophe these economic conservatives ?many of them erstwhile political associates in the Whig party—sought, and effected, an historic compromise...
...Of the Compromise of 1877, C. Vann Woodward has written: "More profoundly than Constitutional amendments and wordy statutes it shaped the future of four million freedmen and their progeny for generations to come...
...Still, it is significant that in a number of cases the liberal forces were strong enough to overrun the White House...
...Out of post-bellum industrialization had come unions, strikes and mass violence: The "wage slaves" were in rebellion...
...she asked...
...As for the thousands without jobs, they hit the road to find work elsewhere, and hoboing became a painfully common way of life...
...By an eight to seven vote—along strict party lines—Hayes was named President of the United States...
...A second Civil War portended class war to the people of wealth...
...When the Republicans met to nominate a Presidential candidate, they had to pass over their "plumed knight," the glamorous James G. Blaine, because his name had been associated with a railroad stock scandal...
...The Democrats, mean-while, called on 62-year-old Samuel J. Tilden, the New York governor who had prosecuted the Tweed Ring...
...In both the North and South, the gentlemen of property were scared...
...Thus a Democratic President can expect to have a solidly Democratic Congress to work with, and one with a strong liberal slant—especially if Southern progressivism continues to expand its influence...
...By 1878, the men of wealth were back in the saddle in North and South...
...I spent part of it writing about the Presidential election of 1876...
...For who could tell what might issue from a struggle, that could give arms to restless ex-slaves and an explosive new group of discontented workers...
...Washington had attempted to "reconstruct" the region by military rule, but the Republicans' Draconian measures were failing either to integrate Dixie into the Union or to integrate blacks into society...
...The notion that the past was good and the present is bad is understandably attractive at this indecisive instant in our land, when we feel we are adrift without compass...
...When the coalition has not been in control of Congress, it has relied on a conservative President to veto progressive bills and counted on having the necessary number of votes to uphold his action...
...In Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana—states still considered "unredeemed" (run by Reconstruction administrations) ?enough Democratic ballots were invalidated to give the Republicans the respective electoral delegations...
...Ultimately, faced with injunctions and the Federal troops who had not yet been demobilized, the strikers returned to work...
...The great issue of 1876 was corruption in Washington...
...In Oregon, a Democratic elector was vacated on a technicality and replaced by a Republican...
...Since then no Democratic President, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson in the first two years after his election, has tried to stand in its way...
...Labor is restless...
...There has been a liberal majority in Congress since 1974, when the Democrats, besides benefitting from the usual midterm trend toward the nonincumbent party, were aided as well by the strong anti-Nixon feeling in the country...
...Hayes was...
...It was Rutherford B. Hayes against Samuel J. Tilden," I informed her...
...The momentous compromise that ended that year's crisis was actually a betrayal of the ideals of 1776...
...Never heard of Hayes," she said...
...The Republicans, of course, were equally adamant about sticking to their position...
...Under ordinary circumstances, the Democrats would be expected to lose seats in the Senate next November: Because they hold 22 of the 33 posts in contest, they are more exposed than the GOP...
...The question of race is unresolved...
...In a South under the sway of the Ku Klux Klan, the liberated slaves remained in bondage...
...Senate, creating a vacancy on the Court and the commission...
...Instead of being plagued by daily doubts and internal strife, we knew we were destined for greatness...
...Moreover, in eight contests where the incumbent is not running for reelection, the Democrats appear far ahead...
...The Republicans are divided and down...
...legitimate President...
...But virtually all the Democrats are running in safe states, while most of the Republicans are facing tough opposition...
...Oh, yes," she said...
...FDR attempted to break the coalition's power in 1938 by drawing himself into the Democratic primaries to clean his party of its conservative influence...
...In his place they selected the colorless, but clean, Rutherford B. Hayes...
...Not much, except preside over jour years that shaped the country for the next hundred...
...At the eleventh hour, however, the Illinois State Legislature appointed Davis to the U.S...
...Unemployment is rampant...
...He must have been a famous President...
...Consequently, it was decided that a 15-man commission —five from the Senate, five from the House, and five from the Supreme Court—would determine the next President...
...They feared the prospect of another Civil War, to be fought over the outcome of the election...
...In return, the South became, in effect, a satellite of the dominant region...
...They currently hold exactly twice as many seats as the Republicans in the House...
...Now the same kind of crisis is with us again, and we are being tested on how much we have learned from our own past...
...Not surprisingly, in the campaign that followed the incumbent Republicans were blamed for the depression that had started in 1873 and continued right into the election...
...Referring the matter to Congress would only have prolonged the stalemate: The Senate was solidly Republican and the House was Democratic...
...And by an honest count, it did lose...
...The 15-man commission was merely the means to put an official seal on this gentlemen's agreement...
...Tilden garnered a clear majority of the popular vote, with a quarter million to spare...
...Who ran that year...
...The graft that took root in Grant's first term had blossomed poisonously in his second...
...The people were ready to vent their frustrations, and in 1877 a simple dispute over wages on the B & O in West Virginia exploded into the Great Railroad Strike—a violent rebellion stretching from Baltimore to San Francisco...
...There's a high school named after Tilden...
...In 1876 more than 9,000 businesses went bankrupt...
...The real story took place beneath the surface and involved the mighty forces that were to determine the destiny of America for another century...
...Race was no less of a problem for the GOP...
...In short, the GOP entered the 1876 contest as an almost certain loser...
...A dig into the real story of the Centennial suggests that yesterday and today have a good deal in common: 1876 was a year of doubt and division, reeking with vice and crime in high places, entrapped in the tangle of race and class, embroiled in vituperation and violence...
...It has been the single most consistent force in directing the domestic policy of the United States from 1876 to the present...
...The Marxists of the period were busy with their internal controversies...
...The indications are that millions of Republicans will abstain from voting or defect to the Democrats if their favorite candidate—whether Reagan or Ford—does not get the nomination...
...In fact, only the absence of a radical center in America prevented the strike from expanding into revolution...
...The agreement was that Hayes, once in office, would withdraw Federal troops from the occupied South...
...Despite the Fourth of July fireworks, the mood today is morose...
...In either case, Republican Congressional hopefuls will suffer...
...The following years were indeed the nadir of the plight of the Negro in America, but the blacks were not the only victims of the deal...
...And if Jimmy Carter wins as impressively as all the polls suggest, a new compromise between North and South will become possible...
...When the National Guard was called out to quell the disorder, many of these young sons of laborers and farmers themselves went over to the side of the strikers...
...So much for the sorry superficialities of the tragicomedy of 1876...
...Yet before we are swept away by a sense of helplessness, it may be wise to recall some words of that history buff, Harry S. Truman: "There is nothing new in the world except the history we do not know...
...They were hurt, too, by widespread labor unrest that seemed to threaten the social peace...
...Repeatedly, as we know, Ford and Nixon have frustrated the majority's will, and Congress has often upheld their vetoes...
...This year, if the Carter edge turns into a landslide, his party may not only hold on to all the seats it won in 1974 but pick up some more...
...Industrial workers and family farmers suddenly found themselves in the grim grip of the propertied class, now united across sectional lines...
...In addition, the railway union did its best to curb violence and vandalism...
...The South became a bulwark instead of a menace to the new order...
...In the electoral college, he won by 203 to 165...
...To begin with, in contrast to 1876, there will be no easy manipulation of the outcome of this year's Presidential race...
...The conflict threatened to turn into a national uprising...
...It was promptly filled with a Republican...
...The political pillar of "the new order" was the Conservative Coalition, the alliance of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats based in Congress that quickly took control of Washington...
...In many ways, 1976 is strikingly like 1876...
...A Liberal League may replace the Conservative Coalition on Capitol Hill...
...in the Senate, they lead 62 to 38...
...In return, Dixie would use its influence in the Democratic party to bring about acceptance of "Rutherfraud" as the...
...He couldn't have done much...
...Is it the same guy...
...So long as the conservative [Southerners] held control they scotched any tendency [of the South] to combine forces with the internal enemies of the new economy—laborites, Western agrarians, reformers...
...We faced the future with the certainty of a Walt Whitman sprouting his Leaves of Grass...
...For a whole century, then, the compromise of 1877 has compromised progress...
...He will also have an opportunity—without parallel and without shenanigans—to reverse the Compromise of 1877, to recapture the Spirit of (the original) '76...
...The compromise had assured the rich Southern whites "political autonomy and nonintervention in matters of race policy," observes Woodward...
Vol. 59 • August 1976 • No. 16
