Was There a Compromise of 1877

THERE was a time, not too long ago, when the disputed election of 1876 could be treated as a relatively uncomplicated story. The Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, had won the popular vote and undisputed title to 184 electoral votes, only one short of victory. The campaign managers of Rutherford B. Hayes claimed victory for their side on the basis of disputed returns from the three southern states still under Republican control-Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. The ensuing deadlock proved unresolvable by traditional means, and, in "one of the wisest pieces of statecraft ever evolved by an American Congress,", an extraordinary electoral commission was created, composed of members of the Senate, House, and Supreme Court. The decision of this commission in favor of Hayes, by a strictly partisan eight to seven vote, so angered Democrats that many of them openly threatened revolution, while others in the House of Representatives began a filibuster to prevent Hayes' inauguration. Fortunately for the nation, reasonable men in both parties struck a bargain at Wormley's Hotel. There, in the traditional smoke-filled room, emissaries of Hayes agreed to abandon the Republican state governments in Louisiana and South Carolina while southern Democrats agreed to abandon the filibuster and thus trade off the presidency in exchange for the end of Reconstruction. This familiar account was challenged in 1951 with the publication of C. Vann Woodward's Reunion and Reaction. The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction.2 Generally well received by reviewers in the major historical journals,3 Woodward's new interpretation soon won "almost universal accep-