Opinion of Samuel J. Tilden

[TDAS04]

HP and sore loser, though not as bad as has fellow election denier 144 years later.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I actually kind of sympathize with how screwed over he got by that election, though he probably would have been a worse President than Hayes.

[Alben Barkley]

HP and sore loser, though not as bad as has fellow election denier 144 years later.

Um... the difference is Tilden literally won, with a majority of the popular vote at that, and the election was stolen by a "corrupt bargain" of Republicans and Democrats agreeing to end Reconstruction in exchange for installing Hayes.

Also despite the fact that he had a much stronger claim to actually having the presidency stolen from him, Tilden did not do what Trump did and subvert our democracy/attack our legislature.

[TDAS04]

Black people should be allowed to vote.

[Vice President Christian Man]

Robbed FF

[Alben Barkley]

Black people should be allowed to vote.

Rutherford B. Hayes certainly didn't think so. Otherwise he and his party wouldn't have thrown out all their "principles" for the sake of power and stealing this election. It really made zero difference for black people who won this election given the circumstances. This was the moment the GOP sold out and became irredeemable. This was when they stopped being the "Party of Lincoln" for good.

[SWE]

No such thing occurred, but it's really hard to imagine Tilden winning a free and fair election, had one been held in 1876

[Alben Barkley]

No such thing occurred, but it's really hard to imagine Tilden winning a free and fair election, had one been held in 1876

What are you talking about? Tilden won states like New York in the North. It's not like he only won in the South. If anything his most suspect "losses" came in the South, which was still under Reconstruction so it's not like you can say that he only won in the South because of the black vote being repressed (if anything closer to the opposite was true; the Republican machines backed by federal troops in SC/FL/LA tipped the scales of the election).

Again, he won an absolute majority of the popular vote, the only time in history this has happened and yet the winner of the popular vote was not allowed to assume office. He "lost" by literally 1 electoral vote, after a partisan commission voted along party lines by 1 vote every time to hand the disputed electors to Hayes (what a coincidence!), and this "loss" was solidified after the now well-known Compromise of 1877 in which Republicans sold their souls and sold out black people to get their man in office.

Reconstruction was likely ending either way, but it didn't have to come at the cost of the Republican Party's soul and the nation's democratic dignity. I can't even imagine why anyone would defend the Compromise of 1877 today. Tilden was at least no worse than Hayes on Reconstruction and generally better on other issues like civil service reform. The nation would probably have been better off had he been allowed to assume office after he won.

[Хahar 🤔]

I can't even imagine why anyone would defend the Compromise of 1877 today.

Nobody here is defending the compromise of 1877. What they are pointing out is that, for instance, there is no way that Tilden would have won Mississippi in a fair and free election considering that its population was majority black.

[Alben Barkley]

I can't even imagine why anyone would defend the Compromise of 1877 today.

Nobody here is defending the compromise of 1877. What they are pointing out is that, for instance, there is no way that Tilden would have won Mississippi in a fair and free election considering that its population was majority black.

The Black Belt in the Mississippi Delta still had their votes counted for Hayes, looking at a county map. And again, the South was still under Reconstruction and this was before the KKK or the complete suppression of the black vote. So it's kinda hard to argue that the election in Mississippi was rigged yet somehow the elections in LA/FL/SC were NOT rigged in the opposite direction.

[Хahar 🤔]

I can't even imagine why anyone would defend the Compromise of 1877 today.

Nobody here is defending the compromise of 1877. What they are pointing out is that, for instance, there is no way that Tilden would have won Mississippi in a fair and free election considering that its population was majority black.

The Black Belt in the Mississippi Delta still had their votes counted for Hayes, looking at a county map. And again, the South was still under Reconstruction and this was before the KKK or the complete suppression of the black vote. So it's kinda hard to argue that the election in Mississippi was rigged yet somehow the elections in LA/FL/SC were NOT rigged in the opposite direction.

I provided you with some data (racial numbers taken from the Census Bureau website):

	1880 % white	1870 % white	1876 % Tilden
Alabama	52.45%	52.30%	59.98%
Arkansas	73.71%	74.75%	59.92%
Florida	52.92%	51.16%	49.01%
Georgia	52.97%	53.96%	72.03%
Louisiana	48.40%	49.81%	48.35%
Mississippi	42.36%	46.25%	68.08%
North Carolina	58.09%	63.33%	53.62%
South Carolina	39.28%	41.05%	49.76%
Tennessee	73.84%	74.38%	59.79%
Texas	75.21%	68.99%	70.04%
Virginia	58.24%	58.12%	59.58%

If we assume absolute racial polarization and broadly equal turnout between black and white voters, we would expect Tilden's percentage of the vote to track closely to the white share of the population. The Confederate states where Tilden's vote was substantially lower than the white population were Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee, all of which have substantial upland areas where white voters might have reasonably been hostile to the Democratic Party. It is much harder to provide an innocent explanation for the states where Tilden's vote significantly exceeded the white share of the population.

Contrary to your assertion that voter suppression or electoral fraud were being perpetrated by both sides, the vote for Tilden in the states you listed as being rigged for Republicans was roughly equal to or (in the case of South Carolina) substantially greater than the white percentage of the population. This does not suggest that the result in these states was tampered in favor of Republicans. Meanwhile, in Alabama to some extent and in Mississippi and Georgia to an enormous extent, we see that Tilden's share of the vote was higher than the white share of the population. Given what we know about the politics of the time, this would seem to any thinking person to be an obvious sign of an unfair election.

Mississippi in the 1870s was less white than Louisiana, and yet Tilden performed 20 points better in Mississippi than in Lousiana. The total Republican vote in Mississippi fell from 82,175 in 1872 to 52,603 in 1876; in Louisiana, meanwhile, the Republican vote was 71,663 in 1872 and 75,315 in 1876. You have stated your belief that black voters in Mississippi had their votes counted, which means that there are two possibilities: either Tilden won a substantial share of the black vote in Mississippi, or else black voters in Mississippi in 1876 simply did not feel like turning out. Which of these explanations do you think is accurate?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Tilden was opposed to mass democracy in general: as a 'reformer' in New York City he had argued in favour of restricting the franchise to property owners only, in order to stop ethnically questionable immigrants from voting for Tammany Hall. His public image remains absurdly favourable given who he was and what he actually stood for, and this is largely due to the fact that the schools history textbooks that shaped popular understanding of American history for so long were written by Democratic Party hacks of the old school; men like Samuel Eliot Morison.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

"president hayes supports corruption. president hayes even supported the 'corrupt bargain' which allowed Samuel Tilden, a man who defends the legacy of the confederate traitors, free reign over the South. Can you trust a man like president hayes? Vote Samuel Tilden for president"

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Tilden was opposed to mass democracy in general: as a 'reformer' in New York City he had argued in favour of restricting the franchise to property owners only, in order to stop ethnically questionable immigrants from voting for Tammany Hall. His public image remains absurdly favourable given who he was and what he actually stood for, and this is largely due to the fact that the schools history textbooks that shaped popular understanding of American history for so long were written by Democratic Party hacks of the old school; men like Samuel Eliot Morison.

An argument can be made that the same is true of popular understandings of the Stalwart/Half-Breed split within the GOP, although in that case the conventional historiography is at least not obviously and straightforwardly wrong, only simplistic and dismissive of the very good reasons why Certain Folk felt defensive of the spoils system.

[H. Ross Peron]

Tilden was opposed to mass democracy in general: as a 'reformer' in New York City he had argued in favour of restricting the franchise to property owners only, in order to stop ethnically questionable immigrants from voting for Tammany Hall. His public image remains absurdly favourable given who he was and what he actually stood for, and this is largely due to the fact that the schools history textbooks that shaped popular understanding of American history for so long were written by Democratic Party hacks of the old school; men like Samuel Eliot Morison.

An argument can be made that the same is true of popular understandings of the Stalwart/Half-Breed split within the GOP, although in that case the conventional historiography is at least not obviously and straightforwardly wrong, only simplistic and dismissive of the very good reasons why Certain Folk felt defensive of the spoils system.

It's very appropriate that Morison would be the one to promote this line of historical thinking since in his autobiography of his youth (One Boy's Boston) he criticizes the myth that Boston Brahmin families like his own were invariably straight ticket Republicans and writes that his own family were Mugwumps who regarded Cleveland as the best President since Lincoln. Morison's father ran as a "Civil Service Reform" independent against a black Republican candidate for the Massachusetts General Court in 1896 but lost. Tellingly, Morison's elders strongly opposed a bill to erect an equestrian statue of Benjamin Butler at the State House in Boston.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

HP he was a Dixiecrats, states rights D are just that Dixiecrats, why did Reagan get so many Middle class Whites he reduced the size of Govt but didn't rock the boat on Social Safety bets in SSI and Medicare

[Senator Incitatus]

HP and sore loser, though not as bad as has fellow election denier 144 years later.

Um... the difference is Tilden literally won, with a majority of the popular vote at that, and the election was stolen by a "corrupt bargain" of Republicans and Democrats agreeing to end Reconstruction in exchange for installing Hayes.

Also despite the fact that he had a much stronger claim to actually having the presidency stolen from him, Tilden did not do what Trump did and subvert our democracy/attack our legislature.

The election was won by legal certification beyond any room for challenge. The only “bargain” was one to ensure the Democratic Party didn’t start another damned war over it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's very appropriate that Morison would be the one to promote this line of historical thinking since in his autobiography of his youth (One Boy's Boston) he criticizes the myth that Boston Brahmin families like his own were invariably straight ticket Republicans and writes that his own family were Mugwumps who regarded Cleveland as the best President since Lincoln. Morison's father ran as a "Civil Service Reform" independent against a black Republican candidate for the Massachusetts General Court in 1896 but lost. Tellingly, Morison's elders strongly opposed a bill to erect an equestrian statue of Benjamin Butler at the State House in Boston.

All of which should remind us that in terms of shaping how American society sees its past - and therefore also how American historians have tended to - there has never been an American Historian as influential as Morison. Even now his shadow continues to, as much of what American historians argue furiously against are the arguments that he and his later followers (often unwittingly so in the latter case) put forward, and note that they do it all in exactly the same manner and using the same methods as he did. Much of the time the result is effectively just Morison in reverse. That the one remaining stronghold of poststructuralist thought in the historical profession is North America (and that the only people who push that way elsewhere have been heavily influenced by American approaches to history) does make a lot of sense, when this is all considered...

[TDAS04]

Barkley certainly likes his Bourbon Democrats.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Tilden was a staunch hard money conservative, even if you don't care about Reconstruction or whatever I don't know why as a modern liberal one would answer FF.

[SWE]

Horrible as the betrayal that the compromise of 1876 was, pretending that Tilden and Hayes were equivalent on race is ridiculous. Hayes appointed John Harlan to the Supreme Court - if the next two Republican presidents who finished their terms were able to find picks as honorable as that, Plessy v Ferguson never would have happened. He also vetoed the repeal of the Enforcement Acts - limited effectiveness because Democrats were able to block funding it's enforcement, but at least it was on the books and could be used later on. These are very grasping at straws pitifully weak "victories," but we're not comparing him to someone good, we're comparing him to someone actively malicious. When things are getting worse quickly, you don't want someone like Hayes who was asleep at the wheel, but asleep at the wheel is still better than someone whose foot is on the gas. Preferring Tilden to Hayes on the grounds that they're both just as bad on reconstruction would be like saying "well, Joe Biden didn't pass Medicare For All, guess I'm voting for Trump"