In 1876, Americans marked their centennial as an independent nation with celebrations ranging from small-town barbecues to big-city parades. The festivities reached their peak in Philadelphia, historic site of the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention, which hosted the first World's Fair held in the United States. It was also fitting in that anniversary year that the oldest existing democracy should hold a presidential election—the capstone event of American representative government which had endured even a civil war. Amidst such jubilation, few would have dared to predict that the selection of the nation's chief executive would itself become a challenge to the constitutional system of government.
The first returns on election day, Tuesday, November 7, 1876, indicated a clear victory for the Democratic presidential nominee, Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York. He had won his home state, the swing states of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Indiana, and was expected to carry the solid South and most of the West. Both Tilden and his Republican challenger, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, went to bed assuming that the Democrats had captured the White House for the first time in twenty years. Similarly, the New York Tribune and other major newspapers across the country reported Tilden's victory in their morning editions.
In dismay, Republican Daniel Sickles decided to attend the theater in New York on election night. The colorful Sickles was a former congressman who had been acquitted in 1859 of fatally shooting his wife's lover on a Washington D.C. street in broad daylight. A courageous Union general, he lost his leg at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, and later served as U.S. minister to Spain (1869-1873). At nearly midnight, on his way home on election night, Sickles stopped by the Republican headquarters to check the returns. He soon realized that if Hayes lost no more Northern states and won the states of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, then the Republican nominee would win the Electoral College tally by one vote. Sickles rushed off telegrams to Republican leaders in those states, under the signature of Republican national chairman Zachariah Chandler, who was sleeping off a bottle of whiskey, urging them to hold their states for the Republicans. At 3 a.m., Republican governor Daniel Chamberlain responded: “All right. South Carolina is for Hayes. Need more troops.”
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