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Everything Old Is New Again, Or Why It's Worth Brushing Up on a 144-Year-Old Electoral Debacle: a thread
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/1876-election-most-divisive-united-states-history-how-congress-responded/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/1876-election-most-divisive-united-states-history-how-congress-responded/
You have probably heard rumblings about what is projected to go down in Congress tomorrow as the collective legislative body counts our nation's electoral votes.
A variety of Republicans from both chambers have indicated that they will lodge objections to the votes in multiple states, and they have invoked the election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877 as precedent.
This comparison is flawed, to say the least.
The election of 1876 was probably the most divisive in American history. The nation was only a decade out from the Civil War; the barely repaired fractures it had left behind were in very real danger of refracturing due to the absolute cesspool that was the Hayes-Tilden election.
*emphasis on "was," since you could argue that we're in the midst of the other most divisive election!
During that election, four states' electoral votes were claimed by both parties. In three former Confederate states, Republican electoral boards were accused of throwing out fair Democratic votes and giving Hayes, who was trounced in the popular vote, a path to victory.
If Hayes took all three contested states and Oregon, which was a weird outlier for reasons I explain in the article, he would win the electoral college by a single vote.
Obviously the 2020 election is nothing like this situation in that the electoral vote fell obviously in Biden's favor and he also won the popular vote.
But there's another reason the claims of comparability are flawed and at best disingenuous: The compromise of 1877 WASN'T ABOUT CREATING THE COMMISSION THAT TRIED TO IRON THIS OUT.
The Electoral Commission that's evoked as a sunny precedent today voted down party lines and, since there was one more Republican, decided the election in Hayes's favor.
But the story didn't end there.
But the story didn't end there.
The commission failed because the Democrats refused to accept its judgment. Only in the face of an active filibuster, the threat of civil unrest, and the ticking clock did both sides come to a compromise...in back rooms.
The "compromise," as @JamilSmith points out so brilliantly here, ended Reconstruction and consigned Black Southerners to decades of subjugation. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/trump-new-lost-cause-1108692/
The Compromise of 1877 was not the commission. It was the deal-with-the-devil in which the Republican party agreed to end Reconstruction and federal oversight of the South in exchange for the presidency and a peaceful transition of power.
Does any of this matter now? It sure does. I worry that the echoes of the chaos of 1876/77 in this election will paper over the real story—our nation's failure to accept the results of that election and the very real damage that failure did to Black lives.
In conclusion, there is always more to learn, and I'm always grateful for the chance to contextualize the news. But let's not accept pat apples-to-oranges comparisons to the past as we consider our nation's future.
