There was little difference between the platforms of the two leading parties. The Democrats declared for reform through all the methods of the administration. The Republicans were equally loud in their calls for the reform of every political abuse, and for the punishment of any and all who made wrongful use of political offices. They also insisted that the rights of the colored men should be safeguarded, and denounced the doctrine of State sovereignty, of which there was little to be feared, since it had been effectually killed by the war.
The Greenbackers made considerable stir. They also used the shibboleth of reform, but put the currency question before all others. Although the government was committed to the redemption of the national legal-tenders and bonds in gold, the Greenbackers insisted that this was impossible, and was also unjust to the debtor class. They claimed, further, that it was the duty of the government to provide a national paper currency, based not on specie, but on bonds bearing a low rate of interest. The Republicans and Democrats maintained that the government could not abrogate its promises of redeeming the currency and bonds in gold.
The Greenback party polled 81,740 votes, the Prohibition 9,522, and the American 2,636, none gaining an electoral vote. For several days after the November election, it was generally believed that the Democrats had been successful, though a few Republican papers, notably the New York Times, persistently claimed that the Republican ticket had been successful.
MEMORIAL HALL OF 1876.
There was a dispute in four States. In Louisiana, the returning board threw out the returns from several parishes on the ground of intimidation and fraud, thereby placing 4,000 majority to the credit of the Republicans. The Democrats insisted that the rejected votes should be counted, and, had it been done, Tilden would have been elected.
In South Carolina, two bodies claimed to be the legal Legislature and both canvassed the returns, one giving a plurality of 800 to the Republican ticket and the other a smaller majority to the Democratic. Precisely the same wrangle occurred in Florida, where each side claimed a majority of about a hundred. Matters were still more complicated in Oregon, where a Republican elector was declared ineligible, because he held the office of postmaster at the time he was chosen elector. The governor proposed to withhold the certificate from him and give it to a Democrat. Had everything claimed by the Republicans been conceded, they would have had 185 and the Democrats 184. It was necessary, therefore, for the Republicans to maintain every point in order to secure their President, for it was beyond dispute that Tilden had received 184 electoral votes. On the popular vote, he had 4,284,885 to 4,033,950 for Hayes. Each party charged the other with fraud, and thousands of Democrats were so incensed at what they believed was a plot to cheat them out of the presidency that they were ready to go to war. Had they done so, it would have been the most terrible peril that ever came upon the Republic, for the war would not have been one section against the other, but of neighborhood against neighborhood throughout the land.
