NO. 1
THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST FOR THE PRESIDENCY
INSIDE HISTORY OF A GREAT POLITICAL CRISIS
(THE CENTURY’S AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES)
BY HENRY WATTERSON
Editor of the Louisville “Courier-Journal”
I
THE time is coming, if it has not already arrived, when among fair-minded and intelligent Americans there will not be two opinions touching the Hayes-Tilden contest for the Presidency in 1876–77—that both by the popular vote and a fair count of the electoral vote Tilden was elected and Hayes was defeated—but the whole truth underlying the determinate incidents which led to the rejection of Tilden and the seating of Hayes will never be known.
“All history is a lie,” observed Sir Robert Walpole, the corruptionist, mindful of what was likely to be written about himself, and, “What is history,” asked Napoleon, the conqueror, “but a fable agreed upon?”