I’m sitting in my high school history class one day in the winter of 2006 when I hear this story.

 

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I’d never heard it before, and there’s a good chance you haven’t heard it either. But it’s an important story, and for fifteen years it’s stayed with me, kind of haunting me, like this clue that I couldn’t quite figure out. It’s a story about the election of 1876. 

 

If you’re like my junior-year self, 1876 means nothing to you. It sits smack in the middle of this US history deadzone. Your history classes probably went into great detail on the country’s founding - the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers. 

 

They probably gave as much attention to the Civil War. But then, in 1865, the war ends, and Lincoln is killed, and history basically hits fast forward until World War I in 1914. Rutherford Hayes? Let’s just say I didn’t expect it to be a memorable lecture.

 

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But then... my teacher launches into this story... and it’s good. 

 

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It’s about a secret meeting in this hotel room overlooking the White House. As my teacher talks, I start to imagine the scene: a light snow falling, the wooden floorboards creaking in the cold, the room dark…. There’s a knock at the door. Several congressmen, an ex-Governor, and a future President enter. They are advisors for the Presidential hopeful Rutherford Hayes, and they’ve come under the cover of night to meet with a handful of southern white leaders from the opposing party.

 

A decade ago, most of these men had fought on opposite sides of the bloodiest war in American history, but on this night, they’ve come to negotiate a deal.

 

Within a week, the deal made in this room will determine the next President. In the process, it will resolve the most contested election in US history and avert the threat of a second civil war. 

 

For many, this secret deal is seen as the final act of the Civil War - an act that marks the end of the period of history known as Reconstruction and the beginning of an era of legalized segregation and racial violence that will last over one hundred years.

 

And the fact that you haven’t heard of this deal is not an accident - it’s the triumph of a flawed historical narrative that was strategically crafted and carefully disseminated after the Civil War. And it’s a narrative that lives on.

 

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This is Fireside History 1876, a podcast about the death of Reconstruction, the rise of the Jim Crow South, and the contested election of Rutherford Hayes. I’m Nick Fogel, and in this podcast, I’ll be your host as we return to a critical but often-overlooked period in American history. With the war over, slavery abolished, and Lincoln dead, what will come next? What will freedom mean for 4 million former slaves? What will defeat look like for the white south? And how will the narratives of the war and its legacy come to power?

 

Episode 1: The Arc of History

 

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If there’s a common theme embedded in the popular narrative of US history, it’s that of progress. 

 

Martin Luther King Jr.: Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

 

There are some blips here and there, some ugly events and trying times, but overall there’s this idea that America is getting better. The Civil War ended slavery. The Civil Rights movement ended segregation. 

 

Joe Biden: But we’ve always constantly been moving the needle further and further to inclusion, not exclusion.

 

Squint a little bit, and it kind of seems to fit. Hell, my first four votes for President – two primaries and two general elections were for a black man. And he won all four.

 

Barack Obama: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

 

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And that idea – that the arc bends towards justice – is powerful. It inspires and comforts and gives hope. 

 

But what if that’s wrong? What if progress isn’t inevitable?

 

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I think my teacher’s story of the election of 1876 stuck with me because it was a moment where the country could have maintained its commitment to racial justice in the wake of abolition… but it didn’t. And for a country that continues to struggle with race, that feels like a really critical decision to understand. 

 

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In 1876, there’s a lot hanging in the balance. But before we get to the drama of the election and the hotel deal, let’s get caught up on what happened in the aftermath of Lee’s surrender.

 

An unlikely coalition of newly freed black people, white abolitionists, and northern capitalists have aligned to advance a bold project to reimagine southern society... The project is known as Reconstruction.

 

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Kate Masur: this was a period of tremendous possibility.

 

This is Kate Masur, a historian at Northwestern University:

 

Kate Masur: So when you go rewind to that moment where slavery was coming to an end, it happened that people were ready to meet that challenge, and tried a lot of things that were unprecedented, that were almost revolutionary, trying to set the stage to create a completely different nation from the nation that had existed until that point.

 

On the ground, Reconstruction means the development of black churches and the establishment of the south’s first public schools. 

 

Hilary Green: So you see as soon as the guns stopped firing, there are schools being formed.

 

Here’s Hilary Green, a historian at the University of Alabama:

 

Hilary Green: and oftentimes the schools are being formed in open fields. There are schools being formed in former slave pens… 

 

Reconstruction means the formation of Black businesses and newspapers and farms. By 1877, historians estimate that between 10 and 20% of black families own land, enabling them to achieve some measure of economic independence.

 

And Reconstruction also means a dramatic expansion of legal and political rights for black people. In the five years after the war, three landmark amendments are ratified, abolishing slavery, guaranteeing equal protection before the law, and granting black men (though not yet women) the right to vote. 

 

It’s hard to overstate how important these amendments are. Remember that before the war, the supreme court had declared that black people were property, which meant they were not eligible for the rights of citizenship. Now, they are full voting members of society. In many southern states, they represent a majority of the electorate, meaning they have a huge amount of political power. 

 

Across the country, Black people fight for and embrace these rights. 

 

Bobby Donaldson: Very often enslaved people are marginalized characters. 

 

This is Bobby Donaldson, a historian at the University of South Carolina.

 

Bobby Donaldson: But remember I said there are 4 million people who are enslaved in the American South during this period, and they're not just bystanders. They're their own actors. They're their own architects about their future.

 

In many states black voter turnout routinely tops 80%. For reference, that’s more than 20 percentage-points higher than it was in 2016. This soon translates into a wave of black leadership. 

 

In the 1870s, there are black congressmen, and black Senators, and even briefly a black governor in the deep south state of Louisiana. The next black governor won’t take office until 1990.

 

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Many historians refer to this period as the ‘second founding’ – more revolutionary than the first. It’s an attempt to establish a true democracy and address the country’s original sin of slavery. There is legislation banning segregation, empowering the federal government to prosecute hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and even serious proposals around reparations for slavery.

 

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But the progress is fragile. Much of the white south rejects Reconstruction. They fear it as a loss of labor, political power, and social status. While free black communities are springing to life, forces are emerging to turn back the clock to the age of white rule. 

​

Greg Downs: White Southerners come home from the Confederate Army ready to continue the war in a continuous state of insurgency against the federal government and against African Americans…

 

Greg Downs, a historian from UC Davis, notes that the Ku Klux Klan is founded in 1865 and other white supremacist groups follow suit. These groups unleash waves of terror designed to delegitimize Reconstruction-era governments and convince northerners that continued federal intervention is not worth the cost. 

 

Greg Downs: This is crucial because it forces Northerners to take a stand, what are they willing to do? Not to say abstractly people should vote, but to enforce it. And this forces Northerners to think about the power of the federal government in a way they hadn't had to… 

 

Many northerners think that white violence can be solved by the ballot box. Once black people are able to vote, they can use that power to force change and protect themselves. 

 

Greg Downs: They are not prepared for what happens in a place where a large well-armed organized portion of the population is willing to use violence to prevent another portion of the population from voting at all.

 

Elections are marked by violence with white supremacists gathering in force around polling places. 

 

Kate Masur: to assert one's right to vote in this period in a lot of places was dangerous...

 

Here’s Kate Masur again:

 

Kate Masur: There was no secret ballot… People would distribute paper ballots color coded, like let's say, you know, red would be one party's ticket, and blue would be another party's ticket. And when you walked up to deposit your ballot in the ballot box, everybody could see how you were voting….And so people in some places, entire black communities, including women, mobilized to protect the right to vote, you see stories of people showing up you know, before dawn at the polling place, on mass, sometimes with weapons or if they didn't have actual guns with kind of broomsticks and other types of things they could put over the shoulder to make it sort of look like they had a gun as a way of defensively warding off people who would white people who would also come armed to the polling place to try to prevent them from voting.

 

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At first, reports of white violence inspired voters in the north to redouble their efforts on supporting Black freedom. In 1869 and 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant sent federal troops to suppress Southern violence, leading a successful campaign to prosecute Klan members in South Carolina. But by the mid-1870s, attitudes towards Reconstruction were shifting.

 

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Madeleine Ramsey: People, especially in northern cities have kind of already started to move on… This is a little harsh to say, but it's kind of an out of sight out of mind thing.

 

This is Madeleine Forrest Ramsey, a historian at Virginia Military Institute.

 

Madeleine Ramsey: Most northerners still support aspects of reconstruction, but they're less concerned with Klan violence. There's no big clamoring from Grant to send in troops, for example. And a lot of this is because Northern cities and businessmen have started to shift gears a bit. They're moving on from the war.

 

An economic crisis as severe as the 2008 Great Recession was gripping the country and southern intervention was expensive. Many northerners began to wonder if it was worth the high taxes they were paying. In 1874, the historian William Wells Brown wrote: 

 

“There is a feeling all over this country that the Negro has got about as much as he ought to have.”

 

In 1875, white paramilitary groups launched a coordinated campaign of violence and voter suppression in Mississippi, murdering hundreds of people and sending heavily armed bands to break up political events. The Governor there was Adelbert Ames - a northerner and former Union commander. When he appealed to the White House for support, President Grant balked, replying: 

 

“The whole public are tired out with these annual, autumnal outbreaks in the South.” 

 

Grant’s party had been crushed in the 1874 midterm elections, and with Reconstruction quickly becoming a losing issue in the north, he feared that sending troops to Mississippi would spell certain defeat in the presidential election in 1876. 

 

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Without federal intervention, the violence in Mississippi worked. White supremacists won huge majorities in the state house and quickly launched impeachment hearings that forced Governor Ames to resign. 

 

Reflecting on the ordeal, Ames wrote: 

 

“When the liberties of the people were in jeopardy, the nation abandoned us for political reasons… a revolution has taken place – by force of arms – and a race are disenfranchised – they are to be returned to a condition of serfdom – an era of second slavery.” 

 

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All of this hangs in the air as voters head to the polls on election day 1876. 

 

Bobby Donaldson: everyone understood that the 1876 election was crucial. 

 

This is Bobby Donaldson again.

 

Bobby Donaldson: It  was crucial to the future of the country and crucial to the future of African Americans. And I think those who are voting on both sides of the debate understood that. 

 

For the first time in sixteen years, Republican control of the White House is in serious doubt, and with it the future of Reconstruction is also on the line. 

 

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As a quick reminder, the parties in 1876 are more or less opposites of their current positions. Democrats are for a small federal government, low taxes, and, importantly, limited rights for newly freed black people. They are the party of the Confederacy, and in the aftermath of the war, they have taken on the mantle as the party of white supremacy. Their 1868 Presidential campaign slogan read: “This is a White Man’s Country. Let White Men Rule.”

 

The Republican party meanwhile was formed in the run-up to the Civil War primarily to oppose the expansion of slavery, and they’ve used their postwar power to advance Reconstruction and expand rights for black people.

 

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The election is between the democrat Samuel Tilden, a wealthy railroad lawyer and Governor of New York, and the republican Rutherford Hayes, a former Union general and Ohio Governor. Tilden is a moderate Mitt Romney type – a rich corporate guy who’s the fiscal conservative in a party that’s focused on culture wars – though he is firmly aligned with his more extreme party members on the need to end Reconstruction. Republican Hayes is basically Tim Kaine. If you’re struggling to conjure an image of what I mean, that’s kind of the point. Hayes is a safe pick from a swing state thrust into the limelight for the primary reason that he is unobjectionable, untainted by the scandals of the Grant administration. His main pitch to voters is that he is not a traitor, imploring former Union soldiers who make up a significant block of power to “vote as you shot.”

 

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The election is a disaster. On Election Night, everyone assumes Tilden has won. After learning he’s lost the battleground state of New York, Hayes himself writes in his journal: 

 

“From that time I never supposed there was a chance for Republican success…I soon fell into a refreshing sleep and the affair seemed over.”

 

But it isn’t over. Tilden is up big in the popular vote, a tally he’ll end up winning by 3 percentage points. But as the votes trickle in, it becomes clear that Tilden is one vote short in the electoral college.

 

The outcome hinges on three southern states whose margins are too close to call – Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. 

 

The process of determining the winner in each state is total chaos. Imagine the confusion of the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W Bush... 

 

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Now multiply that across three states and four months. Oh, and throw in the fact that the two parties just fought a war against each other. 

 

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There are recounts and investigations and state supreme court cases. There are reports of bribery and fraud and accusations of violent voter suppression. There’s a bipartisan commission of congressmen and supreme court justices to try and reach a peaceful outcome. But it only sort of works. The commission rules in Hayes’ favor in each state, but Democrats are crying foul. 

 

They are threatening to filibuster to prevent the results from getting certified. By rule, if they can hold out until March 4th, the election will fall to the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, assuring Tilden of victory. Others are preparing for violence. Here’s Greg Downs:

 

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Greg Downs: A number of democratic state militias activate and there are discussions among governors of trying to create a unified front of democratic militias that will surround DC, largely outnumber the army, and be prepared to intervene if Tilden is arrested or prevented from taking inauguration. Everyone prepares for the idea of two inaugurations, two presidents, even some kind of civil war.

 

I want to pause for a minute here. It’s easy to gloss over the stories of history without recognizing how crazy they are. In 2020, people were up in arms when Texas sued other states to try to overturn their results. Imagine if instead of a court case, the Texas Governor had called Governors of other red states and made plans to use their national guard troops to force Trump’s inauguration. That’s where we are four months after Election Day 1876.

 

And here’s where my teacher’s story about the backroom hotel deal finally comes in.

 

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By late February, a week away from the March 4th deadline, the mood in DC... is tense. 

 

President Grant, a Republican and Hayes ally, has dispatched federal troops to protect bridges and other strategic points around DC. There are reports of militia training nearby under the banner of “Tilden or... blood.” Several congressmen have started carrying pistols with them for protection.

 

And as all of this is happening, this shadowy power broker from New Orleans named Edward Burke arrives in Washington. 

 

Burke is a con man, an opportunist. For Game of Thrones fans, think of Burke like Little Finger, the advisor to Kings and Queens who is adept at injecting himself into big deals. 

 

Peter Balish: Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. 

 

Burke is also an avowed white supremacist. And in the chaos of the election, he sees an opportunity to end Reconstruction once and for all.

 

As night falls on February 26th, Burke and several southern congressmen meet with Hayes' advisors at the Wormley Hotel across the street from the White House. 

 

The southerners are willing to work with Hayes, and with their support, the path to the Presidency is clear. In return, they require two primary commitments: first, that Hayes remove federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana – the final battalions still in the South from the war; and second, that he recognize the democratic candidates as the winners of contested gubernatorial elections in those same states. 

 

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It is a big ask. In the aftermath of the election, when Hayes thought he’d lost, he’d told a reporter: 

 

"I don’t care for myself, and the party, yes, and the country, too, can stand it; but I do care for the poor colored men of the south….The southern people will practically treat the constitutional amendments as nullities, and then the colored man’s fate will be worse than when he was in slavery, with a humane master to look after his interests."

 

But now, with victory so close at hand and the threat of Civil War looming, the fate of four million black people has become a bargaining chip.

 

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Perhaps aware of the shadiness of the deal, Hayes’ team avoids making any formal documents. It is – as these things often are — a gentleman's agreement. The Presidency for control of the south. 

 

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A week later, in a ceremony held in private to protect against the threat of violence, Rutherford Hayes is sworn in as the 19th President of the United States. A month later, he orders federal troops back to their bases and recognizes democrats as winners of the contested gubernatorial elections. By April, Reconstruction is over. Democrats, most of them ex-confederates, control the statehouses in every southern state.

 

Bobby Donaldson: Federal troops leave the South. 

 

Here’s Bobby Donaldson:

 

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Bobby Donaldson: They leave South Carolina in April of 1877. And there was an old African American who watched the federal troops leave Columbia, and as the drums roll, and these men walk out of the city and one person says, no freedom is just like a rope of sand. We grabbed for it, and it's all gone.

 

WEB Dubois echoed that sentiment a few decades later in his history of Reconstruction, saying:

 

“The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery… Democracy died save in the hearts of black folk.”

 

Almost as soon as the troops leave town, the southern governments enact laws to segregate society and disenfranchise black voters. They institute poll taxes, property requirements, and literacy tests that make it nearly impossible for black people to register to vote. This real-life story of voter suppression was memorialized in the movie Selma:

 

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County clerk: How many county judges in Alabama? 

 

Oprah Winfrey: 67

 

County Clerk: Name them.

 

[Pause]

 

In Mississippi, the first state to pass these laws, the number of registered black voters fell from 150,000 in 1890 to fewer than 9,000 just two years later. In Louisiana, the state that had the country’s first black governor, only 730 black people were registered to vote in 1910 - 0.5% of the eligible Black population. As Black voting rates declined, so did black representation. In 1901, George White, a black representative from North Carolina, left office. It would take 72 years before another black southern congressman would replace him.

 

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[Enter and Exit news clips about June 2020, BLM chants]

 

In the spring of 2020 George Floyd was murdered. And Ahmaud Arbery. And Breonna Taylor. In the aftermath, mixed in with the calls for police reform and voter protections, there was a renewed effort to take down Confederate statues and change the names of stadiums and schools…. a reckoning with a history of white supremacy and the narratives that have supported it.

 

Over the ensuing months, history became one of the defining issues in American politics.

 

Donald Trump: To combat the toxic left-wing propaganda in our schools, I am launching a new pro-America lesson plan for students called 1776 Commission. It’s already done… 

 

School board meetings became battlegrounds. State legislatures began crafting new laws defining what can and cannot be taught in public schools.

 

MSNBC: The Times reporting on nearly a dozen Republican-led states seeking to ban or limit how the role of slavery and the pervasive effects of racism can be taught….

 

Fox commentator: The political left is perpetuating this myth that America is a fundamentally racist country….

 

Tucker Carlson: Last month, the department of education proposed a regulation that directs tax dollars to the race hustlers who traffic in this poison. 

 

As I’ve watched this fight play out, I’ve thought a lot about this famous George Orwell quote: “Those who control the present, control the past. And those who control the past, control the future.”

 

Our collective memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction has long been at the center of the fights over how we remember the past. Generations before Fox News, textbook committees, Hollywood movies, and mainstream academics pushed revisionist narratives that formed the very foundation of Jim Crow. 

 

The stories you’ll hear in this podcast will reveal a more accurate narrative and explain how we went from a war to end slavery to a system of legalized white supremacy. They’re stories of terror and despair but also of hope and promise - stories that remind us that progress might not be inevitable, while showing us that it’s still possible.

 

People often forget that there’s a second line to Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote: “The arc of history bends towards justice, but only if we make it.”

 

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Next time on Fireside History:

 

Bobby Donaldson: They were aware that at the stroke of midnight, the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln would be put into place… 

 

We travel back to the roots of Reconstruction, and the hope it promised for a new America.

 

We examine the growing backlash and the seeds of insurgency and terror.

 

Shawn Alexander: But the Klan will come and circle the house almost every night to terrorize them to simply say, we are here. 

 

And we return to Washington where debate over Reconstruction in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination will reveal a chasm that will lead to the first Presidential impeachment.

 

Fireside History is produced by me, Nick Fogel. It is edited by Iris Adler and Ellen Mayer. Scoring and sound engineering by Jason Albert and Hannah Barg. Voice acting from Kilo Martin and Sara Young. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Kate Masur, Hilary Green, Bobby Donaldson, Madeleine Forrest Ramsey, Greg Downs, and Shawn Alexander.

 

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