The Glenn Beck Program - August 29, 2026


America’s Centennial and the 1876 Election Crisis ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 20


Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

151.68

Word count

6,847

Sentence count

527

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.480 It's the Family and Friends event at Shopper's Drug Mart.
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00:00:18.180 It's March 10th, 1876.
00:00:21.520 Inside a cramped laboratory in Boston,
00:00:24.280 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell hunches over a tangle of wires
00:00:28.840 and a liquid transmitter.
00:00:31.020 For months, he and his assistant Thomas Watson
00:00:33.340 had chased an impossible dream,
00:00:35.940 sending the human voice across wires
00:00:38.020 as clear, continuous sound.
00:00:41.000 Failures had piled up.
00:00:42.700 Rival inventors were racing to solve the same problem.
00:00:45.500 But today is the breakthrough day.
00:00:48.900 Alexander Graham Bell's life had been shaped by sound,
00:00:52.420 silence, and relentless curiosity.
00:00:55.400 He was born in Scotland.
00:00:56.540 He grows up in a family of speech experts.
00:00:58.360 his father creates a groundbreaking system to help deaf people communicate.
00:01:03.600 Young Alexander absorbs every lesson about how voices work and how they fail.
00:01:08.280 His mother is deaf, which deepens his obsession with acoustics.
00:01:12.500 Personal tragedy strikes when both of his brothers die of tuberculosis,
00:01:16.040 so in 1870, the family moves to Canada in search of a healthier climate.
00:01:21.960 A year later, Bell moves to the United States and settles in Boston,
00:01:26.680 teaching at a school for deaf children and training other instructors in speech methods.
00:01:31.620 In Boston, Bell also experiments with harmonic telegraph,
00:01:35.160 trying to send multiple messages at once over a single wire using different sound frequencies.
00:01:41.620 He's hired a skilled mechanic named Thomas Watson,
00:01:44.100 and together they push beyond the telegraph entirely,
00:01:47.120 imagining a device that actually would carry a voice.
00:01:49.800 In February 1876, Bell files his patent application for an improvement in telegraphy at the U.S. Patent Office, just before rival Elisha Gray submits a similar idea.
00:02:02.560 Three weeks later, on March 7th, Bell is granted a U.S. patent that becomes one of the most valuable patents ever issued.
00:02:10.240 It is the legal foundation for the telephone empire that would follow.
00:02:14.440 Now, March 10th, Bell and Watson test their latest version in separate rooms connected by wire.
00:02:23.460 Bell leans towards the transmitter and says,
00:02:26.540 Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.
00:02:31.680 Watson hears every syllable. He rushes in, stunned.
00:02:36.100 Bell has just completed the first successful telephone call.
00:02:39.960 He records the moment in his laboratory notebook with quiet triumph.
00:02:43.540 to my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what i said later that year
00:02:51.460 still glowing from the breakthrough bell writes to his father with a prophetic certainty the day is
00:02:57.140 coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas and friends will
00:03:03.300 converse with each other without leaving home it feels almost inevitable that this world-changing
00:03:09.620 moment arrives in 1876. This is America's centennial year. The nation marks 100 years
00:03:16.860 since the Declaration of Independence, a century already packed with technological change,
00:03:21.500 including the mechanical reaper, steam engine, railroad, and telegraph.
00:03:26.520 The centennial year also overflows with many of the world's most famous legends of the
00:03:31.540 American Wild West, and it brings the most contentious, trying presidential election
00:03:36.980 in the country's 100-year history,
00:03:39.240 one that would threaten the republic itself. 0.75
00:03:45.160 This is the American story, The Beginnings,
00:03:49.500 adapted from the book of the same title
00:03:51.640 by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:03:55.880 Episode 20, The 1876 Election Crisis.
00:04:06.980 In May 1876, America threw itself a major birthday party and invited the world.
00:04:13.580 Philadelphia became the nation's showroom, the Centennial Exposition,
00:04:17.440 the first World's Fair ever held in the U.S.
00:04:21.120 It spread across 285 acres at Fairmount Park.
00:04:25.600 200 buildings were constructed for the event,
00:04:28.300 and the centerpiece was the main hall,
00:04:30.780 which covered 35 acres stretching one-third of a mile in length,
00:04:34.920 the largest building ever constructed at the time.
00:04:38.880 On opening day, more than 186,000 people poured in through the gates.
00:04:43.400 Admission was 50 cents, that's about $15 today.
00:04:47.260 President Grant presided over the opening ceremony,
00:04:49.940 standing at the center of an America that was still healing from the Civil War
00:04:53.320 and stepping confidently into the future.
00:04:57.040 Inside the fairgrounds, visitors had their senses overwhelmed with new sights and sounds.
00:05:02.160 They saw the first public demonstration of typewriters, sewing machines, and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone carrying a human voice across a room.
00:05:12.060 They tasted root beer and popcorn for the first time.
00:05:15.340 They gawked at displays of scientific and industrial power that seemed to announce the Republic was alive, well, and accelerating toward the next century.
00:05:23.720 The engrossed parchment of the original Declaration of Independence was transported from Washington, D.C. and displayed under glass.
00:05:31.680 Also displayed were the massive hand and torch of the future Statue of Liberty,
00:05:36.860 well before the full statue rose in the New York Harbor.
00:05:40.420 And in anticipation of the centennial, a new Liberty Bell was cast from four melted-down Revolutionary and Civil War cannons.
00:05:48.720 That centennial bell replaced the original Liberty Bell in the Tower of Independence Hall.
00:05:54.640 It remains there today.
00:05:56.300 When the fair closed its gates six months later, 10 million people had visited.
00:06:01.680 But here was what was missing from the brochure.
00:06:04.820 While the Centennial Expo was all the rage in the eastern half of the country,
00:06:08.980 battles raged in the west in an environment that was so far removed from Philadelphia
00:06:13.760 it would have seemed like it was on another planet.
00:06:18.140 The U.S. government had decided that the last free-roaming Lakota,
00:06:22.340 northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho bands would go on to reservations, one way or another.
00:06:29.640 At the center of the resistance stood two of the most important Native leaders in American history,
00:06:35.280 Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
00:06:39.080 Crazy Horse is one of my favorite people in history.
00:06:41.580 He was a Lakota Sioux warrior, and he was a legend among his people for the courage and the skill that he had in battle.
00:06:48.100 He didn't sign treaties, he avoided white society, and he rejected reservation life. 0.86
00:06:53.380 He wanted really only one thing, to keep living the old way by hunting buffalo, 0.90
00:06:58.560 moving with the seasons, and raising his family on the open land.
00:07:03.540 Sitting Bull, born into another band of Lakota Sioux,
00:07:06.740 he was a warrior, a political leader, and a spiritual figure.
00:07:10.040 He completely rejected treaty negotiations
00:07:12.480 and believed those who signed them spoke only for themselves.
00:07:16.400 Sitting Bull's dispute with the U.S. was about sovereignty,
00:07:19.560 the right to live and hunt and worship, and to move freely in the plains.
00:07:24.900 In the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government recognized the Black Hills of South Dakota
00:07:30.920 as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. It was set aside for the exclusive use of the Sioux people.
00:07:38.180 But in 1874, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into those sacred hills
00:07:44.980 and confirmed what everybody had already suspected.
00:07:48.860 There was gold.
00:07:50.560 Miners flooded in.
00:07:52.980 Well, now to the Sioux, the Black Hills were sacred.
00:07:55.880 To Washington, they were suddenly valuable.
00:07:59.100 When the government tried to buy the land and the Sioux refused the offer,
00:08:02.440 the U.S. issued an ultimatum.
00:08:04.160 Every band must be on a reservation by the end of January 1876
00:08:08.640 or be treated as hostile.
00:08:11.940 General Philip Sheridan, hardened by the Civil War
00:08:14.740 and famous for his successful campaigns against the Confederates, helped drive the policy of
00:08:19.500 compelling native bands into reservations. In the spring of 1876, Sheridan sent three columns
00:08:27.540 converging on the Powder River country. General George Crook coming up from the south, Colonel
00:08:33.420 John Gibbon from the west, and General Alfred Terry from the east. Most of Terry's force was
00:08:39.780 of the 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Custer.
00:08:44.280 The mission was blunt, find the free bands of Sioux
00:08:47.240 and force them in or finish them. 0.88
00:08:50.760 The first real test came on June 17th.
00:08:53.300 It was along the Rosebud Creek in present-day Montana.
00:08:56.660 Crook's Column, roughly 1,000 troops,
00:08:58.580 was moving north when hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors,
00:09:02.620 led by Crazy Horse, struck hard.
00:09:05.040 For six hours, the fight rumbled across the rolling prairie. 0.65
00:09:10.040 The Indians pressed every advantage of terrain and numbers.
00:09:14.040 Crook's men ultimately held, but they were battered and on low supplies. 0.74
00:09:18.040 Strategically, Crazy Oars had won the day.
00:09:21.040 Crook returned to his base camp in Wyoming to resupply,
00:09:24.040 but in doing so he failed to communicate the size of the Indian force
00:09:28.040 to the two other commanders in Sheridan's campaign.
00:09:31.840 Meanwhile, the victorious Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were soaring with confidence.
00:09:37.180 They rode in to join the great village already forming on the Little Bighorn River.
00:09:43.420 Eight days later, Custer found the village that General Crook had failed to reach.
00:09:48.160 Custer was 36 years old, but he already carried the aura of a legend and the instincts of a gambler.
00:09:54.960 Born in Ohio, he graduated last in his West Point class in 1861,
00:09:59.660 but then he rocketed upward through the ranks during the Civil War thanks to his daring and
00:10:04.360 bravery. But he also could be reckless. He became known for his so-called Custer luck after having
00:10:11.580 11 horses shot out from underneath him during the Civil War battles and only receiving one
00:10:16.540 small wound from an artillery shell during the entire war. He came to rely too much on his luck.
00:10:23.380 He was ambitious and convinced that swift, aggressive action always carried the day.
00:10:30.380 Custer was also flamboyant, obsessed with his looks.
00:10:34.520 He liked to wear a black velvet uniform and gold lace and a red scarf around his neck.
00:10:39.660 He had long flowing blonde hair that he perfumed with cinnamon oil.
00:10:46.020 By the morning of June 25th, Custer's scouts located one of the largest Indian encampments ever seen on the plains.
00:10:52.900 Perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 people, plus 1,500 to 2,000 warriors
00:10:59.500 stretched for miles along the Little Bighorn River.
00:11:03.340 Custer's scouts warned him that the village was enormous
00:11:06.020 and also that the cavalry's presence had likely been detected by Crazy Horse's men.
00:11:11.940 But Custer feared the entire village would scatter if he waited much longer.
00:11:16.320 So he attacked.
00:11:19.340 Then he divided his command.
00:11:22.000 Major Marcus Reno was ordered to strike the village from the south.
00:11:26.320 Captain Frederick Benteen was sent off to scout the left.
00:11:30.220 Custer took his remaining 210 men north,
00:11:34.160 apparently intending to hit the village from another direction.
00:11:38.380 Custer's decision, as we all know now, proved fatal.
00:11:42.080 He way underestimated the size of Crazy Horse's force and overestimated his own genius.
00:11:48.720 Reno's attack collapsed first.
00:11:50.400 His men crossed the river, advanced towards the village, and then were hit by fierce resistance.
00:11:55.680 Reno halted, dismounted, formed a skirmish line, and then fired into the onrushing warriors,
00:12:01.420 but Crazy Horse's men just kept attacking.
00:12:04.980 Reno's men, they retreated into a grove of trees by the river, but soon the retreat turned chaotic.
00:12:10.980 Soldiers scrambled back across the river and climbed the bluffs, losing men along the way.
00:12:16.240 Captain Benteen arrived and joined Reno on the bluffs where they dug in.
00:12:21.040 Custer, however, never came back.
00:12:25.720 Custer and his men made their final fight on the knoll overlooking the Little Pighorn River,
00:12:31.960 now called Last Stand Hill.
00:12:34.800 He was surrounded by hundreds of Crazy Horse's warriors, and they were all killed within minutes.
00:12:40.020 By the battle's end, Custer and every single one of the 210 troops that were with him
00:12:45.380 were dead. Among them were his two younger brothers, his brother-in-law, his 18-year-old
00:12:52.700 nephew. Their bodies were later found stripped, and many mutilated in accordance with tribal
00:12:58.100 custom. For the Lakota and the Cheyenne, Little Bighorn was a stunning victory. A defense of 0.89
00:13:04.180 their families, their land, their freedom against an invading military force. But for the U.S.
00:13:09.220 government, it was the worst defeat the army had suffered in the long struggle on the plains.
00:13:14.360 It was a national shock, and it landed right in the middle of the centennial celebration.
00:13:21.080 The aftermath of the battle proved devastating for Native nations.
00:13:24.960 Instead of slowing U.S. expansion, Custer's defeat hardened American opinion.
00:13:29.360 The government poured more troops into the field.
00:13:32.400 The Lakota and Cheyenne band scattered under this pressure.
00:13:35.660 Sitting Bull, he eventually fled to Canada.
00:13:38.240 Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877 and was killed later that year at Fort Robinson.
00:13:44.920 The U.S. continued its battle against the Sioux in the Black Hills until the government confiscated the land in 1877.
00:13:51.940 To this day, the ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the U.S. government and the Sioux Nation.
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00:14:44.080 The cameras broadcast the horror, but eventually they left.
00:14:46.900 Mercury One never did.
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00:14:54.700 But it's storm season again.
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00:15:02.700 Help us have the biggest possible impact.
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00:15:11.640 text LOYALTY to 852017 or visit mercuryone.org. Join the Mercury One family. We'd love to have
00:15:18.660 you. Standard data and message rates do apply. In the summer of 1876, while the rest of America
00:15:25.400 lit fireworks for its 100th birthday, a different kind of American story was born. It was summer
00:15:31.780 that turned a handful of men into the permanent cast of America's Wild West legend. This was the
00:15:39.100 America of rough cowboys, outlaw gangs, saloon gamblers, and trigger-happy lawmen, men who became
00:15:45.760 legends because newspapers, dime novels, and later Hollywood couldn't get enough of their stories.
00:15:52.020 One man who understood the power of a story was the outlaw, Jesse James. Jesse and his brother
00:15:58.020 Frank had grown up in Clay County, Missouri, in a slave-holding family. During the Civil War,
00:16:03.160 Frank rode with the Confederate guerrillas. Jesse, still a teenager, eventually joined his
00:16:08.340 older brother. And in 1864, their guerrilla force ambushed two dozen Union soldiers who were headed
00:16:15.300 home on leave and executed them. When the Civil War finally ended, the James brothers' life of
00:16:22.660 crime was just getting warmed up. They quickly joined forces of the Younger brothers, Cole, Jim, 0.69
00:16:29.240 and Bob Younger. They robbed banks and trains and stagecoaches, and sometimes they killed.
00:16:35.880 Jesse James wrapped his crimes in politics.
00:16:39.360 He presented himself as a Confederate avenger, a victim of radical Republicans, even a kind of Robin Hood.
00:16:46.220 A Missouri newspaper editor, former Confederate John Newman Edwards, befriended Jesse and helped him spin this myth in the press.
00:16:54.040 It was actually brilliant branding, but almost entirely false.
00:16:59.600 The Robin Hood myth obscured the reality that Jesse James was a serial murderer.
00:17:04.680 There was no evidence that he was handing sacks of cash out to poor farmers.
00:17:08.640 He robbed for money, robbed for fame, robbed for the thrill of seeing his name in print.
00:17:15.140 On the evening of July 7, 1876, the James Younger gang picked up a lonely stretch of railroad track called the Rocky Cut, and it was near Outerville, Missouri.
00:17:25.200 They captured the railroad's night guard, took his lantern, and used it to flag down the train.
00:17:30.760 When the engine slowed, the gang swarmed the train, robbed both safes, and vanished into the night with $15,000.
00:17:38.760 The gang paused nearby to divide the take before scattering,
00:17:42.480 and it looked like another clean score, exactly the kind of robbery that helped turn criminals into folklore.
00:17:48.340 But a man named Hobbs Carey, who was new with the gang, he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
00:17:54.760 Within days, he was in custody and named every participant in the robbery.
00:18:01.040 Meanwhile, a different kind of legend was being forged a few hundred miles west in Kansas.
00:18:06.240 Wyatt Earp. He was born in Illinois.
00:18:08.740 He lived in Iowa as a boy, and as a young man, he drifted through frontier towns,
00:18:13.000 worked around saloons and gambling houses,
00:18:15.580 and he had his own brushes with the law, including stealing horses in the Oklahoma Territory.
00:18:20.360 To avoid arrest, he fled to Kansas.
00:18:22.780 He followed one of his brothers to Wichita, where Earp became a police officer.
00:18:28.040 He was tough, he was no-nonsense, good with both the pistol and his fist.
00:18:32.060 His friend and fellow officer, Bat Masterson, said,
00:18:35.600 There were few men in the West who could whip Earp in a rough and tumble fight.
00:18:40.040 But that also meant Earp was combustible.
00:18:43.180 In April 1876, he got into a fistfight with a political rival of his boss.
00:18:48.380 He pummeled the man.
00:18:50.160 But the city council declined to rehire him because of his violent behavior.
00:18:55.000 Earp didn't argue.
00:18:55.740 He packed up and went to Dodge City, Kansas.
00:18:59.520 Within a month, he became the deputy town marshal.
00:19:03.320 Dodge City was where the Texas cattle drives ended and the saloons never closed.
00:19:08.180 There was a constant flow of booze, gambling, and violence.
00:19:11.920 Earp's dangerous work patrolling Dodge City helped build the image that followed him forever.
00:19:17.400 The calm lawman facing down the chaos of the frontier.
00:19:20.980 Wyatt Earp's famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona wouldn't happen until five years later.
00:19:28.700 But his time cleaning up Dodge City was plenty to seed the legend.
00:19:34.320 He had served as deputy in Dodge City under the marshals, never as the marshal himself.
00:19:39.840 But as the Earp legend grew, it glossed over the fact, as legends often do.
00:19:44.920 While Earp was beginning his Dodge City chapter, another legend was nearing his final scene.
00:19:52.240 Wild Bill Hickok. He had been born James Butler Hickok in 1837. He had been a Union Army scout
00:19:59.740 and a spy, a lawman, a gambler, and a gunfighter. He wore long hair, always carried pistols,
00:20:06.040 and had killed several men, some in fair fights, some in the murky gray area that dime novel
00:20:12.600 riders quickly turned into heroic shootouts. His most famous gunfight came years earlier in
00:20:18.880 Springfield, Missouri in 1865. Hickok had a dispute with a former Confederate soldier named
00:20:24.940 Davis Tutte over gambling debt. The men had faced each other across the town square.
00:20:30.980 Witnesses disagree about who fired first, but Tutte's shot missed, while Bills did not.
00:20:38.420 This was the origin of what became a staple of countless Western novels, TV shows, and movies.
00:20:44.480 The image of a cool gunfighter standing in a dusty street, facing down the enemy in a quick-draw showdown.
00:20:51.880 Most real-life gunfights in the West were ambushes or barroom brawls that ended with somebody getting shot in the back.
00:21:00.160 By 1876, Wild Bill was now 39 years old.
00:21:03.780 His eyesight was failing, his glory days were fading, and when word of gold in the Black Hills
00:21:09.400 reached him, he headed for Deadwood. It was an illegal mining camp on Sioux land in present-day
00:21:15.380 South Dakota. Deadwood had exploded overnight into a muddy, lawless pit full of dreamers and desperate 0.99
00:21:22.380 men. Hickok became a regular at the number 10 saloon, barely scraping by as a card player,
00:21:30.080 but on the afternoon of August 2nd he sat at his usual poker table. Hickok always sat with his back
00:21:36.960 to the wall but that day he took the only open seat which left his back exposed to the saloon
00:21:43.900 door. A man named Jack McCall entered. He would claim that while Bill had killed his brother years
00:21:50.220 earlier which turned out to be false. McCall walked right behind Hickok, drew his pistol
00:21:56.960 and shot him there in the back of the head. 0.65
00:22:00.280 While Bill died instantly, slumping over his cards, 0.98
00:22:03.140 a pair of aces and a pair of eights,
00:22:05.120 later to be remembered as the dead man's hand.
00:22:08.780 The fastest gun in the West had been killed from behind
00:22:12.280 by a nobody.
00:22:15.900 A month later, the James Younger gang struck again.
00:22:19.840 Eight men trotted into the quiet town of Northfield, Minnesota.
00:22:24.500 Frank and Jesse James, the three younger brothers and three other accomplices.
00:22:30.300 Three of the men waited by a nearby bridge while two men watched the town square.
00:22:35.720 Frank James and the remaining two men walked into the First National Bank just after 2 o'clock in the afternoon
00:22:40.360 and they ordered the cashier, Joseph Haywood, to open the vault.
00:22:44.760 Well, Haywood stalled.
00:22:46.500 He claimed the vault was on a time lock and refused even after they pistol-whipped him and held a knife to his throat.
00:22:53.420 Outside, a hardware store owner named J.S. Allen had just left the bank.
00:22:58.900 He saw what was happening and shouted the alarm.
00:23:01.100 They're robbing the bank!
00:23:02.740 Citizens grabbed rifles and poured fire on the gangsters from windows and doorways.
00:23:07.240 And within minutes, two of the robbers lay dead in the street and two others were wounded, although they escaped.
00:23:14.020 Inside the bank, the robbers grabbed the only money they could find, 26 bucks.
00:23:19.380 Before fleeing, Frank James turned and shot Joseph Haywood in the head.
00:23:24.600 The James Younger gang scattered into the Minnesota countryside.
00:23:28.080 Jesse and Frank slipped away to the south and eventually made it home to Missouri.
00:23:32.800 The Younger brothers were eventually caught, tried, and sentenced to life in prison.
00:23:37.480 Jesse James kept running until 1882 when Robert Ford, one of his new gang members, shot him in the back of the head.
00:23:46.260 Jesse was 34.
00:23:48.620 Shortly after Jesse was killed, Frank James turned himself in, but in three separate criminal
00:23:54.160 trials no jury would convict him, so he was freed.
00:23:57.620 He gave up crime and died in 1915 at the age of 72.
00:24:03.080 The summer of 1876, it gave America three enduring Western myths.
00:24:08.420 The outlaw as a folk hero, the tough civilizing lawman, and the tragic celebrity gunslinger.
00:24:15.720 The real sources of these legends were complicated,
00:24:18.400 violent, and all too human.
00:24:20.760 But once these stories took hold,
00:24:23.100 America never let them go.
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00:25:50.100 June 1876.
00:25:52.660 As America's official centennial approached,
00:25:55.340 the Republican National Convention got underway in Cincinnati, Ohio.
00:25:59.660 Their party was tired.
00:26:01.780 President Grant was in the last of his eight years in office.
00:26:05.500 The nation was weary of Reconstruction in the South and scandal in Washington,
00:26:09.480 and the two leading candidates, James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling,
00:26:14.440 were tainted with corruption rumors.
00:26:16.860 So Republicans went with a safer choice, Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes.
00:26:22.300 He was a Union veteran wounded in the Civil War,
00:26:25.020 a former congressman and a reform-minded governor who had just won his third term in Ohio.
00:26:31.220 Hayes had a rare reputation in politics for quiet competence
00:26:34.320 and personal honesty.
00:26:36.800 A couple of weeks later,
00:26:38.280 it was the Democrats' turn in St. Louis, Missouri,
00:26:40.840 the first major party convention ever held
00:26:43.180 west of the Mississippi,
00:26:44.820 and their choice was Samuel J. Tilden.
00:26:48.060 He was the governor of New York,
00:26:49.700 and as governor, Tilden had helped bring down
00:26:51.900 Boss Tweed's corrupt political machine
00:26:54.000 and expose the Canal Ring financial scheme.
00:26:58.140 Tilden was also touted as a reformer.
00:27:01.740 On election day, the story looked pretty simple at first.
00:27:04.320 Tilden won the national popular vote by over 250,000 votes, and he appeared to be on the verge of victory in the Electoral College with 184 votes to 165 for Hayes.
00:27:15.560 But an unusual twist had changed the math for this election.
00:27:20.440 Residents of the Colorado Territory had voted for statehood that summer.
00:27:24.260 On August 1st, Colorado officially became the 38th state, dubbed the Centennial State.
00:27:34.320 electoral votes would have been enough to win. But with Colorado in the Union, the total rose to
00:27:39.840 369 electoral votes, and the magic number to win became 185. Tilden was one short.
00:27:51.000 As election night returns arrived at the Hayes home in Columbus, Ohio, the family's mood dimmed.
00:27:56.640 When they heard Tilden was well on his way to carrying New York, Hayes believed he had lost.
00:28:01.480 Early morning newspapers said the same thing.
00:28:03.880 Some editions proclaimed Tilden the winner.
00:28:06.700 But 19 electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina,
00:28:11.500 plus one disputed vote from Oregon, remained unresolved.
00:28:16.160 If Hayes had taken all four of these contested states,
00:28:20.180 he'd win the White House by a single electoral vote.
00:28:23.680 Now, since Hayes thought he had lost,
00:28:25.600 he didn't personally lead the charge to question the results.
00:28:28.860 The Republican leaders did.
00:28:30.900 But then a telegram arrived from his friend William Dennison.
00:28:34.380 He was a former governor of Ohio, and Dennison told him,
00:28:37.060 You are undoubtedly elected next president of the U.S.
00:28:40.600 Desperate attempts are being made to defeat you in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida,
00:28:45.600 but they will not succeed.
00:28:47.660 After that message, Hayes stopped talking about conceding.
00:28:51.820 The reason Republicans believed there was a case was not imaginary.
00:28:56.200 There were real voting irregularities across several southern states.
00:29:00.900 Repeat voters stuffed the ballot boxes. 0.97
00:29:03.620 Fraudulent ballots were printed to trick illiterate black voters into voting for Democrats.
00:29:08.900 And even though President Grant had largely destroyed the Ku Klux Klan prior to 1876 and the election,
00:29:15.860 violence and intimidation against black voters and white Republicans throughout the South was still commonplace.
00:29:22.840 Before Election Day, the U.S. Marshal in the Northern District of Mississippi sent this warning to the Republican National Committee chairman.
00:29:30.060 I am in possession of facts which warrant me in saying that the election in the northern half of this state will be a farce.
00:29:38.020 Colored and white Republicans will not be allowed to vote in many of the counties. 0.95
00:29:42.500 The Tilden clubs are armed with Winchester rifles and shotguns and declare that they will carry the election at all hazards. 0.89
00:29:50.040 In several counties of my district, leading white and colored Republicans are now refugees asking for protection. 0.93
00:29:55.860 A reign of terror such as I have never before witnessed exists in many large Republican counties 1.00
00:30:01.440 to such an extent that Republicans are unable to cope with it.
00:30:05.560 If it were not for rifles and shotguns, this state would give Hayes from 20,000 to 30,000 majority.
00:30:12.460 But fraud did not belong only to one side, and Hayes warned his Republican allies.
00:30:18.380 We are not to allow our friends to defeat one outrage and fraud by another.
00:30:23.040 There must be nothing crooked on our part.
00:30:25.080 All eyes now fell on the state canvassing boards.
00:30:29.460 These boards had the power to decide which returns were valid and which were not.
00:30:34.800 In Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, Republicans held majority control of those boards.
00:30:41.120 Both parties rushed Representatives South to monitor the recount.
00:30:45.460 Republicans watched for intimidation and suppression.
00:30:48.660 Democrats watched for Republican manipulation.
00:30:51.180 and everyone on all sides claimed to be defending democracy.
00:30:57.600 President Grant moved to protect the canvassing boards.
00:31:00.480 He wrote to General William T. Sherman,
00:31:02.820 ordering federal troops to protect the boards
00:31:04.980 so they could do their work without intimidation.
00:31:08.340 Here's what Grant said.
00:31:09.220 Should there be any grounds of suspicion of fraudulent counting on either side,
00:31:14.420 it should be reported and denounced at once.
00:31:17.780 No man worthy of the office of president
00:31:19.860 would be willing to hold the office, if counted in, placed there by fraud. Either party can afford
00:31:26.440 to be disappointed in the result, but the country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the
00:31:32.300 suspicion of illegal or false returns. The Republican-controlled boards went to work.
00:31:39.480 They disqualified returns from counties and parishes where they found evidence of violence
00:31:44.100 against black voters. Democrats cried foul. Republicans insisted they were just enforcing
00:31:50.040 the law. Well, despite Hayes' plea for nothing crooked, bribes, promises of political patronage
00:31:55.960 circled on both sides. Two years after the election, a congressional investigation uncovered
00:32:02.140 coded telegrams between Samuel Tilden's agents in Tallahassee and Colonel W.T. Pelton in New York.
00:32:10.620 Pelton was a secretary of the Democratic National Committee.
00:32:14.260 He also happened to be Samuel Tilden's nephew.
00:32:17.400 He even lived in Tilden's house, and in those telegrams, investigators found discussions of bribe amounts.
00:32:24.600 In the end, all three of the contested state canvassing boards certified Republican electors for Hayes.
00:32:31.500 But that crisis was far from over.
00:32:33.960 The electoral votes still had to be counted in Congress, according to the Constitution,
00:32:38.000 and Democrats from the disputed states sent their own competing results to Washington.
00:32:43.840 Two versions of reality now arrived at the same door.
00:32:48.100 As rumors of violence swirled in D.C., Congress faced a question.
00:32:52.040 The Constitution hadn't answered this clearly.
00:32:55.000 What happens when a presidential election produces rival-certified results
00:32:59.340 and neither side trusts the other to count them?
00:33:02.320 The country that had just celebrated its centennial now faced a major constitutional crisis.
00:33:09.640 So Congress took the extraordinary step, unprecedented in American history.
00:33:14.580 With the clock running out on Grant's presidency, lawmakers reached for a unique workaround to prevent the nation from sliding into chaos.
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00:35:52.140 250. Keyword chapter. Pound 250. Chapter. America was rushing towards a constitutional cliff.
00:36:00.820 It had never faced this before. The 1876 presidential election had happened two months
00:36:06.080 earlier, and there still was no clear winner. According to the Constitution, each state would
00:36:11.800 have to send its electoral votes under seal to the president pro tem of the Senate, listing the
00:36:17.060 popular vote totals for president and vice president. Then came the line that suddenly
00:36:22.120 tripped everybody up. Quote, the president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and
00:36:28.580 House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall be counted. But counted by
00:36:36.880 whom exactly? That was the question nobody had bothered to answer clearly. Republicans insisted
00:36:43.660 the president of the Senate could do it alone. Democrats who controlled the House said the
00:36:47.540 entire Congress should decide. The Constitution was silent on the matter. Now normally the president
00:36:54.300 of the Senate is the U.S. vice president, but that was also part of the problem in this case.
00:36:58.680 Grant's vice president, Henry Wilson, died more than a year earlier after a stroke. The man now
00:37:04.500 sitting in the president's chair of the Senate was Senator Tom Ferry of Michigan. He was a
00:37:09.460 Republican, but he was not the U.S. vice president. Senator Ferry saw the ambiguity in the Constitution
00:37:16.500 and refused to make the call on his own. He didn't believe he had the clear authority to break the
00:37:21.000 deadlock by himself. In the meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, both careful lawyers,
00:37:28.140 stayed above the fray. They let their lieutenants and state party machines do the fighting while
00:37:33.240 they receive the regular briefings from a safe distance. Democrats had the majority in the House,
00:37:38.860 Republicans had it in the Senate. In late January 1877, after frantic negotiations, Congress passed
00:37:45.980 and President Grant signed the Electoral Commission's Act. It created a 15-member
00:37:52.080 panel, five senators, five representatives, and five Supreme Court justices who would finally
00:37:57.360 resolve the election. The Senate chose three Republicans and two Democrats. The House chose
00:38:03.260 three Democrats and two Republicans. One of them was the future President James Garfield.
00:38:09.700 For the Supreme Court justices on the commission, Congress appointed two Democrats and two
00:38:14.060 Republicans, stipulating that those four would then choose the fifth justice. Many just assumed
00:38:20.200 it would be Justice David Davis of Illinois, widely viewed as the closest the court had to
00:38:25.680 a genuine independent. The idea was for the commission to have a total of seven Democrats,
00:38:31.100 seven Republicans, and with the independent Davis as the swing vote. But the Illinois legislature
00:38:36.680 had just elected Davis to the U.S. Senate, so he declined the commission seat and soon
00:38:42.520 resigned from the Supreme Court. The four justices turned instead to Justice Joseph Bradley.
00:38:51.180 He was a Republican-leading justice appointed by President Grant.
00:38:55.420 That meant the commission was now eight Republicans and seven Democrats.
00:39:00.320 Its decisions could only be overturned if both the House and the Senate voted to reject them.
00:39:06.640 Given the split control of Congress, that was never going to happen.
00:39:10.740 The commission held its first meeting on January 31st inside the Supreme Court chamber,
00:39:14.860 which at the time was located in the U.S. Capitol building.
00:39:18.920 Hearings began the next day.
00:39:20.560 Representative James Garfield kept a personal diary of the proceedings,
00:39:24.180 logging the careful legal arguments and constant partisan pressure in the room.
00:39:28.560 They considered the states one at a time,
00:39:30.380 starting with Florida, then Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina.
00:39:33.920 Each side got two hours per state to argue its case.
00:39:37.240 It took the commission roughly a week per state to deliberate.
00:39:40.660 By the end, every final vote was 8 to 7, right along party lines.
00:39:47.040 All for Hayes.
00:39:49.040 Democrats erupted.
00:39:50.900 They had voted for the commission and agreed to accept its decisions,
00:39:53.920 but now they filibustered,
00:39:55.560 and the final congressional proceedings trying to prevent Hayes
00:39:58.620 from being certified the winner was on,
00:40:01.240 and the clock was ticking towards March 4th, Inauguration Day.
00:40:05.540 While the filibuster played out on the floor,
00:40:07.420 quieter conversations happened offstage.
00:40:09.360 Representatives of Hayes and Tilden held several meetings in Washington,
00:40:13.060 and the result of these talks is often called the Compromise of 1877.
00:40:18.340 Though there is no evidence that any specific deal was ever struck,
00:40:22.320 but whatever was discussed, it seemed to help bring the chaos to a close.
00:40:27.040 After days of exhausted debate, the Senate finally confirmed Hayes at 4.10 a.m. on March 2nd,
00:40:34.040 just 48 hours before the inauguration.
00:40:37.240 Although eight members of the commission had voted to uphold the Hayes result,
00:40:41.460 Justice Joseph Bradley was singled out
00:40:43.860 for the harshest treatment by the Democrats.
00:40:46.420 They had expected him to play an independent role.
00:40:49.900 The New York Sun even accused him of changing his mind
00:40:52.620 after Republican visitors pressured him at his house
00:40:55.880 late on the night before the final vote.
00:40:58.900 That fall, Bradley published a letter
00:41:01.060 branding the charge a slander and a falsehood,
00:41:04.160 insisting that he had no such visitors at his house
00:41:06.740 during the commission's work.
00:41:08.340 He wrote,
00:41:08.780 I had no private discussion whatever on the subjects at issue with any person interested
00:41:15.620 on the Republican side, and but very few words with any person.
00:41:20.820 I earnestly endeavored to come to a right decision, free from all political or other
00:41:25.780 extraneous considerations.
00:41:27.980 About his decision in favor of the Hays results, Bradley added,
00:41:31.860 The more I have reflected on it since, the more satisfied have I become that it was right.
00:41:37.400 Then came the final wrinkle, March 4th.
00:41:40.760 It fell on a Sunday that year,
00:41:42.260 so the public inauguration would happen Monday the 5th,
00:41:44.900 but President Grant and his Secretary of State
00:41:47.140 worried that the 24-hour gap could be exploited by the Democrats,
00:41:51.240 still determined to install Tilden as the president.
00:41:54.640 So Hayes was privately sworn in at the White House on Saturday, March 3rd.
00:41:59.600 Then the public ceremony proceeded both without incident on Monday the 5th.
00:42:04.640 Both Democrat Supreme Court justices who had been on the Electoral Commission refused to attend.
00:42:11.500 Perhaps no American was more relieved by Hayes taking over than President Grant.
00:42:17.140 He wrote,
00:42:17.540 The day that brought about the result and enabled me to leave the White House as I did,
00:42:23.080 I regard as one of the happiest in my life.
00:42:26.740 Personally, I was weary of office.
00:42:28.940 I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency.
00:42:34.580 Shortly after Hayes took office, he demonstrated a very rare quality for a politician
00:42:39.440 by promising to serve only one term.
00:42:42.540 And he kept that promise.
00:42:44.400 A common misconception is that part of the deal to get Democrats to agree to the Hayes presidency
00:42:49.380 was that he would remove the last of the Union troops from the South.
00:42:53.440 When Hayes was sworn in, Union troops were still stationed at the state capitol buildings of Louisiana and South Carolina.
00:43:00.920 Hayes moved them to barracks in those states, but he did not withdraw them completely.
00:43:05.860 In writing about that decision later, Hayes said,
00:43:08.800 My judgment was that the time had come to put an end to bayonet rule.
00:43:13.280 I saw things done in the South which could only be accounted for on the theory that the war was not yet ended.
00:43:18.520 Many Southern people evidently felt that they were justified in acts which could only be justified in time of war towards the common enemy.
00:43:26.320 My object was to end the war, to restore confidence in the South in the justice and goodwill of a Republican administration.
00:43:34.240 The Army was withdrawn because I believed it a constitutional duty and a wise thing to do.
00:43:40.320 America ended its centennial year with a crisis that almost shattered the peace,
00:43:45.300 which was still fragile even 12 years after the Civil War.
00:43:49.720 The republic had been tested once again, but it had not been broken.
00:43:55.240 It was proof that the U.S. system of government, as partisan and painfully slow as it is,
00:44:00.480 could hold up in a dire situation and devise a solution.
00:44:05.100 The storm may rage, but the foundation is strong.
00:44:08.420 It's a recurring theme in the ongoing, always messy, yet ever seemingly hopeful saga of freedom in the United States of America.
00:44:29.400 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.
00:44:38.420 We'll be right back.