WI: Samuel Tilden Elected President in 1876

Cylon_Number_14

In OTL the Election of 1876 in the United States featured all kinds of shenanigans: Democrats putting the picture of Lincoln on their ballots to trick the illiterate, Republicans and Democrats both stuffing ballots, and ultimately an extra-constitutional deal rewarding 19 disputed Electoral Votes to Hayes so that he won the election by a single EV despite Tilden (officially) earning 51% of the popular vote.

Let's sidestep all of that unsavory history with this POD: instead of losing California by less than 3000 votes, Samuel Tilden wins the state by an (undisputed) razor-thin margin. This gives President-Elect Samuel Tilden 190 EV even if all the disputed votes are left by the wayside.

How does this affect the End of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Gilded Age?
 

Atreus

Simpler POD is to have David davis not resign from the supreme court. In OTL he was supposed to be the deciding (neutral) vote on the election commission. But the Democrats tried to bribe him by electing him to a senate seat. As a result, he resigned from the court to sit in the senate, and was replaced with a republican. For understandable reasons, the commission then voted 8-7 on party lines to award the contested 20 electoral votes to Hayes.

Don't have Davis selected for the senate, and he may very well effectivly chose Tilden as the next president.

As for the consequences, I would say that the main question is whether or not Tilden ends reconstruction. Tilden's election automatically butterflies away the compromise of 1876. On the other hand, Tilden owes a lot to the Southern states, and an end to the reconstruction may be presented to him as the price of the presidency.
 

Cylon_Number_14

One consequence I think is likely is that the Presidency will be more competitive in the 1880s and 1890s and even beyond. If one looks at the results of Congressional elections, where several times the Democrats held commanding majorities in both chambers during the period, and just how narrowly the Republicans won the Presidency in 1880 and 1888, it is even plausible (though unlikely) for the Democrats in TTL to win all of the presidential elections in this time period.
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

Atreus said:
As for the consequences, I would say that the main question is whether or not Tilden ends reconstruction. Tilden's election automatically butterflies away the compromise of 1876. On the other hand, Tilden owes a lot to the Southern states, and an end to the reconstruction may be presented to him as the price of the presidency.
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Then again, Tilden was very much like a Republican, and one of the few Democrats of his ideologies and ideas that did not indeed join the GOP. I understand it was the Republicans that ended reconstruction, but it was only a -admittedly large- faction of it that support ending Reconstruction and of which Hayes happened to belong to. So I don't know if Tilden himself would have ended it.
 

Atreus

Emperor Norton I said:
Then again, Tilden was very much like a Republican, and one of the few Democrats of his ideologies and ideas that did not indeed join the GOP. I understand it was the Republicans that ended reconstruction, but it was only a -admittedly large- faction of it that support ending Reconstruction and of which Hayes happened to belong to. So I don't know if Tilden himself would have ended it.
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That is the question. Tilden is about as moderate a northern democrat as you are capable of finding in high office during the period. And the reconstruction only happened as it did because the commission handed Hayes the election, and ending reconstruction was the price needed to get the southern democrats to accept this. On the other hand, Tilden as president strengthens the hands of all democrats, and some elements of the southern wing of the party will push for an end to reconstruction.

Is it possible that this all hastens the schism between the northern and southern democrats?
 
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