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Part Sixty-Seven: The Election of 1876

Election of 1876:
President Lee had enjoyed a fairly popular first term, despite the economic downturn in 1874 and 1875. The remainder of the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, industry and railroads in the North and West were expanding at an ever faster rate, and Americans were enjoying a better standard of living than ever before. However, deep divisions were still present in some areas of the country. Many of the former Confederate States had been experiencing lackluster economic growth after the National War. Only Louisiana, Jackson, and Cuba seemed to recover quickly, and most of their recovery was due to the continued growth from immigration from Ibero-America. A new resurgence of Nativism in the rural regions of the South caused most of this wave of immigrants to remain in the coastal cities or the more welcoming cities along the Mississippi River. The Nativist sentiments permeated the Democratic Party and, along with the rising importance of their free trade platform in the Northeast, were the main issues facing the nomination for the 1876 Democratic Convention in New York City.

At the Convention in July of 1876, the Democrats once again nominated Samuel Tilden for their presidential candidate. Tilden's economic positions coincided with the party positions and with many of the wealthy industrialists in the Northeast. The Democrats also nominated Francis Blair, a senator from Missouri, as their Vice Presidential candidate. While Blair had been a member of the Republican Party prior to the National War, he had switched to the Democratic Party after the war. Blair had felt that the Republicans were taking their positions too far with furthering immigration and had opposed Fremont's support of the Lincoln Court's ruling on Fox v. Bennett[1]. The Democratic Party hoped the nomination of Blair would gain them votes in the more conservative Southern states and balance the industrial candidacy of Tilden with a rural Vice Presidential candidate.

The results of the 1876 election were a victory for Lee and the Republicans, however both the results in the presidential election and the Congressional elections showed that the Republican dominance of American politics was slipping. Lee's electoral margin over Tilden was much smaller than in 1872, with almost all of the former Confederate states voting Democratic. In the Congressional elections, the Democrats gained a number of seats. Hiram Bingham II, a Congregationalist minister[2], defeated two term Republican senator Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island to gain a place in the Senate. In the South, the Lamar family continued to grow in influence. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar won election to the House of Representatives while his first cousin Bonaparte Lamar[3] was elected as governor of Houston. The Democratic Lamar family continued to have influence in Southern politics throughout the remainder of the century and into the 1900s.

Lee/Burnside: 182 EV
Tilden/Blair: 147 EV

[1] The court case on former slaves being citizens of the United States.
[2] OTL Hiram Bingham II was a missionary in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
[3] TTL son of Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar.