Bulldozed and Betrayed: Louisiana and the Stolen Elections of 1876 by Adam Fairclough

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bulldozed and Betrayed: Louisiana and the Stolen Elections of 1876 by Adam Fairclough John C. Rodrigue (bio) Bulldozed and Betrayed: Louisiana and the Stolen Elections of 1876. By Adam Fairclough. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. 311. Cloth, $45.00.) The disputed presidential election of 1876 and the Compromise of 1877, which decided the outcome and ended Reconstruction, have generated a [End Page 268] wealth of historical scholarship. In this exhaustively researched, engagingly written, and brilliantly executed study, Adam Fairclough makes a welcome addition to this literature, focusing on the Louisiana dimension of this extraordinarily complicated affair. Fairclough’s title refers to Louisiana Republicans, who, although themselves no saints, were “bulldozed” by Democratic intimidation, violence, and fraud during the campaign and election and then subsequently “betrayed” by Rutherford B. Hayes, whom they had risked their lives to put into the presidency only to be abandoned with the collapse of Reconstruction. As scholars have long known, the election was a sordid affair, with virtually no heroes. “The Democrats stole the election,” as was said at the time, “and the Republicans stole it back.” Yet the election that Republicans stole back was the presidential one, and the theft was predicated on betraying Republicans in Louisiana and South Carolina. While Fairclough offers an overview of the 1876 presidential and state elections in Louisiana, the book centers on the workings of the Potter Committee, the congressional committee chaired by New York House Democrat Clarkson N. Potter. The committee was charged in 1878 with investigating only certain aspects of the 1876 election: in effect, to disprove Republican allegations of electoral fraud in Louisiana and Florida while precluding any substantive inquiry into Democratic irregularities. The goal was not necessarily to remove Hayes from office, though some Democrats still clung to that delusion, but rather to discredit further the Hayes presidency and to strengthen the prospects of Democrat Samuel J. Tilden for another presidential run in 1880. Yet, as many Democrats feared, relitigating the 1876 election in any way would potentially open a Pandora’s box, given the whole history of Radical Reconstruction in general and of the 1876 election in particular. If Fairclough’s analysis focuses on the Potter Committee, the committee’s investigation would ultimately hinge on two key questions. The first was the allegation by “Republican” (in name only) election official James E. Anderson that longtime congressman, and Hayes’s secretary of the treasury, John Sherman had promised in writing patronage jobs to Anderson and his confederates for their roles in securing Louisiana’s disputed electoral votes for Hayes. The so-called Sherman letter most likely never existed, Fairclough concludes, although it generated no shortage of “copies” or of theories as to its origins and ultimate fate. The quid pro quo implicit in the Sherman letter may have discredited Republicans, but the discovery of the “cipher dispatches” that Tilden’s agents wrote during the tumultuous aftermath of the 1876 election was a political catastrophe for Democrats. Fairclough traces the circumstances surrounding the [End Page 269] creation and discovery of these dispatches and the breaking of the code that allowed for their translation and publication. The dispatches clearly proved that some of Tilden’s closest confidantes were involved in attempts to bribe presidential electors in Louisiana and Florida. Strictly speaking, the dispatches lay beyond the Potter Committee’s writ, but public opinion forced the committee to look into them, and thus to address the second key question: whether Tilden knew of these efforts. Tilden eventually testified before the committee and categorically disavowed any knowledge of the dispatches’ contents. But his denials were so implausible, even some Democrats had to concede, as to destroy what little was left of his political career. Indeed, as Fairclough argues, the Potter Committee could not have backfired more badly for Democrats, paving the way for the 1880 presidential victory of James Garfield, who had been deeply involved in the shenanigans of 1876–77. Fairclough meticulously disentangles the complicated circumstances surrounding the 1876 elections in Louisiana and their resolution, and he details the equally byzantine maneuverings of the Potter Committee in conducting its investigation. He offers lucid descriptions that bring to life the many colorful characters involved...