Stop me if you've heard this one: election night comes and goes and the race between two American presidential candidates is too close to call. The popular vote supports the reticent Democrat, but the well-connected Republican is named president after a lengthy and controversial fight over recounts and electoral votes. Of course, we're speaking of the 1876 contest between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden as chronicled in Fraud of the Century by historian Roy Morris Jr. Morris spends much of the book setting the stage by illuminating the characters of both the folksy Hayes from Ohio and the urbane New Yorker Tilden. Though quite different, both men are presented as principled and, ironically enough, committed to wiping out corruption and chicanery. This helps the reader understand the players when the post-election mayhem ensues. The Electoral College is unable to declare a winner after Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida submit multiple "official" ballots with different victorious candidates. Numerous shady deals are worked out to Hayes's favor while forces loyal to Tilden threaten to march on Washington and install their man by force, if necessary. The most damaging result of the mess, according to Morris, is the pervasive mood of distrust and acrimony on the part of Congress, a mood that would contribute to the South's notorious Jim Crow laws. History buffs will appreciate Morris's extensive research but everyone enjoys a good political thriller. --John Moe


From Publishers Weekly
For those who think the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000 represented the nadir of American electoral politics, Morris (The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War) provides some muchneeded historical perspective. In 1876, New York Democrat Samuel Tilden almost certainly won the popular vote over Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But contested returns in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, as well as a legal issue in Oregon, eventually led to a 15-member congressional commission awarding Hayes all 20 contested electoral votes, giving him an improbable one-vote victory in the Electoral College. Well researched and written in clear prose, Morris's account details the stunning sequence of political dirty tricks-including overturning Tilden's nearly 8,000-vote lead in Louisiana-as well as the personalities that conspired to steal the election from Tilden. Although he maintains the decency of both candidates, Morris revives the political legacy of Tilden, portrayed here as a courageous and principled politician who stood up to the corruption of New York's Tammany Hall. Tilden chose to concede the election rather than drag the nation down a dangerous path. "It was an act of supreme patriotism," Morris concludes, "for a man who had won, if not the presidency, at least the election." In sharp contrast to the contested election of 2000, dominated by hanging chads and confusing ballots, Morris's account of the 1876 election reminds us that character can triumph over politics.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Morris, a biographer of several late-19th-century Americans, here examines the highly contested election of 1876--Tilden won more votes, but some questionable returns put Hayes in office.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
With partisans still claiming that George W. Bush stole the presidential election of 2000, it is pertinent to look back more than a century to another election that may have been hijacked. The election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes over Democrat Samuel B. Tilden was a sordid affair in which graft, blatantly undemocratic procedures, and racial politics ruled the day. Morris, a former political correspondent and the author of several books on the Civil War, tells the story with a mixture of verve, cynicism, and outrage. New York governor Tilden had a reputation as a reformer, but the southern wing of his party included both recalcitrant rebels and hard-line racists. Hayes encouraged Northerners to "vote as you fought," further inflaming sectional passions. Although Tilden won the popular vote decisively, massive fraud in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina denied both men a majority in the Electoral College. Eventually, a special Electoral Commission anointed Hayes, guaranteeing the removal of federal troops from the South and ushering in the Jim Crow era. A well-researched, well-told account of a sorry chapter in our political history. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In this work of popular history and scholarship, acclaimed historian and biographer Roy Morris, Jr., tells the extraordinary story of how, in America's centennial year, the presidency was stolen, the Civil War was almost reignited, and black Americans were consigned to nearly ninety years of legalized segregation in the South." "The bitter 1876 contest between Ohio Republican governor Rutherford B. Hayes and New York Democratic governor Samuel J. Tilden is the most sensational, ethically sordid, and legally questionable presidential election in American history. The first since Lincoln's in 1860 in which the Democrats had a real chance of recapturing the White House, the election was in some ways the last battle of the Civil War, as the two parties fought to preserve or overturn what had been decided by armies just eleven years earlier." Riding a wave of popular revulsion at the numerous scandals of the Grant administration and a sluggish economy, Tilden received some 260,000 more votes than his opponent. But contested returns in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina ultimately led to Hayes's being declared the winner by a specially created, Republican-dominated Electoral Commission after four tense months of political intrigue and threats of violence. President Grant took the threats seriously: he ordered armed federal troops into the streets of Washington to keep the peace.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Fraud of the Century is a writerly account of a fascinating chapter in American history, but longwinded on the fine points of the electioneering struggle and light on the knotty mystery of Justice Bradley's rulings. Students of the 1877 crisis who want to get a bit closer to the bottom of the affair will supplement it with a look at Woodward and Fairman. If there is a bottom. The historical truth, residing in the lost conscience of Joseph Bradley, may never be pinned down. — Edwin M. Yoder Jr.

The Denver Post

Morris' fine, objective account of the 1876 election debacle involving Hayes and Tilden is an informative, insightful and, yes, entertaining act of memory. — Dorman T. Shindler

Publishers Weekly

For those who think the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000 represented the nadir of American electoral politics, Morris (The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War) provides some muchneeded historical perspective. In 1876, New York Democrat Samuel Tilden almost certainly won the popular vote over Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But contested returns in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, as well as a legal issue in Oregon, eventually led to a 15-member congressional commission awarding Hayes all 20 contested electoral votes, giving him an improbable one-vote victory in the Electoral College. Well researched and written in clear prose, Morris's account details the stunning sequence of political dirty tricks-including overturning Tilden's nearly 8,000-vote lead in Louisiana-as well as the personalities that conspired to steal the election from Tilden. Although he maintains the decency of both candidates, Morris revives the political legacy of Tilden, portrayed here as a courageous and principled politician who stood up to the corruption of New York's Tammany Hall. Tilden chose to concede the election rather than drag the nation down a dangerous path. "It was an act of supreme patriotism," Morris concludes, "for a man who had won, if not the presidency, at least the election." In sharp contrast to the contested election of 2000, dominated by hanging chads and confusing ballots, Morris's account of the 1876 election reminds us that character can triumph over politics. Agent, Tom Wallace. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Having endured the long national nightmare of the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath, readers may find it hard to imagine any election more bizarre and problematic. But the 1876 election was even stranger, and historian Morris (The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War) does an excellent job of bringing to life this peculiar election (which he calls "one of the most brazen political thefts in American history"). Charges of vote fraud and disputed ballots in several Southern states caused the creation of a special election commission to decide the eventual winner, and a series of intrigues large and small marred the process that eventually put Rutherford B. Hayes into the White House (Ruther F-R-A-U-D, his critics called him thereafter), ended Reconstruction in this country, and cost Samuel Tilden the office he probably rightfully won. Morris has an eye for detail and a lively writing style that make this highly detailed, first-rate work of history read more like a whodunnit than a historical examination.-Michael A. Genovese, Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews