government was committed to the redemption of the national legal-tenders
and bonds in gold, the Greenbackers insisted that this was impossible,
and was also unjust to the debtor class. They claimed, further, that it
was the duty of the government to provide a national paper currency,
based not on specie, but on bonds bearing a low rate of interest. The
Republicans and Democrats maintained that the government could not
abrogate its promises of redeeming the currency and bonds in gold.

The Greenback party polled 81,740 votes, the Prohibition 9,522, and the
American 2,636, none gaining an electoral vote. For several days after
the November election, it was generally believed that the Democrats had
been successful, though a few Republican papers, notably the _New York
Times_, persistently claimed that the Republican ticket had been
successful.

[Illustration: MEMORIAL HALL OF 1876.]

There was a dispute in four States. In Louisiana, the returning board
threw out the returns from several parishes on the ground of
intimidation and fraud, thereby placing 4,000 majority to the credit of
the Republicans. The Democrats insisted that the rejected votes should
be counted, and, had it been done, Tilden would have been elected.

In South Carolina, two bodies claimed to be the legal Legislature and
both canvassed the returns, one giving a plurality of 800 to the
Republican ticket and the other a smaller majority to the Democratic.
Precisely the same wrangle occurred in Florida, where each side claimed
a majority of about a hundred. Matters were still more complicated in
Oregon, where a Republican elector was declared ineligible, because he
held the office of postmaster at the time he was chosen elector. The
governor proposed to withhold the certificate from him and give it to a
Democrat. Had everything claimed by the Republicans been conceded, they
would have had 185 and the Democrats 184. It was necessary, therefore,
for the Republicans to maintain every point in order to secure their
President, for it was beyond dispute that Tilden had received 184
electoral votes. On the popular vote, he had 4,284,885 to 4,033,950 for
Hayes. Each party charged the other with fraud, and thousands of
Democrats were so incensed at what they believed was a plot to cheat
them out of the presidency that they were ready to go to war. Had they
done so, it would have been the most terrible peril that ever came upon
the Republic, for the war would not ha