 So one of the things I do with the Institute is write articles, help with social media. And one of the things I've realized is the importance of a good headline. So there might be some people tuning on YouTube now or perhaps in the future, expecting something a little closer to this. But I hate to tell you, it's a little bit of a bait and switch. But I think you'll see the relevance of a little bit of history that is often overlooked to some of the conditions in America today. So we're really going to be talking about not the election of 2020, but the election of 1876, till dinner blood. One of the things that I find fascinating is the history of revolution. Obviously, we have ideas very outside of the political norm. And ultimately, it's periods of revolution where we see these big ideological shifts. Now in America, we have a very interesting political legacy here. We have the second longest constitution in existence today. And yet, we know that in spite of it nominally being the same constitution, there's been revolutions within the form to use a phrase of Garrett Garette. Now this quote here, he's referring to the New Deal and obviously FDR's revolution. But we can think back the Constitution itself, being a coup over the Articles of Confederation. Read more of Patrick Newman's book for that. Obviously, some conversations about the impact of the Civil War of 1913, 1960s and there on about. But I think 1876 is a year that is often overlooked. And yet, one of the American writers who I found myself increasingly appreciated is a man named Gore Vidal. And as Gore Vidal wrote, the year 1876 was probably the low point in our republic's history. And knowing something about what happened then is, I think, useful to us now as times are again becoming rather too interesting for comfort. Now it's a few decades ago, but I think the sentiment there is still true. Because while in theory, you had the Civil War, in theory, times of war, you can have kind of a realignment of norms, if you will. I think 1876 is still an election. It's really what broke any hope that you had kind of restoring some sort of romantic idea of the republic. Now Vidal himself is very interesting. He has an entire series called Narratives of Empire. And really, it's almost very Rothbardian in the way that he approaches American history with this sort of revisionist look, starting with Burr, which is a very interesting sort of perspective of the American Revolution, almost from the Antichrist, hated by both Jefferson and Hamilton. So that perspective is very interesting. But he goes throughout identifying what led from the decay of the American Republic to the American Empire. It's also interesting later in his life, Gore-Vidal actually interacted with some figures within our orbit. Bill Kaufman was a very interesting political writer. You can often find this book in the bookstore. Lou Rockwell, Ralph Raco, and Murray Rothbard are in the acknowledgments of that. So it's a very interesting overlap there. So we're going to set the stage right now. And obviously, we have Ulysses S. Grant right here. When I'm talking to normal audiences, I often kind of describe Grant as sort of the bizarro, George Washington. He's the conqueror of the South. He is the most celebrated general of his time. And yet as the president, he was utterly corrupt and perhaps still kind of perceived in history as perhaps the most corrupt president of the era where George Washington was this man beyond such interests. Now, if you read Patrick Newman's cronyism, you'll see that his depiction is maybe not entirely accurate, but still historically, we still have this perception that even Grant, in spite of all of the romanticism we have of Lincoln and FDR and these other less than great figures from a political standpoint, Grant is still kind of held within disdain for good reasons. His administration was plagued with a number of not simply corruption issues, but public corruption issues. You had the Black Friday Gold Panic, which involved his son-in-law, in law with Jay Gold and some other very powerful people trying to manipulate the American gold market. You had the New York Custom House ring, which is dealing with petty corruption. You had the whiskey ring, which Grant himself threatened to testify about. These all led to increasingly personal figures within his orbit, so he didn't have a lot of distance. Corruption was so bad under Grant that in 1872, a group was called Liberal Republicans who ran a tent named Horace Greenley, which created one of my favorite political phrases, saying that you can vote to burn down schoolhouses, desecrate churches, and violate women, or you can vote for Horace Greenley, which means the same thing anyway. But again, at this time, politics was in a way that maybe we're getting closer to now, but you still had the go-to campaign rhetoric, was waving the bloody shirt of the Civil War. You had a South still occupied by federal troops. The connection between military and political power had never been more explicit than the conquering general sitting in the White House with a corrupt political party worked around him. You also had at this time the explosion of the railroad industry, the railroad industry being extremely corrupt. I'm here as a Ryan McMaking quote on some of this sort of stuff, but you think about this industry in particular, right? It needs a tremendous amount of land, which itself leads itself to political favors, right? Political trades for that land required a tremendous amount of debt for investment. This is Senator Blaine of Maine, who was one of the rising charismatic Republican figures who himself was brought down by a very public corruption scandal involving railroad debt and financial speculation. There's actually this entire scene where he actually, there's letters that he ends up incriminating and so he actually rips them away from his hand and runs away and then testifies to Congress that, oh, don't you worry, you can trust me. There's nothing bad in those letters that I just stole from the guy involved. But again, these were sort of characters. Again, these sort of explicit outright corruption going on at this time. You also had a very interesting economic environment which is leading us to 1876. You have the period of 1873, for a while, this was itself referred to as the Great Depression until the 1930s came in for some good economic analysis from that. Patrick Newman once again pops up. There's a QJAE article. And then of course, at this time, you also have Reconstruction. Again, so you had federal troops occupying southern states. You had, you know, the Scalawags and carpet baggers, Scalawags were sort of kind of viewed within southern circles, sort of the turncoats, right? You know, these were Republican Southerners willing to work with Democrats, often again with tremendous amount of corruption, right? So you had these governments imposed upon people that were not, you know, their motivation was Republican politics. It was national interest. It was keeping down the rival Democratic Party. And so again, the well-being of the people took a shot even by our own standards. This is a book by Roy Morris for the century on this topic where he says, from the start, Congressional Reconstruction was as much about hardcore partisan politics as it was racial equality. The widespread disenfranchisement of former Confederates had the practical effect of driving the Democratic Party underground. And again, this narrative is often overlooked. You know, right now we're still kind of sold the idea that removal of Reconstruction was this great betrayal of the American ideal, right? They still had this very romantic idea that, oh, if only federal troops were maintaining the South and we would have peace and harmony throughout, it was a lack of political will that really undermined this. The problem is, is that there was fraying at the edges. Again, you had bad governments that the people were not respecting and this led to increasingly combustible political moments. This was the Louisiana-Consessed Election of 1872, which dealt with a gubernatorial campaign between Democrat John McKinney and Republican William and Kellogg. You had violence in the streets. The Democrat actually held office for a few months until federal troops came in to reinforce Kellogg, right? But you had the entire breakdown of the American political system because you had a structure designed to buy this National Republican Party equipped by the American military to keep down genuine representation of, again, their rival political party. And again, so we see the limits of political will. You had violence in the streets. So, this all leads us to the 1876 election and so the Republican nominee at the time was a very interesting man. It was Rutherford B. Hayes. He himself, like many leading Republicans, was a Civil War veteran. And as far as I can tell the record, he was a very good man relative to some of the other interesting characters of that Republican Party. What's also kind of interesting is that his nomination was almost entirely unplanned. The convention itself was held in Ohio and he was governor of Ohio. And so he eventually wins on the seventh ballot after some more prominent national figures including Senator Blaine going through his corruption scandal including Lincoln's treasury secretary who was being recognized as one of the non-corrupt guys. He's the one prosecuting people in the grant orbit. You got Robert Conkling. You have some very interesting personalities. All of them kind of killed themselves within the political manipulation of the convention and uprides Rutherford B. Hayes who according to historian Henry Adams was a third-rate non-entity whose only recommendations are that he is obnoxious to no one. So he's just a placeholder that's not corrupt and connected to grant. Now, end walks the stage, one of my favorites, honest Sam Tilden. As again, Patrick Newman mentioned in his lecture yesterday, the Jacksonian tradition of American politics is perhaps the most prominent powerful libertarian political force in our nation's history and Sam Tilden was a direct legacy of this tradition. He was a protege of Martin Van Buren both of them being New Yorkers. He actually gets a brief mention in cronyism. He was also an extremely successful railroad attorney that made him one of the richest men in the country. He did not fight in the Civil War because he was a payoff to the ability to do so. And so because he was a railroad attorney and given the corruption of the railroad industry, he knew how to go through and prosecute and identify corrupt actors. And doing so, there was no state in the country with a longer legacy of corruption that was plaguing the country than New York. Boss Tweed is perhaps the most powerful political boss in New York history politics. He controlled the judges, he controlled the newspapers, he controlled the politicians up and down the line. Sam Tilden was the man that brought down Boss Tweed. And so here we have stepping into this vacuum, right? We have a country played with corruption, exhausted by corruption, a Republican party that can't promote non-corrupt figures that they end up with this third-rate non-entity. It upsteps from the Democratic Party not a anti-corruption reformer who was from the North. So he wasn't a confederate, that helps, given the standards of the time. He was also probably autistic, like if you read some of that sort of stuff, which, again, one of us. So then we have his presidential campaign. And he campaigned on the end of Reconstruction. He wanted to remove federal troops from Southern occupation. He ran on civil reform to end the corruption of the Grand Administration. But he was very serious, most importantly, on slashing federal expenditures and maintaining the sound currency. One of my favorite parts of the Progressive Era is Murray Rothbard's analysis of third political system. And he talks about this sort of laissez-faire, populist tradition, the bourbon-democrat tradition. Sam Tilden was probably the most intellectual of that bourbon-democratic tradition. And he knew that he was fighting an uphill battle. Again, the reforms that he wanted will be resisted at every step, but it must be pressed persistently. He was a man who was very committed to making America great again. So then we get to the election of 1876. And this is where things get very, very interesting. One of the bellwether states at the time was New York. Even though Tilden himself was the governor of New York, there's still a lot of Republican in fighting there. Tilden wins New York big election night. Then all of a sudden things get interesting. There's three Southern states that have Republican governors because of federal occupation and the limits on political behavior. Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Now, early in the night, the Republicans in these states are sending telegrams to Republican National Headquarters saying we've lost. You start having all the newspapers, major newspapers from the New York and other major cities are acknowledging Sam Tilden as one. There's a little bit of confusion with Oregon. It's a very short margin, but it seems the election night, everyone goes to bed knowing that Sam Tilden is one. The head of the Republican Party famously brings a bottle of whiskey to his room and wants to be left alone. It's very interesting. This is a headline from the Chicago Tribune. Again, at the time, papers were pretty much explicitly partisan. And so here they are weeping the fact that we are now gonna be plagued by Democrat greed and plunder thanks to the victory of Sam Tilden, but then things get curious because there's one newspaper in particular that's not interested in concession. The New York Times comes with an infamous headline, election and dispute. So again, it's interesting how sometimes history repeats itself at times. And so again, what's important to understand here is that the New York Times was operating as an explicit wing of the Republican Party. You had New York Times editors in constant cooperation to get explicitly with the party. And when the New York Times put out the headline saying, we don't know what the election results are, Republican operatives started getting the action. Because again, Republicans control the Southern States. And U.S. is that's grant controlled those Republican, the federal military. And so the American military, federal troops confiscated the ballot boxes of the Southern States. Again, they have the access of press, political and military power. And the New York Times was essentially writing the playbook to how to keep the Democrat out of office. This is the man John C. Reed, who was in charge of a great deal. He was the managing editor of the New York Times. And what's interesting is that so during the night of the election, the Democratic Party is trying to confirm election results. And so they make the great mistake of sending a telegraph to the New York Times asking for confirmation about these Southern States. By doing that, they tell John C. Reed that they don't know the exact numbers. And this itself puts into place the opportunity for them to overthrow the election. Now Reed himself, along with being an editor from the New York Times, he was a prisoner of war in the Civil War. So he had very, very strong feelings against the Democrats in the South. And again, he essentially became the mastermind of the entire response of the grand administration. Again, the entire campaign was explicitly aggressive from the times. They were accusing Sam Tilton of tax evasion, which only makes him better in my book. You know, they tried to bring a man on various things. New York Times was the most effective campaign instrument of the Republicans of that year. This itself is a map of kind of the contested states. Here we have Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Oregon had a very interesting thing where it was also a short margin, but the Republican member of the Electoral College, one of them was the Postmaster General. And there was a constitutional rule like you can't be a member of the government and be on the Electoral College. So there was a single delegate on there that had its own sort of things. But again, the night of the election, Sam Tilton had 184 votes. He needed 185 to be president. So there's 20 electoral votes up in the air. And for the Republicans to win, they're gonna have to make a perfect sweep. Now, one of the arguments that has continued to be used to kind of justify this entire thing is that you did have periods of intimidation that are going on with the black voters in the South, right? You had the Ku Klux Klan was in operations at this point. Now it's very interesting that there's been a lot of analysis done of some of those profile cases of there and the stories really don't hold up. But basically the entire Republican argument is that, okay, sure, we know the number of votes isn't accurate, but we can't trust those numbers because of this intimidation. The most corrupt state of this is Louisiana. That's largely been a historical constant in America. And they're like, I mean, Louisiana state canvassers were like openly putting up the bid. The corrupt, $250,000 and I'll get you all the votes that you need to decide this race. But so again, this was a crisis as which America had never seen really until 2020. So the solution is that they create an election commission. This election commission was gonna be equal parts Republican and Democrat legislators along with the Supreme Court. And then things get very interesting once again. So this was an independent Supreme Court justice. So the Democrats, and he was gonna be the swing vote. So the Democrats have a great idea. Well, we know he wants to be Senator, a Senator. And so they make him Democrat Senator from Missouri. Well, and then he resigns his position on the election commission. So that doesn't really work. He's followed by another Republican who writes an opinion in favor of Tilden. But again, there's so much outright corruption going on there that he ends up maintaining party loyalty. And so the end result is recognition from this commission giving all 20 disputed votes to Rutherford Behave. Now again, we are reliving in a very contentious moment. So you have, you have Southern veterans of the Civil War ready to go back to war saying they're gonna continue to oppress us. You have Democrats within Congress threatening to filibuster the entire operations of government because of how outright, because of the outright fraud that just went in place. Tilden or blood became a very popular slogan at the time and so in order to get through and to keep the government going, the Republicans recognized that it wasn't simply enough to have the ruling of the Electoral Commission, but they needed the buying of the Democrats itself. And what's interesting as well is that again, again, in spite of how this came about, in 2020 when there was concern about the debate, the consideration of Electoral Commission or treating these sort of concerns seriously was completely off the table. Like that was the January 5th sort of advocacy from like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, but that was not done away with or that was not considered. And again, when people do not feel the political process is operating, they engage in non-political action as we saw January 6th and the Louisiana election of 1872. So they create a new grand bargain and doing so, the Democrats make a deal. In order to maintain the peace within the South, they're gonna remove federal troops that are already straining from the limitations of a government entirely dependent upon military force. In doing so, one of the contested elections was going on in South Carolina, where we had a Democrat, Wade Hampton, running against the Republican Daniel Chamberlain. Chamberlain recognized that the only way that he was gonna be able to maintain that position was federal troops protecting the governorship much the same way that we saw in Louisiana in 1872. So the removal of federal troops meant that the Democrat was able to take the governorship there. There was also an agreement for economic aid and railroad industry investment, most of which did not come about, but that was within the agreement. It also gave the South the right to set its own, racial policies which ended up manifesting itself in a variety of ways on the line that are still criticized today. What's curious though is that there was one more get that the Democrats got. In exchange for the support of the Democratic Party going along with this entire thing, the Democrats were given one political position. It had to be a southerner as well coming to maintain balance. And so they decided on the position of postmaster general. And the reason why is that while this title might not seem all that exciting to you outside of the appearance on that one episode of Seinfeld, the postmaster general position was very important because that's where the spoils were at. You had a lot of money attached to that position. And to me, I think this is one of the great tragedies of this moment is that here you had step up to try to restore America's Jefferson, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian ideas. You had a man of incredible talent, incredible courage, incredible integrity who all he wanted to do was remove corruption from the government. And unfortunately his own political party decided that they didn't really care about corruption itself. They just wanted it to be their own corruption. And so this was a major part of getting the compromise of 1877 in place. And so when I think about the legacy of Sam Tilden, this is I think it's self very telling, this is the tomb of Sam Tilden. And I think there's a couple of ways you can kind of interpret this, right? You have Sam Tilden that went to his dying day believing in democracy, believing in these sort of romantic ideals. Because Sam Tilden had the opportunity of various points to buy what he had already won and refused to do so. Because he thought doing so undermined the entire case for everything that he was doing. And so on one side, you have this very majestic tomb with, I still trust the people and great with it. The other way is you can look at that and you can see the tomb of a forgotten man and increasing decay. That maybe his faith in democracy did not do him well. And again, I think that these traditions, when we understand the ways the state uses history as a weapon, I think one of the best ways that we can take the ideas and the perspectives and the experiences that we've had this past week and apply them in the real world is to identify the points of history that we're not told about. Because you get maybe half of a high school lecture, making some sort of comment on 1876 and doing so great men are forgotten. Great traditions are allowed to die and that's a mistake. And so understanding those periods of time, recognizing the progress of good ideas throughout history and understanding why they failed politically, perhaps learning from that, take away from later, I think is again, something that I find very encouraging. And I think that's, we have a long tradition, I think within people, within our orbit of doing just that. So if you're interested in learning more about the Berman Democrats post of war history, these are some books that I would recommend for all the century covers this election itself, has some great quotes. It was written in 2001, so this was a very popular book among Democrats at the time because like, oh, this is just like the Gore fiasco. This time, they were rewriting all of the 1876 stuff, now like focuses on, oh, this was the portrayal of American racial progress and things like that became a lot less popular in 2020. Gore Vidal's 1876 is also a great time of a great book to read for this era. One of the things I love about Gore Vidal's work in general is that the amount of research he has in it is as good as most non-fictional histories, but because it comes from a fictional perspective with some of the framing device of these characters, you get a real taste for the times in a way that I don't think you get from traditional histories. And so like the main character here like interacts with Mark Twain at a bar, and so you get sort of an aspect, a perspective of American society that again, history books don't do a great deal of. He also captures the tremendous irony that here we are, the centennial of the, the legacy of 1776, the world's fair going on in Philadelphia, and yet here is what America has become just a hundred years after. The Transatlantic Persuasion is a great book on this sort of Jacksonian liberal political legacy and its connections between both the English Anglo tradition right of Gladstone and the repeal of the Koran laws and really the political consequences of wealth of nations, regardless of any critiques of Adam Smith himself. I think the political ramifications are very important. And so there's some great articles here about Jefferson, Jackson, Tilden, Rover Cleveland, who did take the presidency many years later. I forgot to mention, because of the stolen election, Republicans controlled the Republican Party as a one party state for 24 straight years. Again, I would argue that that was the point where any ideas of redeeming post-civil war, Jeffersonian liberalism died. Some great essays there. Again, also the Progressive Era, as I mentioned earlier, Rothbard's analysis of the third political system is very fascinating and obviously a topic that Patrick Newman is also very interested in. His book, Crony, as I'm touching, again, as I say, I'm Tilden, a cameo itself. So that being said, I think that is my time. And that is how the New York Times stole the presidency.