Power  /  Vignette

Undecided Candidates

An excerpt from the diary of presidential hopeful at the outset of the contested election of 1876.

We heard that in some two hundred districts of New York City, Tilden had about a twenty thousand majority, which indicated fifty thousand in the city. The returns received from the rural districts did not warrant the belief that they would overcome such a large city majority. From that time, I never supposed there was a chance for Republican success.

I went to bed at twelve to one o’clock. Talked with Lucy, consoling her with such topics as readily occurred of a nature to make us feel satisfied on merely personal grounds with the result.

We soon fell into a refreshing sleep and the affair seemed over. Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil-service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.

But I took my way to my office as usual Wednesday morning, and was master of myself and contented and cheerful. During the day the news indicated that we had carried California; soon after, other Pacific states; all New England except Connecticut; all of the free states west except Indiana; and it dawned on us that with a few Republican states in the South to which we were fairly entitled, we would yet be the victors.

From Wednesday afternoon the city and the whole country has been full of excitement and anxiety. People have been up and down several times a day with the varying rumors. Wednesday evening on a false rumor about New York, a shouting multitude rushed to my house and called me out with rousing cheers.

I made a short talk, saying [as reported by the papers]: “Friends: If you will keep order for one half minute, I will say all that is proper to say at this time. In the very close political contest, which is just drawing to a close, it is impossible, at so early a time, to obtain the result, owing to the incomplete telegraph communications through some of the southern and western states. I accept your call as a desire on your part for the success of the Republican party. If it should not be successful, I shall surely have the pleasure of living for the next year and a half among some of my most ardent and enthusiastic friends, as you have demonstrated tonight.”