He LOST the Vote and Still Became President

One of the closest, dirtiest elections in American history was settled in a secret backroom deal.

In 1876, Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But twenty electoral votes were furiously disputed.

Both parties claimed the same votes in three Southern states. With no clear winner, Congress created a special commission to decide. After weeks of deadlock, the nation edged toward another crisis just eleven years after the Civil War.

Then came the bargain. Democrats agreed to let Hayes take the presidency. In return, the last federal troops would leave the South. The commission handed Hayes all twenty votes, and he won by a single electoral vote, 185 to 184.

With the troops gone, Reconstruction collapsed. The rights of millions of Black Southerners were abandoned, and Jim Crow took hold for nearly a century.

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