Talk:Rutherford B. Hayes

Popular vote claim contrary to Election of 1876 article

This statement: "He lost the official popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden (due at least in part to Southern suppression of Republican votes, it is not known with certainty who won the actual popular vote)" is directly contradicted in the article United States presidential election, 1876 thus: "The results of the election remain among the most disputed ever, although it is not disputed that Samuel J. Tilden of New York outpolled Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote." Since the popular vote was about 51 to 48% you can't finagle this with assumptions, even totally unrealistic assumptions, about the small 3rd party vote. One of these 2 claims is wrong. Since the claim in this article is the more extraordinary and contrary to "official" history, the burden of proof lies with it. It should either be sourced plausibly or replaced. I'm not sure how to add one of those [source?] doodads. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.96.210.230 (talk) 15:57, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

• The statement in this article is sourced to two books (Trefousse, p. 75; Robinson, pp. 119–123). The 1876 election article also says "It is therefore likely that Hayes would have won appreciably more of the popular vote in a fair election, perhaps even a plurality or majority." And that, too, is sourced (see footnote 15 in that article). And there's no contradiction between the two statements you quote. One says Tilden had more popular votes in the official tallies. The other says Democrats didn't count many Republican votes in the South. Both are true. --Coemgenus (talk) 16:30, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

"The statement in this article is sourced to two books . . ." No, it isn't. Those books may contain that information & they may even be cited elsewhere in the article, but the specific sentence I QUOTED contains no link to any footnote or source whatsoever. Nor does any sentence in that paragraph or the 2 paragraphs that follow. If you are going to make an unusual claim, it should be either sourced explicitly immediately or in a linked footnote the first time it is made.

"And there's no contradiction between the two statements you quote. One says Tilden had more popular votes in the official tallies. The other says Democrats didn't count many Republican votes in the South." Wrong. The statement in THIS article that I directly quoted says that he won the official popular vote tally but may not have won the actual popular tally, while the sentence in the other article, which I quoted explicitly, makes no such distinction, and not only flatly states that Tilden outpolled Hayes, while indicating no qualification of that claim whatsoever, but further explicitly states that that the fact "is not disputed". I haven't studied the facts of the case to know which statement is correct but only a knowledge of the English language is needed to see that these 2 sentences are flatly contradictory. One or the other needs to be revised. If the one here is correct, it needs to be properly linked to a footnote that actually supports it.

I see your confusion. The lede paragraphs on Wikipedia are not cited if the information is cited elsewhere in the article (which should always be the case, because the lede is meant to be a summary of the article). That's explained in this section of our style guide, if you're interested in that sort of thing. The point in question is repeated in the main text of the article: "The official popular vote also favored Tilden (there was some Southern suppression of Republican votes), but Republicans realized that if they held the three unredeemed southern states together with some of the western states, they would emerge with an electoral college majority.[101]" That fn. 101 is the one with the citations I mentioned above. If you want to revise the 1876 election article to match, go ahead. --Coemgenus (talk) 22:44, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

I grant you one thing, based on your: "The 1876 election article also says . . . see footnote 15 in that article)." Indeed, that is a clear statement in the Election of 1876 article in agreement with the one in the lead here, and I missed it.

It is also an interesting ref & I thank you for drawing it to my attention. That statement is much clearer and much more clearly sourced than the one in the lead of THIS article that I take issue with for being unsourced.

A couple of points about it:

- The statement from that article that I quoted earlier is still in conflict with the statement in the lead here, although the one you cite, indeed, is in agreement with the one in the lead here.

- While the statement you point to in the Election of 1876 article is admirably concise, clear, and clearly referenced, the Cresswell article cited doesn't support that statement at all. That is actually a much worse problem than the lead statement here. The lead statement here, may be true, and true or not, I suspect it is in good faith. My complaint is that it is too notable a claim to make without adequate source being cited and no such citation has been provided (I'll come back to that).

In contrast, the statement in the Election of 1876 article looks fine, & I wouldn't have thought to question it if we hadn't had this discussion, but the Cresswell article cited as source, which is quite worth reading if you are interested in this sort of thing, isn't about the popular vote at all, but about the legitimacy of the electoral votes and the Compromise. It doesn't even touch on the question of what the popular vote totals were.

In the disputed states, a shift of a small number of votes in how you counted things could flip the electoral votes, but it takes a much larger change to make Hayes the recipient of the largest number of total popular votes. That's an important point. It makes anything that is purely about electoral votes beside the point. That's depressing. I wonder how many other plausible sounding references are equally unrelated to what they are supposedly supporting.

But, back to the main point, the assertion that the claim in the lead of THIS article is repeated and footnoted later in the body, is incorrect.

What does appear later & is footnoted is this: "The official popular vote also favored Tilden (there was some Southern suppression of Republican votes), but Republicans realized that if they held the three unredeemed southern states together with some of the western states, they would emerge with an electoral college majority.[101]"

A parenthetic note that

"there was some Southern suppression of Republican votes"

is not the same as the claim in the lead that

"it is not known with certainty who won the actual popular vote".

The claim in the body of the article is plausible, unsurprising, and cites, but does not quote, 2 books not available online. Furthermore the footnote, appearing as it does at the end of the sentence, appears to be in support of the main thrust of the statement ("Republicans realized . . ., etc.), not the parenthetical aside at the beginning. But the most important point, is, I repeat, it's not the same claim as the one made in the lead.

But the claim in the lead is considerably at variance with common belief and unsupported by anything I can find on the internet or in my personal library with a reasonable effort. That doesn't mean it isn't true - it would hardly shock me - but it DOES mean that it should have a sound reference, and it does not.

Minor points, but FWIW, the article on Samuel J. Tilden also flatly states repeatedly that Tilden won the popular vote and does not qualify it with some adjective like "official" or in any way whatsoever. The article Compromise of 1877 also doesn't say anything about there being any question about the who got the plurality of popular votes.

The most erudite discussion of the 1876 election, particularly with respect to the popular vote, I've found online is the text of "16th Hayes Lecture on the Presidency, February 19, 2006, in the Hayes Museum":

http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/another-look-at-the-1876-election/

by Michael F. Holt who is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and the author of:

By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876, University Press of Kansas, 2008

and numerous serious publications especially on the history of the Whigs and Republicans. Note where that would suggest his bias, if any, would be likely to lie.

http://history.as.virginia.edu/people/mfh6p

Holden flatly states "Tilden outpolled Hayes by over 300,000 popular votes" without any qualification, and although he goes into far greater detail about the frauds, improprieties, & disputed aspects of the 1876 election than any WP article does, he nowhere suggests that a proper counting would make Hayes the "actual" winner of the popular vote.

So far as I can find with reasonably casual internet search, this seems to be pretty much what EVERYONE with a publication available online has to say about it, except WP - & WP is inconsistent. Everyone agrees that there were multiple problems with the vote tallies of 1876, including, but by no means limited to, some suppression of Democratic voting in the south. But I can't find ANY credible source, heck any source AT ALL, besides Wikipedia, suggesting that the total net QUANTITY of voter fraud and voter intimidation was anywhere near sufficient to justify claiming a realistic possibility that Hayes won the "actual" popular vote. All 3 of the TNQ words are important: Total, Net, & Quantity.

Nor is this surprising. The 1876 election did NOT take place during the post-reconstruction era, when intimidation of probable Republican voters was much more common, and intimidation of likely Democratic voters pretty much ceased, but instead, during the latter part of the "radical reconstruction" era when a significant part of the south was still occupied and supervised by federal troops, a period, when, in the areas still occupied, there were at least as many credible allegations of intimidation of likely Democratic voters in the south as there were allegations of intimidation of likely Republican voters. This same election former Confederate states sent, if I counted right, 10 Republicans to congress. The senate is a little harder to figure out, but I count 1 or 2 Republican senators elected from from former CSA states that year.

I am NOT saying that it is absurd to assert that if all improprieties of the 1876 election were accounted for that Hayes might have won the "actual" popular vote. I AM saying that it is a claim notably at variance with general perception, with much elsewhere in Wikipedia, with everything I've seen on the internet outside of Wikipedia, & with everything I've seen in print; that such a claim should not be made without CLEARLY referencing some some legitimate source; and that this has not been done.

"If you want to revise the 1876 election article to match, go ahead." Thanks for permission. The problem is that there are already too many people filling most of the history articles with assertions without making a good faith effort to be sure they are factual. I'm trying to give whoever wrote that sentence a chance to support it adequately, which they still might, but haven't yet. The claim MAY be true, and if it is I'd like to know it. That purpose is not served by just striking it out. And I'm certainly not going to propagate it further without evidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.96.210.230 (talk) 04:51, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

OK, I looked up who wrote that & when. He was active for less than a year & then stopped suddenly shortly after making this edit. His user page has been deleted. I was going to communicate directly, but that isn't possible. So I restored the version that was there up until he changed it on 7 Janurary. The older version is much more in line with what pretty much all legit historians claim AFAIK. Anyone who thinks I'm wrong, put it back but include a clear ref to a credible source that specifically claims that Hayes may have won the "real" popular vote total. Try to appreciate the quantitative aspects of the above discussion. The REAL arguments about which set of results to certify from each of the disputed states, and whether the procedure used to arrive at The Compromise of 1877 had legal validity have nothing to do with the popular vote total and hinge on fairly small differences in vote totals in the disputed states. To claim that Hayes won the "actual" popular vote you have to show that a much larger number of votes were miscounted than were actually disputed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.96.210.230 (talk) 07:02, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

OK, that edit makes sense. --Coemgenus (talk) 17:39, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Historian John G. Sproat discussed this directly in Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct (1974) edited by C. Vann Woodward pages 163-165 titled The Disputed Election. Sproat said Tilden had "won a clear popular majority and claimed 184 electoral votes." Republican party leaders accused the Democrats of "fraud and intimidation of black voters" in three states Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina and this had invalidated the "apparent Tilden victory". The Republicans disputed and challenged the election returns in these three states. Hayes himself disputed and challenged the election returns. So the article should state that Republicans disputed the election results and charged the Democrats of "fraud and intimidation of black voters." Cmguy777 (talk) 17:27, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

• United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote Cmguy777 (talk) 01:57, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

There's a round table discussion on YouTube between four historians, including Holt, at Conversation: 1876 Election & American Democracy. One assertion raised in there, but I can't remember who by (it's over two hours long), is that in other Southern states under Democrat control with no federal troops the turnout dropped significantly compared to 1872, and I think it's this that may be the origin of the "Hayes would have won a fair popular vote" claims. (A more general one I've seen over the years is the assertion that one candidate would have won a fair vote and the other a fair count but these don't always distinguish between popular vote and Electoral College.) The problem is that because these other Southern states received less attention at the time and since it's harder to drill into this claim of suppression, plus these are assertions about votes not cast rather than about votes being cast the wrong way or counted wrongly. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:03, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

World Tour of Ulysses S. Grant

I think it would be good to mention something about Ulysses S. Grant's world tour since Hayes gave ex President Grant authorization to use warships to travel around the world in a diplomatic capacity promoting U.S. interests abroad. This was unprecedented for its times and served as a model for future presidents who would eventually go overseas while in office. Cmguy777 (talk) 17:06, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

It's way less important to Hayes than to Grant, but I'll check the sources and see what Hayes's biographers said about it, if anything. --Coemgenus (talk) 13:42, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Grant used three navy ships: USS Vandalia USS Ashuelot and USS Richmond. Grant's biographer White (2016) says Hayes personally sent the USS Vandalia for Grant's tour of the Mediterranean on page 597. Another Grant biographer Chernow (2017) on page 877 says Secretary of the Navy Richard W. Thompson encouraged Grant to continue his tour around the world using the USS Richmond. But the ship was delayed and Grant took a private commercial ship. The USS Richmond was used between China and Japan. Thompson admitted their was a political agenda for Grant's world tour: commerce and "the nature and values of our institutions." White (2016) page 608 says the USS Ashuelot was used by Grant to proceed to China. Cmguy777 (talk) 18:18, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Also, Hayes met with Grant personally after he returned to Philadelphia in 1879 and apparently had a long talk. Cmguy777 (talk) 20:42, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

• Citizen of a Wider Commonwealth: Ulysses S. Grant's Postpresidential Diplomacy Edwina S. Campbell (2016) Page 192

The Hayes Administration recognized the importance of Grant's tour. Cmguy777 (talk) 00:36, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

• Citizen of a Wider Commonwealth: Ulysses S. Grant's Postpresidential Diplomacy Edwina S. Campbell (2016) Page 3 Cmguy777 (talk) 00:36, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Grant was initially suppose to travel from France to Japan on the USS Richmond. This would imply that Hayes gave Grant's tour signifigant weight or importance. Cmguy777 (talk) 00:39, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't think much needs to be added but maybe a few sentences would be good for the article since this was an unprecedented event, Hayes should get some credit. Cmguy777 (talk) 00:41, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

"Starting in 1877 former President Ulysses S. Grant went on a tour of Europe and his receptions in England were very popular. The Hayes Administration realized the unprecedented unofficial diplomatic importance of such a tour, encouraging Grant to promote international commerce and "the nature and values of our institutions." Grant was given use of three U.S. naval vessels during his world tour that ended in 1879, including USS Vandalia, USS Ashuelot, and USS Richmond." Cmguy777 (talk) 01:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Harry S. Truman which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Not seeking reelection

Rather than just saying that he kept his promise not to seek reelection, should mention he was the last President not to seek a second term or partial term (other than those who died during their first) and the last not to be nominated for one until Biden in 2024. 47.144.2.92 (talk) 03:31, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

According to our article, Chester Arthur "made only a token effort" to get the nomination and didn't get it, in 1884. Coolidge famously declined to run in 1928. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:54, 16 November 2024 (UTC)