Introduction
The US history has many significant milestones that have led to its open election process today. Over the years, the country has undergone many changes to perfect its election system. One decade that witnessed significant changes in the US election was between 1870 and 1880.
It was a period when the country was recovering from the effects of the Civil War. Their reconstruction efforts led to significant federal government expansion, economic growth, and large-scale agriculture development. Political parties and their supporters had to make significant changes to keep up with these changes. This paper comprehensively focuses on the US elections during this period, with much focus on the issues encountered and the candidates involved.
Significant Changes in U.S. Elections: Analyzing the Decade from 1870 to 1880
The Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment
One critical issue related to elections between 1870 and 1880 was the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. According to Maltz (2021), before 1870, Americans were making efforts all over the nation to reconstruct what remained of the Civil War. As Ulysses Grant prepared for the 1868 presidential election, Blacks freed from slavery were still not allowed to vote. Even though many Reconstruction Acts called for Black voting in the Southerners, many Whites and privileged individuals saw it as an unfair move. Since these Acts did not also apply in the Nothern States, the Blacks were not allowed to vote in the 1868 election (Manjapra, 2022). Almost all the border states did not allow African Americans to vote, too.
The Republicans suggested that the only way to allow Blacks to participate in voting was to make a Constitutional amendment. According to them, this new Constitutional Amendment was to apply to all states despite the party that controlled the federal government (American Experience, n.d.). As a result, Congress took the time between Grant’s election and inauguration to draft the Amendment. On 26 February 1869, Congress determined and passed the new Amendment as the fifteenth in the Constitution.
However, many states resisted this ratification, and it only applied to 17 Republican ones. Congress needed 11 more conditions for the Amendment to become law (Maltz, 2021). The Congress then moved its attention to the states in the Southern regions of the US that were yet to be readmitted to the Union. Ultimately, on 30 March 1870, Congress saw that the Fifteenth Amendment became part of the United States Constitution. This marked a significant milestone in US history as it guaranteed Blacks the right to vote and protected it from anyone in the future.
Even though passing the Fifteenth Amendment meant that Black men had their rights protected by the law, it was a short-lived victory in practice. The state and local governments tried to weaken the new law and prevent the Blacks from voting. According to Shah and Smith (2021), the law these levels of government used to prevent Blacks from voting was referred to as disenfranchisement. With time, the action of preventing African Americans from exercising their voting rights was referred to as the “Jim Crow” laws.
The privileged used many Jim Crow laws, including literacy tests, poll taxes, or a requirement that anyone who wanted to vote must own a property (National Geographic, n.d.). In many instances, election boards or groups such as the Ku Klux Klan enforced the Jim Crow laws. Ku Klux Klan would go to the extent of intimidating African Americans with violence if they attempted to vote. Many states in the Southern regions did nothing to protect the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
The Impact of African Americans on Elections Despite Voting Rights Challenges
However, despite African Americans’ challenges while trying to exercise their voting rights, they significantly influenced elections between 1870 and 1880. According to Wright (2020), for instance, the Southern states where many Blacks resided recorded a significant increase in African American voters. To fight the resistance that Whites posed to them, African American voters had to form voting blocs in most states, including South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi (Maltz, 2021). Most aligned themselves with the Republican party with leaders who always fought for their rights, such as Abraham Lincoln.
In addition to the law permitting African Americans to vote, the period between 1870 and 1880 also experienced significant changes in the ways of conducting elections. Before this period, American elections were characterized by chaos, fraud, and little to no regulations or oversight. For instance, Americans experienced the rise of a political machine at the beginning of the 1970s.
Political Machines: Power-Seeking Groups in the 19th Century Political Landscape
As mentioned earlier, the period between 1870 and 1880 was characterized by many people migrating from rural areas to cities. However, according to McDonald (2021), cities needed to be better structured during this period and could not offer residents services. As a result, political machines like Tammany Hall took advantage of the conditions to build a following of loyal voters. Most of these loyal voters were made up of immigrant groups looking for favors such as housing and jobs.
Political machines were groups of politicians and loyal voter followers who constantly aimed to maintain power instead of offering good government to the people. According to Popa (2021), these political machines were famous for incorporating corruption and fraud in the election process. Lotha (2022) notes that the political machines helped assimilate the vulnerable groups, and their supposers deemed them adequate. They also believed that “consolidating power in the hands of a boss…guarantees city governments the power and authority they need to cope with urban problems effectively” (Lotha, 2022, para. 4). The individuals were rewarded with patronage jobs after “delivering” votes.
However, at the beginning of the 1880s, many American states decided to pass laws that would help overlook election processes and prevent fraud incidences. For instance, one of the most critical milestones in overseeing the confidentiality of these elections was the introduction of section ballots. Secret ballots, also known as Australian ballots, were a “system of voting in which voters mark their choices in privacy on uniform ballots printed and distributed by the government or designate their choices by some other secret means” (The Editors of Encyclopedia, n.d., para. 3)
The United States adopted the Australian ballot at the beginning of the 1880s and had new methods of conducting elections (Dowling et al., 2019). While voting using this new system, the containers used had to be examined before the beginning of the process, and they could only be opened once it was over. This process marked the end of political machines and their effects on elections.
The Bipartisan Landscape: The Republican and Democratic Parties in Elections
The US elections between 1870 and 1880 have two major political parties: the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Supporters of Thomas Jefferson adopted the term “Republican” in 1792 (Richardson, 2019). Later in the 1830s, the Republican Party was formed when leaders against the slavery of Blacks came together to oppose this inhumane act’s extension to Nebraska and Kansas. The party dominated the American political landscape from the Civil War to Reconstruction.
However, at the beginning of the 1870s, the Republican Party started losing support after Lincoln’s prospect for an 1864 reelection weakened due to the prolonged Civil War agony (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2023). Additionally, the loss of support for this party was due to its support of the rights of the Blacks, whom whites from the Southern States significantly resented.
The roots of the Democratic Party can be traced to 1828. Studies indicate that during the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, they tolerated or supported slavery. The party also opposed civil rights reforms to retain the Americans’ political support from the Southern states. As a result, the Democratic Party started to gain more support, especially from the Southern states. Since its formation, the Democratic Party has always been associated with state rights and white supremacy.
Due to its stance and rising support, the midterm elections 1874 had the Democrats winning the House of Representatives control (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2023). However, this gain was short-lived when the Democratic Party split into two when the currency reform issue arose (Desilver, 2022). Due to this split, the Democratic Party was weakened, leading to the Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives in the elections held in 1876.
The 1876 Presidential Election: A Defining Moment of Controversy in the 1870s
The most controversial election between 1870 and 1880 is the 1876 presidential election. The presidential election held on 7 November 1876 was between a Democrat, Samuel J. Tilden, and a Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes. In the election, Tilden was leading with more than 260,000 popular votes. In the election, “preliminary returns showed Tilden with 184 electoral votes to Hayes’s 165, with the 19 electoral votes of three states and one elector from Oregon still in doubt” (Gaur, 2022, para. 5). Tilden and Hayes claimed victory in the three Southern states: South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. Ultimately, the US Congress formed an Electoral Commission that favored Hayes as the victor.
The 1880 Presidential election was between a Democratic Winfield Hancock and a Republican, James Garfield. Even though Tilden promised to participate in the election after the 1976 defeat, his poor health could not allow him (Barr & Pappas, 2022). On the other hand, Rutherford B. Hayes also pledged to serve as an American President for a single term. The election was held on 2 November 1880, and the voter turnout was among the highest in American history (Wang, 2021). Unlike 1976, the 1880 presidential election was relatively peaceful. The results of the elections showed that Republican James Garfield won with the narrowest margin in history.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the US period between 1870 and 1880 was marked by significant changes and upheaval. During this period, the US elections were associated with numerous issues that significantly influenced their results. For instance, at the beginning of this period, African Americans were allowed to vote after Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment on 30 March 1870. Even though they faced significant barriers from Jim Crow laws and electoral boards, Blacks still turned out to vote for Republican Party candidates. Elections during this period were also linked to corruption and fraud as political machines tried to assimilate vulnerable groups. Additionally, while there was tension during the 1976 presidential election, the 1880 election was relatively peaceful.
References
American Experience. (n.d.). Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment PBS. Web.
Barr, J., & Pappas, A. T. (2022). Stricken before election: Presidential health crises from 1880 to 2020. Annals of Surgery Open, 3(1). Web.
Desilver, D. (2022). The polarization in today’s Congress has roots that go back decades. Pew Research Center. Web.
Dowling, C. M., Doherty, D., Hill, S. J., Gerber, A. S., & Huber, A. G. (2019). The voting experience and beliefs about ballot secrecy. PloS One, 14(1). Web.
Gaur, A. (2022). United States presidential election of 1876. Britannica. Web.
Lotha, G. (2022). Political machine. Britannica. Web.
MacDonald, D. (2021). Internal migration and sectoral shift in the nineteenth-century United States. Social Science History, 45(4), 843-862. Web.
Maltz, E. (2021). The coming of the fifteenth amendment: The republican party and the right to vote in the early reconstruction era. Louisana Law Reviw, 82(2), 395. Web.
Manjapra, K. (2022). Voter suppression grew up from the soil of emancipation itself. Time. Web.
National Geographic. (n.d.). The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Web.
Popa, M. (2021). Political machines and the institutional background of economic miracles. Government and Opposition, 56(2), 345-364. Web.
Richardson, H. C. (2019). When adding new States helped the republicans. The Atlantic. Web.
Shah, P., & Smith, R.S. (2021). Legacies of segregation and disenfranchisement: The road from Plessy to Frank and voter ID laws in the United States. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(1), 134-146. Web.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia. (n.d.). Australian ballot. Britannica. Web.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2023). Republican party. Britannica. Web.
Wang, X. (2021). The last Lincoln republican: The presidential election of 1880. The Journal of the Civil War Era, 11(4), 594-597. Web.
Wright, G. (2020). Voting rights, deindustrialization, and republican ascendancy in the South. Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series, 135. Web.