The election was among the most contentious in American history, and was only resolved by the Compromise of 1877, where Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction in exchange for recognition of his presidency.

Although Tilden defeated Hayes in the official popular vote tally, the election involved substantial electoral fraud, voter intimidation by paramilitary groups like the Red Shirts, and disenfranchisement of black Republicans.

Grant's inner circle advised him to go for a third term and he almost did so, but on December 15, 1875, the House, by a sweeping 233–18 vote, passed a resolution declaring that the two-term tradition was to prevent a dictatorship.

When the Sixth Republican National Convention assembled in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 14, 1876, James G. Blaine appeared to be the presidential nominee.

They chose the reforming Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, who had been gradually building support during the convention until he finished second on the sixth ballot.

New York Representative William A. Wheeler was nominated for vice president by a much larger margin (366–89) over his chief rival, Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, who later served as a member of the Electoral Commission, which awarded the election to Hayes.

There were 5000 people jammed inside the auditorium in St. Louis amid hopes for the Democratic Party's first presidential victory in 20 years.

Tilden overcame strong opposition from "Honest John" Kelly, the leader of New York's Tammany Hall, to obtain the presidential nomination.

The Democratic platform pledged to replace the corruption of the Grant administration with honest, efficient government and to end "the rapacity of carpetbag tyrannies" in the South.

It also called for treaty protection for naturalized United States citizens visiting their homelands, restrictions on Asian immigration, tariff reform, and opposition to land grants for railroads.

The platform supported the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution, international arbitration, the reading of the scriptures in public schools, specie payments, justice for Native Americans, abolition of the Electoral College, and prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages.

[13][14] Tilden, who had prosecuted machine politicians in New York and sent the political boss William M. Tweed to jail, ran as a reform candidate against the background of the corruption of the Grant administration.

Hayes had served in the Civil War with distinction as colonel of the 23rd Ohio Regiment and was wounded several times, which made him marketable to veterans.

On the other side, the newspaperman John D. Defrees described Tilden as "a very nice, prim, little, withered-up, fidgety old bachelor, about one-hundred and twenty-pounds avoirdupois, who never had a genuine impulse for many nor any affection for woman".

They violently disrupted meetings and rallies, attacked party organizers, and threatened potential voters with retaliation for voting Republican.

[21] Florida (with four electoral votes) and Louisiana (with eight) reported returns that favored Tilden, while Hayes led in South Carolina (with seven).

The most extreme case was in South Carolina, where an impossible 101 percent of all eligible voters in the state had their votes counted,[22] and an estimated 150 Black Republicans were murdered.

The Tilden electors in South Carolina claimed that they had been chosen by the popular vote although they were rejected by the state election board.

After supporters marched to his home to call for the President, Hayes urged the crowd that "it is impossible, at so early a time, to obtain the result".

The Democrats objected to that construction, since the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the Republican Thomas W. Ferry, could then count the votes of the disputed states for Hayes.

[25] Facing an unprecedented constitutional crisis, the Congress passed a law on January 29, 1877, to form a 15-member Electoral Commission, which would settle the result.

Each of the disputed state election cases (Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina) was respectively submitted to the commission by Congress.

During intense closed-door meetings, Democratic leaders agreed reluctantly to accept Hayes as president in return for the withdrawal of federal troops from the last two Southern states that were still occupied: South Carolina and Louisiana.

Republican leaders in return agreed on a number of handouts and entitlements, including federal subsidies for a transcontinental railroad line through the South.

Upon his defeat, Tilden said, "I can retire to public life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office."

The Greenback ticket did not have a major impact on the election's outcome by attracting slightly under one percent of the popular vote; nonetheless, Cooper had the strongest performance of any third-party presidential candidate since John Bell in 1860.

The election of 1876 was the last one held before the end of the Reconstruction era, which sought to protect the rights of African Americans in the South, who usually voted for Republican presidential candidates.

This is the closest electoral college result in American history, and the second-closest victory in the tipping point state with South Carolina being decided by 889 votes (only the 2000 election in Florida was closer).

None of the Southern states that experienced long periods of occupation by federal troops was carried by a Republican again until Herbert Hoover in 1928, when he won Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.