America's Contested Election

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1876 was a great pivot in US history. In the presidential election that year a record turn out and chaotic vote counts, particularly in Florida (!), saw a contested result. Civil war, so recently concluded, seemed imminent until Democrat and Republican grandees made a bargain. It would save the republic but at terrible cost. Joining us on the podcast is Professor Gary Gerstle, the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. We discussed the momentous events of 1876-7, what they mean today and just how endangered is American democracy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History It. It's the most contested election in American
0:08.1	history with record turnout. The electoral process was obscure, corrupt, hedged about with intimidation
0:17.2	and other dirty tricks. Both sides refused to accept the result and a constitutional crisis
0:23.8	I am of course talking about the US presidential election of 1876, which eventually saw
0:32.6	Rutherford B. Hayes defeat Democrats Samuel Tilden, despite Tilden getting a lot more votes.
0:40.2	But the Democrats came away with what they really wanted. This is the election that lots of scholars
0:46.5	are looking back to as we enter this pivotal week, US election week, the rest of the world hold
0:53.0	its breath to see who the good people of Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are going to give
1:00.5	us as the next leader of the free world. Choose wisely my friends, choose wisely. For this podcast,
1:06.4	I'm talking to Gary Gersl. He is professor of American history at Cambridge University. He is
1:14.0	a writer, a broadcaster. He's taught around the world. He's a total legend. He's also as an
1:19.8	American currently in the US very excited to cast his vote. So it's great honor to catch up with
1:25.5	Gary Gersl and talk about elections past and present. If you wish to become a subscriber to history
1:33.2	hit, you get to listen to these podcasts without the ads on our own platform. It's called
1:36.8	HistoryHit.tv. We've got extra podcasts on that. Most importantly of all, we've also got hundreds
1:41.4	of history documentaries like Netflix, but for history. Amazing. And if you use the code pod1 pod1,
1:47.6	you get a month for free and your second month for just one pound euro or dollars. So please go and
1:52.2	check it out. In the meantime though, here's professor Gary Gersl. Enjoy.
2:02.6	Gary, thank you so much for coming to the podcast. Thank you. It's great to be here.
2:06.4	Well, we are days away from the election in 2020. There are all sorts of people talking about
2:12.8	past of victory contested results, single votes in Nebraska. And I thought it'd be good to go back
2:18.4	and talk about an election that really was remarkably contested, mathematically tricky. And that was
	...

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