Stubborn myth of corrupt deal regarding Hayes persists 150 years later

On Feb. 26, 1876, the infamous “Wormley Conference” took place in Washington, D.C. 

The presidential Election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden was one of the most contested in U.S. history.

Though Tilden won the popular vote by over 250,000, Hayes ultimately won the electoral count 185-184, claiming the disputed votes in Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina. It would take four months and the creation of a special electoral commission to resolve the situation.

During this time, claims of fraud, violence, and intimidation by the Democrats against African Americans and southern Republicans as well as returning board fraud perpetrated by the Republican Party (all of which were true), was rampant, and investigated thoroughly by both parties.

Fast forward to nearly the end of the crisis and the meeting at the Wormley Hotel. A stubborn myth has implied that Rutherford Hayes and his Republican associates made a “deal” with Democrats at the Wormley for the presidency, trading the rights of African Americans and ending Reconstruction by removing federal troops from the South. 

Though a meeting did take place between representatives of the two parties, what was discussed had little to no impact on the outcome of the election, which the electoral commission would decide only a day later in Hayes’s favor. The discussion at the Wormley Hotel focused on assurances Hayes had made during his campaign speech.  Before the election, Hayes pledged to work to return the three remaining state governments in the South still controlled with military protection by Republicans since the Civil War, to the states themselves as per the Constitution. 

What the South hoped for even more than a Tilden presidency was “home rule.” The Republicans wanted assurances that the rights of African Americans in the southern states would be protected. In April 1877, Hayes would indeed remove the troops protecting the statehouses in Louisiana and South Carolina, allowing the Democratic governments to assume control. But he pulled them back to their barracks, not out of the states entirely as has been misunderstood in the Wormley myth.

Historians have noted how the so-called bargain that supposedly took place at the Wormley Hotel was not the shady backroom deal that it has been made out to be. Even Edward Burke, one of the Democrats who was at the Wormley meeting, later called it a “bluff session.” With the election crisis nearing its end, there was no need for any deal to be struck, and it has been argued that

Hayes himself would never have agreed to any bargain, especially as victory was imminent. One aspect we’ll never be sure of, however, is how much Hayes (or Tilden for that matter) knew about what was being discussed at the meeting. One of the Republican representatives stated very clearly later that they had “no authority” to make any “compact” on behalf of Hayes.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the crisis itself is Hayes’s claim that had there been an actual free and fair election in the South, without violence and intimidation perpetrated by white southerners against African Americans and southern Republicans, Hayes would have easily won both the popular and electoral vote in 1876.

Pictured: The Wormley Hotel, which no longer stands. Painting “The Florida Case before the Electoral Commission” by Cornelia Adèle Fassett, 1879.
Courtesy of the U.S. Senate Collection