| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876. By Roy Morris Jr. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 311 pp. $27.00,ISBN 0-7432-2386-1.)
The election fiasco of 2000 inevitably rekindled interest in the disputed election of 1876. Roy Morris Jr. assays to satisfy that interest in Fraud of the Century. Seeing in the earlier contest a "cautionary relevance to recent events" (p. 5), Morris intimates that Samuel Tilden's case was somehow the moral equivalent of Al Gore's. Few historians will find the comparison convincing.	1
A former journalist who has taken to writing popular history, Morris presents the basic story, beginning with an overview of the nation in the centennial year and ending with the last-minute maneuvers that led to Rutherford B. Hayes's inauguration. Morris's slant in favor of Tilden is clear throughout. The biographical chapter on Hayes is entitled "A Third-Rate Nonentity" (borrowing a gibe from Henry Adams), while that on Tilden is called "Centennial Sam." In Morris's treatment, Tilden is a committed reformer and a man of great intellect and refinement. Hayes, on the other hand, is a pedestrian politician barely above the level of a hack but one endowed with extraordinary luck. As for the outcome in the Electoral Commission, that was a matter of "eight villains to seven patriots" (p. 200).	. . .

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