Samuel J. Tilden won 184 electoral votes in the 1876 presidential election, and Rutherford B. Hayes won 165. Twenty votes remained in dispute from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and from Oregon, where an elector was disqualified and replaced. In those states, each party submitted its own results to Congress, as indicated by multiple entries in this document.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
Statement of the packages, supposed to contain the Certificates of the Electoral Votes for the President . . . of the United States, 1877
Congress Resolves a Disputed Presidential Election
In 1876 Congress settled the tangled presidential election between Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden. After a vicious contest, Tilden won the popular vote, but the Electoral College vote was disputed. A Democratic House and Republican Senate created an Electoral Commission of Members of Congress and Supreme Court justices to resolve these votes. The commission voted along party lines to assign all the disputed votes to Hayes, making him the nineteenth president
A dispute exists with regard to the result of the election of the Chief Magistrate of the nation. . . . The country . . . wants to be assured that the result of the election will be accepted without resistance… and that the highest officer shall not hold his place with a questionable title of right.
President Ulysses S. Grant, Message on Signing Legislation Creating the Electoral Commission, January 29, 1877
Samuel J. Tilden won 184 electoral votes in the 1876 presidential election, and Rutherford B. Hayes won 165. Twenty votes remained in dispute from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and from Oregon, where an elector was disqualified and replaced. In those states, each party submitted its own results to Congress, as indicated by multiple entries in this document.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
