Did you miss this part?...FEOS wrote:
Did you miss the part where it essentially said that the outcome of the election wouldn't have changed regardless? Yes, it was ugly as hell, but Tilden would've most likely lost anyway...as stated previously.
"It is not possible to conclude definitively what the result would have been if a fair election had been held without the violence and intimidation, throughout the South, that disenfranchised many African-Americans explicitly eligible to vote under the 15th amendment. Nevertheless, in the likeliest fair scenario Hayes would have won the election with 189 electoral votes to Tilden's 180 by winning all of the states that he did ultimately carry, plus Mississippi but minus Florida. A strong case can be made that South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi, states with an outright majority African-American population, would have gone for Hayes since nearly all African-Americans during this time voted Republican (while nearly all whites in the South during this time voted Democratic). Florida, with a majority white population, would have likely gone to Tilden in a fair election. Clearly Hayes would have won appreciably more of the popular vote in a fair election, albeit arguably still not a plurality or majority."
They say there is a very likely scenario that Hayes would have won, but at the same time, there is no way of conclusively proving that because of various uncertainties and corruption.
So no, it's not rational to simply assume Tilden would have lost.
Last edited by Turquoise (2010-02-21 17:12:40)