Hayes's ride: in 1876, a Democratic candidate won the presidency, but, through a lack of nerve lost the recount. Sound familiar?

• Author: Greenfield, Jeff
• Position: FRAUD OF THE CENTURY: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 by Roy Morris Jr. Simon & Schuster

FRAUD OF THE CENTURY: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 by Roy Morris Jr. Simon & Schuster, $27.00

THROUGHOUT THOSE REMARKABLE 37 days that followed Election Day, 2000, as the struggle for the presidency moved from the polling booths to the streets of Palm Beach to the courthouses of Florida and Washington, as we media types spoke of Constitutional crises and enough uncharted waters to re-launch Gilligan's Minnow, the voice of the American people seemed to be saying: "Um, excuse us, but could you figure out who the president is and let us know as soon as possible? Either one's more or less okay with us, but hey--Christmas is coming up, the NFL playoffs are around the corner, so could you wrap this up quick?"

In those days Of peace and prosperity, America was in the words of one observer, "a hotbed of rest" But what, I kept wondering, if we were in a different climate? What if the United States had been divided by an unpopular war, or by intense racial and cultural divisions? What if great numbers of Americans were prepared--literally--to take up arms if Gore or Bush had emerged the victor?

Is such a scenario unimaginable? The fact is, it happened--not in 2000, but in 1876, when New York Gov. Samuel Tilden, the Democratic nominee, went to bed on Election Night with a solid 250,000 plurality over Ohio Gov. Rutherford B. Hayes, only to see Hayes win the White House after a two-month battle where bribery, blackmail, extortion, voter fraud, and murder, were freely employed by partisans of both candidates. It may seem like the stuff of fiction--in fact, Gore Vidal's novel 1876 puts the contest at the center of its plot--but the real story, set down by author and onetime political correspondent Roy Morris Jr, has enough drama, melodrama, farce, and tragedy to power a dozen such books. Morris's blend of research, narrative skill, and historical perspective renders Fraud of the Century a compelling tale for anyone even remotely interested in American political history.

Morris begins with a brisk account of how the election came to be contested in the first place. While Hayes himself and most of his supporters believed that Tilden had won--the pro-Republican Chicago Tribune headline read: "Lost. The Country Given Over to Democratic Greed and Plunder"--a trio of Hayes supporters began to stoke the fires of resistance that night. (One of them was a New York Times editor named John C. Reid.) With telegrams sent to...