Visitors Ticket for Congressional Vote Count in Bitterly Contested 1876 Presidential Election

1877. A very good copy, faint pencil rule to center.. 3 x 4 3/4 inch card on mustard-colored stock. A rare ticket of admission for the congressional vote counting after the election of 1876. "Counting the Vote for President and Vice-President. Admit Bearer. To Gallery of the House of Representatives." # 732. February 19, 1877. Signed in facsimile by T[homas] W. Ferry, President pro tempore of the Senate, and Sam[uel] J. Randall, Speaker of the House.

The highly disputed election between New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden, who won the popular vote, and led in the electoral count, and Republican nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes, led to a constitutional crisis. On the first count in the electoral college, Tilden had 184 electoral votes, Hayes 165, and 20 votes were disputed. Many of the disputes had to do with certification of the electoral votes. On January 29, 1877, the US Congress passed a law forming a 15 member Electoral Commission to settle the result, which led to the compromise of 1877 in which all 20 disputed votes were awarded to Hayes supposedly in exchange for troops being withdrawn from the South, and thus effectively ending Reconstruction. It should be noted that in the election of 2020 several Republican Senators mistakenly cited the bipartisan Electoral Commission of 1877 as a historical precedent for Congress to appoint an electoral commission to adjudicate the 2020 election despite the fact that there were no states in which the electoral vote was legitimately in dispute. and unlike 2021 there was no violence in the halls of Congress in the 1877.

Cards were issued for various days and in different colors. The Library of Congress has one dated March 2, 1877 in blue.