1880 United States presidential election

The 1880 United States presidential election was the 24th quadrennial presidential election. Incumbent President Rutherford B. Hayes did not seek re-election, keeping a promise made during the 1876 campaign. The election of 1880 was the sixth consecutive presidential election won by the Republicans, the second longest winning streak in American history.

About 1880 United States presidential election in brief

Summary 1880 United States presidential electionThe 1880 United States presidential election was the 24th quadrennial presidential election. Incumbent President Rutherford B. Hayes did not seek re-election, keeping a promise made during the 1876 campaign. After the longest convention in the party’s history, the divided Republicans chose another Ohioan, Representative James A. Garfield, as their standard-bearer. The Democratic Party chose General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania as their nominee. In the end, the popular vote totals of the two main candidates were separated by 1,898 votes, the smallest victory in the national popular vote ever recorded. The election of 1880 was the sixth consecutive presidential election won by the Republicans, the second longest winning streak in American history after the Democratic-Republican Party during the period 1800–1824. This is the first presidential election in which people in every state were able to vote directly for presidential electors. This was the most recent election until 2020 when the Republican and Democratic candidate both won the same amount of states. The results initially indicated a Democratic victory, but the electoral votes of several states were disputed until just a few days before the new president was inaugurated. Four years earlier in 1876, Republican Rutherford B Hayes of Ohio defeated Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York in one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in the nation’s history. In 1880, Garfield’s victory was much larger; he won the decisive state of New New York by 21,033 votes.

Hancock’s sweep of the Southern states was not enough for victory,. but it cemented his party’s dominance of the region for generations. Tariff reform and the gold standard also divided the country and the major parties. The monetary debate was over the basis for the value of the United States dollar. The issue cut across parties, producing dissension among Republicans and Democrats alike and spawning a third party, the Greenback Party, in1876, when both major parties nominated \”hard money\” candidates. Most Northern Protestants voted Republican, as did black Southerners. On the other hand, white Southerner and Northern Catholics generally voted Democratic. In 1879, Congress effectively demonetized silver in 1873 and began redeeming greenbacks in gold by 1879. Greenbacks helped pay for the war, but resulted in the most severe inflation since the American Revolution. Many Democrats supported high tariffs, however, for the same economic reasons that Northern Republicans did. Many Republicans wanted to avoid the question of the interest of the federal government as much as possible, so they sought to avoid it as much possible as possible to avoid as much conflict as possible. The U.S. Congress effectivelydemonetized gold and silver coin until the end of the Civil War, when the mounting costs of the war forced the Congress to issue \”greenbacks\”. This was done partly to pay for war, and partly because high tariffs were popular in the North. In 1873, the U.N. agreed to a gold-backed dollar.