I‘ve got to admit I’m hooked on this presidential election like no other in my lifetime.
Even if you don’t like either of the candidates, the issues being debated present a fascinating — although not especially optimistic — picture of our divided nation.
But sometimes it’s good to study history just to get the reassurance that things have always been kind of crazy in America.
I looked at the national and Mississippi returns from every presidential election since the Civil War. The trends in recent decades are generally familiar in the state (hint: the Republican nominee is always going to carry the state), but the distant elections have some fascinating backstories.
1868
Mississippi (as well as Texas and Virginia) did not participate because it had not yet been readmitted to the Union because it had not yet ratified a state constitution. The constitution had been adopted by the legislature in May 1868 but wasn’t ratified by the people until December 1869, and Mississippi was finally officially back in the United States in February 1870.
1872
With Republicans, the party of Lincoln, in control during Reconstruction, many black citizens could vote — and white former Confederates could not. Not surprisingly the state’s vote went to the Republican candidate, Ulysses S. Grant. It would be the last time a Republican carried the state until 1964.
1876
This was the closest presidential election of all time as measured by the electoral college vote: 185-184 for Republican Rutherford Hayes over Democrat Samuel Tilden. Democrats in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina cut a deal to give their electoral votes to Hayes in exchange for ending Reconstruction, in what is known as the Compromise of 1877. It turned out to be one of the worst decisions in U.S. history, ushering in the Jim Crow Era where states were free from federal oversight to pass laws to treat blacks as second-class citizens. It’s haunting to think if that deal hadn’t been struck the South could have perhaps begun healing its racial wounds a century sooner.
1880-1944
This was the Solid South era, where Democrats dominated. Between 1896 and 1944, the Democratic presidential candidate received an average of 90.7 percent of the popular vote in Mississippi.
1948
The Solid South began to crumble as Southern Democrats walked out of the national convention because of Harry Truman’s support for civil rights and formed the Dixiecrats with Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as their nominee. Thurmond carried Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina, but other Southern states stuck with Truman to help him win in an upset.
1960
Neither Democrat John Kennedy nor Republican Richard Nixon won the state’s electoral votes. Instead a plurality of the popular vote and thus the state’s eight electoral votes went to eight “unpledged electors.”
Their names appeared on the ballot and included Indianola native and attorney Frank Everett along with other party leaders.
That goes back to the oddities of the electoral college. The Constitution sets each state’s number of electoral college members — called electors — by its number of U.S. senators and representatives. But it leaves it up to state legislatures to decide how to pick electors. Today most of the states, including Mississippi, have laws requiring all the electors support the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote.
But that’s not always been the case. Electors’ names were often listed on the ballot alongside the candidate they intended to support. But according to a Bill Minor column, in 1960 Gov. Ross Barnett hoped to use unpledged electors to control the outcome in case of a close race — similar to 1876 — and negotiate concessions to slow or stop desegregation. The race did end up being close, but Kennedy was able to win thanks in part to Illinois, where allegations of voter fraud remain disputed today.
It all shows that U.S. presidential elections have always been a dirty business, yet our country has continued to thrive despite racism and backdoor deals marring our elections.
There’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to the shenanigans — although Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump may try to disprove that over the next three months.
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Charlie Smith is the editor and publisher of the Enterprise Tocsin in Indianola. He can be reached by email at
csmith@enterprise-tocsin.com.
