Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. First edition [stated]. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. ix, [1], 274, [2] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. DJ has slight wear, soiling and sticker residue. William Hubbs Rehnquist (October 1, 1924 - September 3, 2005) was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States for 33 years, first as an Associate Justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as Chief Justice from 1986 until his death in 2005. Considered a conservative, Rehnquist favored a conception of federalism that emphasized the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers to the states. Under this view of federalism, the court, for the first time since the 1930s, struck down an act of Congress as exceeding its power under the Commerce Clause. Rehnquist served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during the final years of World War II. After the war's end in 1945, Rehnquist studied political science at Stanford University and Harvard University, then earned a law degree from the Stanford Law School. He clerked for Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson during the Supreme Court's 1952-1953 term. He served as a legal adviser for Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election, and in 1969 President Richard Nixon appointed Rehnquist as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel. In 1971, Nixon nominated Rehnquist to the Supreme Court he won Senate confirmation that same year. Rehnquist quickly established himself as the most conservative member of the Burger Court. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to succeed retiring Chief Justice Burger, and Rehnquist again won Senate confirmation. This book is written by the late Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist. Covers the highly contentious and disputed presidential election of 1976 between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes [who was named the winner two days before the inauguration in March, 1877]. He writes of this great, 19th century American political drama in a gripping and detailed narrative. Derived from a Kirkus review: In the annals of presidential elections, the hotly contested 1876 race between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden was in many ways as remarkable in its time as Bush versus Gore was in ours. Chief Justice William Rehnquist offers readers a colorful and peerlessly researched chronicle of the post—Civil War years, when the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant was marked by misjudgment and scandal, and Hayes, Republican governor of Ohio, vied with Tilden, a wealthy Democratic lawyer and successful corruption buster, to succeed Grant as America's chief executive. The upshot was a very close popular vote (in favor of Tilden) that an irremediably deadlocked Congress was unable to resolve. In the pitched battle that ensued along party lines, the ultimate decision of who would be President rested with a commission that included five Supreme Court justices, as well as five congressional members from each party. With a firm understanding of the energies that motivated the era's movers and shakers, and no shortage of insight into the processes by which epochal decisions are made, Chief Justice Rehnquist draws the reader intimately into a nineteenth-century event that offers valuable history lessons for us in the twenty-first.