After the events of January 6th, many are rightly concerned about the possibility of political violence and whether the results of the election will be free and honest. The country has seen how easily the results of an election can be resisted, and mobs motivated by partisan candidates can become unruly and dangerous. This is not the first time an election has come in the wake of political violence.

The 1876 election happened 8 years after the the election of 1868, one in which the KKK enacted mass political suppression and violence against the newly enfranchised black voters in the South. This election also came a decade after the end of the Civil War, the largest-scale act of political violence ever seen in America. It can then be assumed and confirmed by the documents that exist from the time that those living through the 1876 election had the same, if not greater, concerns that plague our modern-day election.

Though political violence and suppression did occur in the election of 1876, the government’s breakdown of the KKK after 1968  election was mostly successful in preventing that violence from being mass-organized. Instead, what made the 1876 election contentious was the voting count, namely that neither party was able to get a majority of the electoral votes due to unclear results in three southern states.

Bringing this back to a modern comparison, the breakup of the KKK could be compared to the government’s efforts to find and uncover the insurrectionists on January 6th and bring them to justice. The consequences these people faced might mean that this election will not be one made contentious by political violence, like in 2020 and 1868, but instead, one made contentious by a struggle to certify votes like in 1876. This possibility is already occurring in Georgia, where Trump’s stacked election board is making plays to resist certifying the election results and, therefore, create confusion come election day. If this were to occur, like in 1876, both sides might be forced to come together to find a subconsutional compromise like what happened with the 1876 committee and subsequent bargain. The question becomes, then, are we in 2024 capable of creating such a compromise to keep the union going, or are we more divided now than in post-civil war America?