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popculturebuffet · 8 months ago

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Here Comes Garfield: Here Comes Garfield Review: Together Again (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello all you cool cats and nobody's fool cats and welcome back to here comes garfield, a look at garfield's fine history of specials.

Last time I took a look at his first apperance with the hourlong special the fantastic funnies which had Garfield's First animated apperance, some interviews with various comic strip creators.. and nothing else of value. Except maybe a possible doonesbury spinoff where micheal doonsebury and broom hilda become wacky roomates.

The Garfield Short itself however was fantastic, adapting a few great strips with Scott Beach doing a decent job in the roll and Thom Huge's first roll as john showoing what a naturual he was. The shorts were impressive enough that CBS ordered a full special.

So thus here came here comes Garfield. Both John and Garfield were recast from the fantastic funnies short: For Garfield they clearly had wide auditions.. but Lorenzo Music easily won after his first. Licking himself probably helped. Music was best known as the voice only character "Carlton, the Doorman" on Rhoda, and while he did some voice work here and there, Garfield was easily his biggest roll, with the second being Peter Venkman on the real ghostbusters, being just as good at the roll as Bill Murray and yes i'll stake my claim on that. He was also replaced by David Collier of Full House Infamy. I'm cursed with this knowledge and now so are you. And yes it was a massive downgrade.

For John they wanted an LA actor, so frequent guest actor Sandy Kenyon replaced Thom Huge. Thankfully Huge would be given the part back after auditoning for the next special when Kenyon wasn't avaliable and despite never leaving indiana, he was just THAT good. We also finally got a cast for Odie with Gregg Berger, who got cast because

I scraped the background info i got for this from wherever I could. Still Berger went on to be a longtime voice actor, being the only one of the big three's va's to still be at it. My faviorite roll of his is he, grimlock but berger has a staggering career I wasn't aware of.

The rest of our cast are: second fred flintstone Henry Collis as grouchy neighbor Huebert, Owl from Winnie the Pooh and frequent scooby doo guest voice actor hank garret as Huebert's wife Reba and pro wrestling hall of famer and sitcom starr, both entirely true I looked it up, Hank Garrett as vet inmates Fast Eddy and Fluffy.

Our final bit of casting wasn't for voice acting but for the Special's soundtrack, a person so integral to these specials I can't imagine them without him: Ladies, Gentlemen and that beautiful rainbow inbetween and outside, please welcome mr lou rawls!

Rawls is a legendary R and B artist, with "you'll never find" being his signature. He's been on the Muppet Show, the Proud Family, Sesame Street, and more. He was a legend and i'm very sad he's gone.

It's these specials that introduced me to rawls, though it took the muppet show to get me to look at more of his songs and he brought his a game. The reason? He saw the residuals sexual predator Bill Cosby was getting from Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and had one thought when asked to do Garfield

Jim Davis would be proud.. because he was also in it for the money. And like the earlier years of Garfield, Lou Rawls didn't half ass it: the songs he performed for this special and later ones were truly fantastic and he always had a banger ready to open the special. I'm still baffled they were never put on a cd, with the only album relases being for here comes garfield and a mixtape from various r and b artists that includes shake a paw from Garfield Gets a Life. The specials would not be the same without Lou in them, and i'm happy he kept taking that check as he made them better each time he provided a silky opening song to kick off the hyjinks.

So with a bunch of vetran sitcom actors, the voice of an angel and a ton of strips, how was Here Comes Garfield? join me under the cut to find out.

We open the special with Garfield throwing his alarm clock through a window after rudely waking him up. A perfect intro: shows off he's cranky, sleepy and takes no shit.

We then follow it up with an elaborate dance number from Garfield, as he's known for, set to our title theme tune, here comes garfield. It's Rawls first crack at the character.. and it's a gorgeous, catchy song that sums up everything from Garfield's love of lasanga to his laziness. Is it weird to juxtopose that with an elaborate rotoscoped dance? yes yes it is. Is the animation and song so smooth it dosen't matter? Yup.

The dancing was modeled after Desirée Goyette, who also wrote the songs and sung the final one with Rawls, and also presented an issue as it didn't look quite right at first as Garfield to this point mostly stood like a blob. Since it was done at the Mendelsons where Peanuts was done, Sparky Schultz ended up providing the answer: the feet were too small and it's where Garfield got his big feet and smaller legs. They weren't to the degree they'd grow later, for better and for worse, but it's neat to know this evolution in garfield's appearance came from Sparky.

After this Garfield does some of his usual stuff: He threatens Odie, in his first animated appearance, wants a big breakfast then gets pissy when John won't give him the big breakfast and reacts entirely normally.

Several of the bits from this special were taken directly from the strip. Sadly unlike with the Fantastic Funnies, most aren't bookmarked, but thanks to google I was able to find a few i'll highlight. If I missed one or two, feel free to point them out, as there's a lot. Like the peanuts specials these earlier garfield ones tend to adapt a few one off bits for scenes and weave them into the plot.

Mid Breakfast, cat food as John hasn't yet had his spirit entirley broken, Odie startles Garrfield, a fight insues, and Jon throws his pets outside. Before we join them i'd like to talk about Sandy Kenyon's john.. and how he really dosen't work in the roll. What Huge got and what Wally Wingert and, at least judging from trailers, Nicholas Hoult get as John is that ballance: of put upon weary looser and optimstic dork. The latter part wasn't as prominent yet, but Huge would slide into it effortlessly.

Kenyon's John feels more like we're in a cat themed version of the stepfather and at any moment he's going to kill both pets, change his name and be on to another town. He feels like he's going to put down some plastic sheeting, throw on some huey lewis and get the axe out. He feels like he's one setback away from putting on a mask and going after some teenage cats. John is just too course here, too angry. Kenyon's trying to be deadpan but unlike other Jons, it comes off more threatening. And John CAN be threatning to his cat when he wants to be, but it comes off more like an angry dad, which is what he is, instead of an angry serial killer dad.

So our heroes go out and frolic in the flowers before a dog bites Garfield

And then another dog bites garfiled, Fluffy, the weird looking dog owned by Garfield's next door neighbor Huebert.

I'm so happy to get to talk about Huebert. As you may know, Garfield.. dosen't have the biggest bench of side characters in the strip itself. garfield and friends added a few paticuarlly binky (who went from a one off character in the strip and specials to one of the series best character) and the garfield show did the same, but in the strip it's kept to, outside our three person main cast, Liz, Nermal, Arlene, John's Parents, Doc Boy, Irma, Lyman early on and in more recent decades, the Big Vicious Dog. It's not a bad bench to pull from and some can go out of focus for a while if Jim Davis and his merry band of ghost writers runs out of ideas, but it works. Some strips have massive spraling casts like breaking cat news, some just need a few main characters and a few side cast to function. It didn't mean there were NO other characters or no guest characters, the 80's in paticular has some bangers and two of them even show up in this special, but in terms of recurring cast Jim Davis and Co kept it light.

Huebert and Reba are part of that cast and while not used these days, still made an impression when they were around. They were one note mostly being there to either gape in horror at John and Garfield's nonsense or be a victim of it. It did work though. They mostly stuck to sundays as it gave the gags enough room to work them in.

Huebert here assumes Garfield attacked Muffin unprovoked.. which isn't that unfair if you've known garfield formore than a single minute. Garfield and Odie don't help matters by trolling the guy. Hueburt dosen't help matters by trying to whollop them with his stick.

When that fails, he decides to call animal control. And in the garfield unvierse the city pound is apparnetly fucking psychotic as they not only just. manifest instantly, but don't ask any followup questions such as "are these somebody's pets", "Why do you want these animals removed" and "Whats your offer." They jsut show up to swoop our guys up.

Garfield hides but Odie, befitting his nature, is too stupid to and gets nabbed. Garfield seems genuinely sorry about it.. before griping, reminding us he's nature's perfect asshole. he does try to tell john about it with some fun patnomime.. but all john gets is Garfield might have fleas, a bit I really like.

Garfield gives up to watch some tv, then sleeps, thinking back to him and Odie as puppies.. before seeing the net come in and tkae the boy. And honestly this setup, Garfield feeling guilt one of his only friend sin the world is absent but taking his sweet time to do anything because he's that stubborn and selfish that he can't ADMIT it, works really well.

Eventually Garfield wakes up and needs to feed lest his hunger consume him then us all. So we get our second song, Long About Midnight, a fun jazz number from Rawls about Garfield's appitite. I also say Rawl's r and b style REALLY fits garfield well Rawls music tends to be laid back and jovial, talking about romancin and relaxin, and that fits garfield just fine. He can get it and he's ntohing but relaxed.

We get some food shenanigans during it recycled from a sunday, minus john for plot purposes

Thanks to Alyssabeth on Goodreads for putting this tsrip in her review, I wouldn't of remembered this refrence without it. Though I will say the gags are made better thans to Music's delivery. He just.. fits garfield so perfectly, having that nice combination of sardonic and laid back. There's a reason voices after him.. just haven't quite felt right. Bill Murray did a great job despite terrible material, and Frank Welker is decent, but Music just set an impossibly high bar that's yet to be cleared. He was garfield and elevated the character from great to god tier.

It's telling that for once food can't fill the void inside: Garfield misses his dog/punching bag/brother and decides to go free him. he NEARLY does.. only for the creepy watch men to catch him.

It's in Stir garfield meets two of his cell mates: Fast Eddie and Fluffy. Fast Eddie and Fluffy are actuallyt aken from a January 1981 arc I remember vividly as I had the book it was in as a kid.

The special changed the two slightly changing Eddie's name, Fluffy into a dog, and making both more realistically colored, though the latter's a bit more understandable on Fast Eddie/Guido, as we didn't have a color fo rhim. Fluffy on the other hand was on the back of the book he was in, so I don't know what the excuse there was.

I also admit I prefer Fluffy's original design, the big blue dopey look versus a more generic dog in the special.

The arc they were in was fairly short, with almost none of it really adapted for the special, just taking the characters and the situation of garfield in the pound, but they were still a great take. I may not like the change in fluffy but the two are a lot of fun and help speed along expositoin.

Eddie sticks up for Odie when Garfield gripes at him for getting him thrown in jail, only for Eddie to reveal that Odie is to be PUT DOWN TOMMOROW.

Yes. I wasn't kidding about how.. weirdly sadistic the pound is in this universe. Granted it COULD'VE been this weirdly sadistic in the 80's too but yes, despite having been here for less than a day they already plan to MURDER ODIE to make room. Whose running this pound?

Yeah that tracks. So Garfield tries to figure out a way to savd Odie from death and comforts his best friend on his last night. It's a genuinely heartbreaking scene, not helped by our third song "So Long Old Friend" If you can listen to this song without tearing up, you have no soul and i'm pretty sure even that's sketchy as vampires would cry tears of blood over this.

Garfield vows to save odie but Eddie holds Garfield back as they'll "take you too"

Thankfully Garfield gets an out: a little girl comes by to adopt a pet and all the cats and dogs line up. I also like all the various cats and dogs here, who Eddie outlined earlier my faviorites being Rocky, a nermal sized cat who beat up a neigherbood dog, Charlotte, a lovely kitty who simply scratched up some royal drapes, and Weird Larny who got arrested for impersonating a moose. Garfield gets picked because of plot convience.. but bolts to rescue Odie from certain death...

The other pets join him in booking it the hell out of deathland and overun the one guy trying to stop them. It's here we get our final number, and my faviorite, Together Again, with rawls and goytte combinging vocals. It's a joyful, triumphant song of renuinon as our heroes finally escape and go home.

Jon.. is a bit of a passive agressive dick, assuming they were partying whihle he was worried sick.. even though he clearly didn't you know CHECK THE POUND or do any work whatsoever. They quickly butter him up, he "forgives them" and we get one last gag taken directly from a strip I coudln't find to close things out

Here comes garfield is a great start to the specials. The stakes are high but still grounded enough for early garfield. While the timeline of thigns is a bit sped up, it's anchored by a belivieble yet touching arc from garfield, confromation that while he may bully odie and be annoyed by his existance.. he can't live without the guy and it's a fitting thing to get him off his fuzzy butt to do something. The jokes are fairly funny, the music is top notch. It's an excellent special and only seems lacking.. because they mostly get BETTER from here, with Here Comes Being a good start.. but most of the others take that foundation to new heights. Still it's a fantastic start and well worth checking out.

And like with my monthly muppets reviews, i'll be ranking these as I go and since I already covered babes and bullets and the fabulous funnies, that gives us two to start. I'll also be adding the garfield films to the ranking if I ever do them, and would be happy to do those on comission if anyone's intrested. Anyways here's our current ranking

This ranking probably won't move much at first, but we shall see

next time: In honor of the movie's launch we're looking at this special's followup, Garfield On the Town. With the new movie finally introducing us to Garfield's Father, it's only fair to look back at how we met his mother in one of the best of the specials. Tears will be shed, weird musical numbers will happen and you will be moved> yes you. in the front there.

Thanks for reading.

#garfield #here comes garfield #jon arbuckle #odie #lou rawls #animation #comics trips #comics

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perexcri · 2 years ago

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for the writing ask: 1, 13, 19, 40 :)))

AHHH hello Lark!! :D

i just answered #1 here!! i would add more but. i honestly have no more to say lol

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

oooh i just answered this one here too, but i have some more i can add!!

for difficult subject matters to write, i also have a very hard time writing about illness. this is again because of personal/family matters, but yeah. i'm not sure i could even do a sick fic (except for like one idea i have, but it's far removed enough from the usual context for me to be able to handle it)

easy to write? in a weird way, apocalypse/end of the world scenarios! this is partially because of the part of the country i grew up in and how the end of the world is something that is often talked about with glee, so there's already just this desensitization to it. but i also just like how,,,symbolic the end of the world can be? like not necessarily The End, but sometimes, the end of the world can be just having a bad day, right? i like the flexibility of the term and how it can be explored

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

ooooh ok, i think i have a fun one for how this started!

so in another ask a while ago, i had mentioned i'd started writing stories particularly after a difficult time my family went through. so now i'll talk about poetry!

i started writing poetry because of a church camp. no seriously. it was a kids camp between my 5th and 6th grade years of school, and the theme was the arts, so me and all of my schoolmates went to this camp, and all of us had gotten super into manga and drawing in that style the previous school year, so all of us had signed up for the visual arts section of the camp, of course. well basically every single one of my schoolmates who attended the camp got into that one except for me! i ended up in the poetry and cooking section despite not wanting to bother with either, and i was lowkey miserable! i remember feeling crushed because i didn't get to do drawing for that week, but also because i wasn't gonna be with any of my friends, and as an incredibly shy person, that was absolutely distressing

but as i started working on the poetry stuff, i actually (begrudgingly) came to like it? my final piece for the camp was an acrostic which was Not Good by any means, but i was like 11, and i'd never written poetry before, so why would it be good, right? anyways, after that i started exploring poetry more as a way for me to get my emotions out, and i even competed in poetry in this art competition my church's denomination runs at the national level, and i submitted a few poems to students journals when i was in high school. i haven't done much with it since, but i still write it and try to make time with it when i need to get my feelings out (i even went to the beach to write one today!) so...yeah. funny how things happen, right?

speaking of poetry...

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

you served me well with your sappho poem, so i tried my best to find one from my favorite poetry collection book i've had since my freshman year of high school :'D i just liked the imagery of this one and how relaxing it is, so i hope you enjoy it, too!

"Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing

as a woman takes up her needles

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

Let the wind die down. Let the shed

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop

in the oats, to air in the lung

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

thanks for the ask my friend!! i hope you are doing well :] 💜

#ask #ask game

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beckleysbooks · 2 months ago

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The Contested Election

With voting for the presidential election to be finalized this Tuesday, my hope is for the candidate who loses to display foresight and character with a timely concession speech. This has not always been the case. An example of a refusal to concede is found in the actions of those who stormed the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, an act of treason if there ever was one. Spare us a repeat of all this election denial ballyhoo and let’s get on with business.

Before January 6th, there was November 7, 1876!

In my upcoming sequel, “The Gilded Age” - www.beckleysbooks.com - I delve into the effect the 1876 Presidential Election had on all of our ancestors who lived locally during this time period. Roughly five years after the fateful 1876 election (1880), and with promoting of Northeast Ohio’s favorite son, James A. Garfield, into the White House, the local democrats were still fuming over the election that had been stolen from them in 1876. The Democratic mouthpiece, The Carroll Chronicle, was still dredging up “the theft” and reminding folks pretty much on a weekly basis.

A look back at what transpired in the early morning hours of November 8, 1876, and the months that followed, gives us an understanding of why the Democrats were so passionate and why they felt aggrieved for so long. Here’s what went down, by all historical account.

The Republican Party nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, the Governor of Ohio, who was a placid, but outgoing individual. Kenneth E. Davison’s biographical sketch of Hayes tells us of the Kenyon College student walking 40 miles to his family’s home in Delaware, Ohio one Christmas. Hayes later met and married the renown women’s activist, Lucy Webb, who became one of the more gifted First Ladies, and the first to be a college grad. “She was an excellent hostess; her outgoing personality complemented her husband’s more reserved manner.”, Davison writes. Rutherford Hayes was not his party’s first choice for president, but after seven ballots, he was considered the perfect compromise candidate from their primary convention held in Cincinnati that year.

The Democrats coalesced around the Governor of New York, Samuel Tilden. Tilden’s appeal, according to author Roy Morris Jr., was his being a cerebral politician, an intellectual who did not devolve into the personal side of a campaign, but otherwise embodied a self-aloofment. “Centennial Sam” at 62, looked a good ten years older. He was short and slight of stature with sparse sandy hair, a pale complexion, and an odd drooping left eyelid. Is there any surprise that he was a bachelor?

My read on this election is that neither party’s candidate got personally involved with the eventual outcome, but, Hayes’ “essential rectitude” allowed him to overlook the evidence of electoral misbehavior by some of his closest friends and supporters.

Meanwhile, Tilden realized, despite securing 1.3 million more votes than his opponent, the election was being stolen from him. Tilden also understood how one ill-chosen word might reignite the country into civil war. Morris Jr. writes, “Tilden had the good grace and inherent patriotism to avert such a social catastrophe.”

This is a tale that might sound eerily familiar. It starts with a political operative, Daniel Sickles – aka “Dirty Dan” - who had been a Democrat and was a rising star under the James Buchanan administration. That was until Sickles effectively ruined his career by killing the son of Francis Scott Key, whom had been having an affair with his wife. Sickles used his connections through Edwin Stanton, the future War Secretary, to secure an acquittal. Roy Morris Jr., in his best-selling book, “Fraud of the Century”, notes that Stanton, in this legal brief, was the first lawyer to use the argument of “temporary insanity”.

Sickles salvaged his reputation by raising and leading a Union brigade during the Civil War, losing a leg at Gettysburg, but winning a Medal of Honor for his efforts. Then, after the war, Sickles was appointed as Military Command of the Reconstruction District encompassing North and South Carolina, before having been removed once President Grant appointed him as an “American Minister” to Spain. Sickles had to resign this foreign post after having become too familiar with the Queen of Spain and thereafter, he moved to Paris. It was from his residence in Paris where Sickles wrote to his American contacts of his concern for a Tilden presidency. Oddly enough, the National Republican Chairman, Zachariah Chandler, declined Sickles’ offer of help, but this did not deter him from returning and settling in New York City.

On the night of November 7th, Sickles was returning from a Broadway play when he stopped at the hotel of the Republican Headquarters on 23rd Street. He was expecting a hive of activity, but found none; only a disheartened clerk, M.C. Clancy, as everyone else had retired for the night fully expecting a Democratic Party victory in the morning. Morris Jr. describes in his book how Sickles sat at the chairman’s desk and “riffled through a stack of telegrams from Republican State Headquarters across the country. What he saw gave him hope.” Sickles mentioned to the clerk that the presidential contest was “really close ... doubtful, but by no means hopeless.”

Sickles turned his astute eyes on the Electoral College tally and instantly knew that in three states, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, where Republicans still held power through governorships and reconstructive governmental power, he could raise the “slightest air of uncertainty”. Sickles then drafted a message to each of those three states’ party’s chairmen restating, “With your State sure for Hayes, he is elected. Hold your State.” What Sickles needed next was the clerk, Clancy, to forge Chairman Chandler’s signature on the messages. Clerk Clancy was skeptical of the scheme until the powerful and current Collector of the Port of New York, and future President of the USA, Chester A. Arthur appeared. Sickles posed his scheme to Arthur, and under Arthur’s direction, the deceptive telegrams were sent.

Rumors abound as early as 3:45am on the morning of November 8th and worried Democratic officials sought to allay their fears with a wired, urgent message to the Editor of the New York Times, “Answer at once!”. They were enquiring about the returns from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. Meanwhile by daylight, the Associated Press was reporting that both sides were declaring victory in Florida. Also, at the break of day, came back a reply to Sickles’ telegraph from the South Carolina Governor - “South Carolina is for Hayes”. Sickles sent more messages to his Florida and Louisiana operatives telling them, despite nearly every U.S. newspaper declaring Tilden the winner, “to hold your State.” And with that, Sickles duties were done.

The New York Times continued to sow seeds of doubt upon the election’s results with their morning headline - “A Doubtful Election”. The New York Herald followed with “The Result – What Is It? The Returns Too Meager.”

The Democrats counted firmly on 17 States and 184 Electoral College votes while the Republicans held 18 States and 166 Electoral College votes, leaving 3 States and 19 Electoral College votes in dispute. For the record, Tilden won all three disputed States with the initial returns, and some by a large margin like the 7757-vote majority in Louisiana. Fear was rampant, though, of what these states’ Returning Boards would finally do.

Tilden’s campaign manager, Abram Hewitt, drafted a memo encouraging Americans to assemble at various points around the country “to protest against the frauds, which have been committed, and to express their determination that the people should not be robbed of their choice for President.” Tilden was unmoved and refused to release the message stating, “it would be safe to trust to the sense of Justice, which sooner or later, would show itself in the public mind and make the consummation of the fraud impossible.” Privately, Tilden’s closest confident ranted, “Another civil war may be the consequence of this state of things and we may enter upon the next century under a different form of government from that of which for nearly a century we have been boasting.” And despite Tilden being bombarded with private wires to act, he remained unmoved. “Be satisfied with reflection that the people are too patriotic, too intelligent, too self-poised to allow anything perilous to be done that may disturb or destroy our peculiar form of government.”, Tilden replied confidently. Meanwhile, seven additional companies of soldiers were moved to protect Washington after rumors that the Democrats were arming themselves to march on the city and install Tilden by force.

Bayonet-wielding soldiers were also beginning to camp around the capitols of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina as supporters from both sides arrived to review and oversee the vote certification. All three states’ Returning Boards set their deliberations for mid-November with an eye on a deadline of December 6th to certify their state’s votes. Each state followed a similar format. First, investigators would be dispatched to the counties where the Republican-led boards felt voters were coerced or threatened to vote the Democratic ticket. As an example, in Louisiana, 300 witnesses were rounded up by soldiers and brought before the board members to tell their tales of alleged Democratic abuse. After these hearings were conducted by each state’s commission, the board members would remove the overseers and go into a secret session.

Not surprisingly, some members of each state’s Returning Boards approached Tilden operatives seeking sizable bribes in exchange for their vote to confirm the Tilden vote count. Once again as an example, in Louisiana, a group of board members approached the Tilden campaign representative seeking $250,000 – one hundred thousand for both of the white members and twenty-five thousand for each of the two negro members. Despite these overtures, no bribery money was paid to any Returning Board members of any state.

The South Carolina Board’s final determination was to disregard two State Supreme Court orders and invalidate all votes from three Democrat-leaning counties, which gave Hayes a 7-vote margin in their Electoral College tally. Tilden previously held a 1-vote winning margin. The South Carolinian Board then adjourned placing them out of reach of further legal mandates. The Court issued warrants for the members’ arrest for contempt of court, but their stay behind bars was mitigated by a sympathetic magistrate, who simply released them from custody.

In Louisiana, their Reporting Board invalidated 15,623 votes, of which 13,211 were cast for Tilden. This action made Hayes the winner of their State. From the Board’s secret and final session, these results were released three days later citing systematic intimidation, murder and violence toward one class of voter as the reason for their decision.

The Florida Returning Board, meeting in secret session and protected by armed guards, tossed more than 1800 Tilden votes to give Hayes a majority of 924 votes in their State’s final tally.

December 6th arrived and in 38 State Capitols across the country, the Electoral College vote took place. In 34 of the 38 States, the votes tallied as per on election night. In the three aforementioned States, plus Oregon, two separate election certificates were filed. Not counting the 4 aberrant States, Tilden still had 184 votes and Hayes 165. The remaining 22 votes were mired in contradiction by separate election certificates having been signed by various governors, governors-presumptive, secretaries of states or as in one instance, signed by nobody at all. Through all of this, nothing had been decided.

At this point a frustrated Tilden lashed out, “Our Presidential Election has been subverted by a false count of votes cast by Presidential Electors, found on a substitution of pretended votes known at the time to be fraudulent or forced and to have been manufactured for that particular use.” Tilden feared that his country had become “a bad copy of the worst government of the worst ages.”

The question then became, what would the Senate Majority Leader, Thomas Ferry, do as Acting President of The U.S. Senate? This is normally a role given to the Vice President, but Grant’s VP, Henry W. Wilson, had died the previous year, so Ferry had been filling in since then. Ferry and the other Senators were unsure if the 12th Amendment to the Constitution meant that he was supposed to open the Electoral College votes and count them, or was this just a ceremonial role he had signed up for? And in a situation like this, where there were two different sets of votes from four states, was he supposed to declare which set of votes were to be counted and which ones to set aside? The Democrats wanted Ferry to perform the ceremonial role of simply opening the votes and announcing Tilden 185 Hayes 164. In this case, neither candidate having a majority of the 371 total, the contest then would be automatically thrown into the House of Representatives, where the Democrats held a majority and Tilden would surely win.

What actually transpired was this. Two competing resolutions, one from the Democratic House and the other from the Republican Senate passed each chamber one day after the arrival of the Electoral College votes. Each resolution created a “bipartisan” committee to study ways to resolve this mess. The House committee consisted of 4 Democrats and 3 Republicans and the Senate committee consisted of 4 Republicans and 3 Democrats. The deliberations began, but the two opposing candidates for president used this lull in the proceedings to take two opposite courses of action. The bookworm-ish Tilden dug into reams of legal research to prove legally his rightful claim as the President. Meanwhile, Hayes began to personally reach out to Congressmen who would ultimately be deciding his fate. Then, a twist in events occurred where it was agreed that both legislative committees would combine, now with an equal number of party members represented at the table. The design of this action was to select members for just one committee, a group who would then effectively choose the next President. After three days of vigorous debate, it was agreed that this new committee would consist of 5 Democratic Congressmen and Senators and, 5 Republican Congressmen and Senators, 2 Democrat Supreme Court Justices and 2 Republican Justices, and a fifth Justice who would be chosen by the other four Justices. All parties to this agreement had in mind an “Independent” Justice by the name of David Davis, to take up this fifth spot of the Electoral Committee. However, after the committee had been empaneled, Davis accepted the position to represent Illinois in the US Senate and therefore refused the nomination to be seated as the fifth Justice on the committee. In a scurry, the four seated Justices decided to choose the recently Grant-appointed Supreme Court Justice, Joseph P. Bradley, to take the final seat on the committee. Hayes’ campaign manager informed his boss that Bradley “was as safe as either of the other Republican Judges.”

The Electoral committee commenced with hearings, which droned on through February 6th, when it finally went into executive session for private deliberations. Not long after, the vote took place and the Committee voted along party lines to not receive any more evidence and no further investigations. The Democrats realized at this moment that the selection of Justice Bradley had tipped the scales in Hayes favor. On February 8th, the Electoral Commission awarded the contested votes from all four States to Hayes and he thereafter took up residence in the White House as the President of the United States of America.

Contested elections since 1876 have also occurred in 2000 and 2020. With all the angst and chatter surrounding this upcoming election, why has it recently become in vogue to assume this 2024 election will be contested too?

On October 27th, CNN released results from a poll where just over 30% of the registered voters said that Donald Trump will accept the results of the election and concede if he loses. 73% felt that Vice President Kamala Harris would accept an election loss. This is ominous and staggering to me, but don’t accept my “biased” opinion on this issue. Here’s what a New York Times Opinion Columnist, David French, wrote on October 24th about Trump’s election reversal dreams. “The legal arguments Donald Trump used to try to reverse the election outcome in 2020 have been decisively rejected and the legal loopholes he tried to open have been closed.” French goes on to explain how the Trump Team used the “Conspiracy Theory” to ignite rage that led to the “Coup Theory”, the actual legal mechanism for overturning the election. The Trump Team also arranged for slates of fake electors to be ready to cast ballots for Trump the instant that State Legislatures invalidated the original election results, French pens. The Electoral Count Act of 1887 gives any single Senator or Congressman the right to object to the certification of a state’s vote count. The Act does not define the grounds, though, for overturning a state’s election, and this is what gave the MAGA Team some hope that their scheme might work.

As we know, then Vice President Pence refused to play his part as Presiding Officer of the Senate and, Trump’s efforts failed because of this. French writes, “If Pence had declared Trump the victor, we would have potentially seen two different presidents sworn in on the same day.” French’s article goes into depth explaining how if Trump can once again persuade tens of millions of Americans that the election was stolen, his legal options have narrowed considerably.

French concludes his article by saying, “I want to be very clear – I'm not writing this to say that we have nothing to worry about in 2024. Sadly, legal reform might even make political violence more likely. Trump’s team knows that it’s now virtually impossible to reverse an election outcome through the Courts or Congress. They’ll file their frivolous lawsuits, of course, but they may believe that their last hope is in the streets ... I’d be surprised if the post-election period is entirely peaceful ... but nothing and no one can foreclosure the possibility of political violence. If Trump loses again, chaos is his last – and most dangerous – card to play.”

Wow! It’s hard to believe we’ve come to this, our place, in the annals of history. My opinion is, placing aside the patriotic platitudes (Duty – Honor – Country) that are espoused by all political parties and their loyalist supporters, let’s take a hard look at what our country has been, and where our nation can go from here, and reject the vain attempt of men who attempt to wield political power in this country at all cost.

#beckleysbooks #historical fiction #ohio history #19th century

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