School children are taught to learn the names of all the Presidents of the United States, of which, honestly, President Samuel Tilden is not one of them. In fact, he did run for President, and somehow despite receiving the popular vote of nearly 51% of those Americans that voted in 1876, as well as receiving 184 electoral votes, in an election in which 185 electoral votes would be good enough to become President, somehow Tilden lost; as the four States that had disputed election returns, ended up having all of their electoral votes going to the eventual winner, Rutherford B. Hayes. To believe, somehow that this result was a fair reflection of the votes so made during that Presidential election, would be false, for truly the victory that should been Tilden's was not.
This reflects, rather sadly, that quite frankly, national politics is a very dirty game and has been for a very long time. The most probable reason why candidate Hayes, became President Hayes, unfairly over Tilden, is so that the Reconstruction would be terminated in the South and therefore the South would be run, essentially by the very same people, or type of people, that ran the south before the Civil War, that cost the lives of over 620,000 soldiers, and destroyed families, and businesses, all under the misguided notion that somehow it was right for certain privileged people to own other unfortunate people, as if they were their own personal property.
So that, who wins and who loses national elections, most definitely makes a real difference and when those that have the temerity and are traitorous enough to rise up against their own country, in order to protect their peculiar institution, at all costs, so as to make their profit off of the blood, sweat, and tears of those who owed them absolutely nothing, not even an honest day's work, is unequivocally wrong.
The upshot of President Hayes victory was essentially the final nail in the coffin of Reconstruction, and thereby the resurrection of the Southern white cause to run the south as if it was the personal domain of the white slave-owning ruling class, which is indeed what subsequently, happened. This essentially meant that the side that caused the Civil War, and the same side that lost the Civil War, did not really lose the war, but merely lost the battle of a war that continues perhaps even until this very day; for they ended up back in the seat of southern power with all of the money, all of the property, and all of the justice, in their unjustified control.
Far too many good men gave their lives so that this nation would have a new birth of liberty, justice, and equality for all, based not upon the color of a given man's skin, nor based upon whether a person was born into privilege or not, but based solely upon the character of that man. Whether that country exists in actuality in the here and now, is something that is in evidence by all that surrounds us, day-by day.