♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: I'm pleased to be in conversation today with Dana Bash and David Fisher, the co-authors of "America's Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History."

We're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium at the New York Historical.

Thank you both for being here.

BASH: Thanks for having us.

RUBENSTEIN: Dana, we often see you interviewing other people, and, uh, you've been at CNN for how many years?

BASH: 32 years.

RUBENSTEIN: 32 years?

BASH: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And what was the highlight of your time there so far?

Are you... BASH: Oh my gosh.

RUBENSTEIN: Presidential debates or... BASH: Yeah, I mean, that was pretty big.

Presidential debates, uh, for sure.

Uh, I, you know, I feel so lucky that I, I've covered the White House.

I covered, uh, Capitol Hill for years.

I've covered lots of campaigns, international stories, uh, so it's hard to sort of pinpoint one.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, and so, David, you have written more than 80 books, so do you eat?

BASH: It's amazing.

RUBENSTEIN: Do you do any sleep?

How do you, how do you, how do you have time to write more than 80 books?

FISHER: One of the things I've been able to do is spend time with leaders in really every profession, in politics, in science, in sports.

And, you know, if it were a job, it would be tough, but it's not.

It's, it's what I love to do.

Um, it's what I'm comfortable doing.

Um, and I always think there's more I need to know.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about the book.

And to set the stage, um, Abraham Lincoln, uh, had a plan for Reconstruction.

And under that plan, um, more or less, uh, you could come back into the Union if you, basically swore allegiance to the Constitution.

And, uh, 10% of the voters in a state were, would agree to be loyal to the Constitution, that state could become, uh, a state again in the Union.

And that was his idea, but he was assassinated and succeeded by Andrew Johnson, who didn't really agree with a lot of what Lincoln wanted.

And so, the Reconstruction effort that Lincoln had to bring the, the South back into the Union didn't really quite work out.

And so, let's talk about the example you're, you've put in your book.

Talk about New Orleans and Louisiana.

Why is New Orleans so unusual a place and was, what was its role before the Civil War and right after the Civil War as an important city in the country?

FISHER: Well, New Orleans, first of all, as a port, was enormously important.

And as it was an economic powerhouse in, before it was 50 states, before it was a continental country.

And what happened during the Civil War is the Union captured New Orleans, but not Louisiana.

And so, you had this Union bastion and all these Northerners coming down during the war, and they freed the slaves.

And so, you had freed men in the New Orleans area, but still slavery existing outside New Orleans.

So it was, uh, um, it was almost a northern bastion in a sea of Confederacy.

BASH: Yeah, like Shreveport was, the Confederate capital at the time.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

BASH: And, uh, yeah.

I mean, it was almost like modern day, you have the kind of the blue dot in, in the cities in, in red states.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so, uh, New Orleans is a southern state, and in the south, because of Lincoln's assassination, uh, many of the southern White leaders who had been owners of plantations or leaders in the Confederate Army, they came back to their home state and wanted to recapture a lot of, uh, the power they'd had and money they had before.

And they didn't really like the idea that people used to work for them as slaves were no longer slaves.

So, in 1872, there's an election for governor in, uh, Louisiana.

And, um, before that, who was running Louisiana before 1872?

Was it the Republicans or the Democrats?

FISHER: Well, Louisiana or New Orleans?

RUBENSTEIN: Well, both... FISHER: Very different.

General Sheridan... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

FISHER: ...was, uh, running the state, basically, uh, running the whole south.

Um, but a lot of carpetbaggers fled down.

Uh, this was where they were gonna make their fortune.

New Orleans was a very successful city, a lot of money to be made.

And one of them was a 26-year-old Northerner named Henry Warmoth, who was one of the most fascinating political figures I had ever, I had never heard of him... BASH: Fascinating.

FISHER: ...until we got involved in this.

RUBENSTEIN: And he's elected governor at one point?

FISHER: He was elected governor.

RUBENSTEIN: And, and he was elected governor in what, 1870 or... FISHER: 1872.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, 1872, he's elected governor.

He is a very young man and... BASH: And as a Republican.

RUBENSTEIN: And Republican, and Republican then meant you believed that, uh, freed slaves should have some rights.

BASH: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And that you believe then that the, um, the people who were coming back from the Confederacy were people that shouldn't get all the rights back that they had before, and there should be some punishment, uh, I think their view was for some of the people came back who'd, who disaffected from the country.

BASH: Yeah, it was literally the party of Lincoln.

RUBENSTEIN: Right, okay.

BASH: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he gets, uh, elected governor, and then what happens?

Is it peaceful or... FISHER: ...that's where we get into the whole theme of the book, and it resonates throughout history.

It isn't who votes.

It's who counts the votes.

(audience laughter) And this was where we saw it in ways that are unimaginable, but in fact, they're still doing exactly the same things to prohibit people from voting.

There was violence.

There was, uh, uh, moving the ballots around.

There was registration, prohibiting people from registering, everything that both parties are accused of doing today was part of the process that it ended with Warmoth being the governor.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he gets elected governor.

He's a very young man.

And does he say, "I wanna be governor and do the right thing for the state?"

Or does he say, "I wanna make a lot of money?"

BASH: Well, he said he wants to be governor and do the right thing for the state.

And he realized that, in politics in Louisiana in 1872, he could make a lot of money.

And so, he proceeded to, but, much like other, um, leaders in the history of the planet, it was about money, but it was about power.

I mean, this guy was almost a larger-than-life figure.

People loved to love him, and they loved to hate him.

He was very divisive, but he was sort of... a, a very big personality.

But once he became governor, he understood that he had to amass as much power as he could by changing the rules of the game, changing things that seemed really mundane to most other elected officials, like, well, a lot of states called the canvassing board.

They're the ones who... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BASH: ...count the, count the votes.

So, he realized early on that he had to get his patronage, big time, the spoils system, get his people into these systems and into these... RUBENSTEIN: But the... BASH: ... otherwise not well-known... RUBENSTEIN: I see.

BASH: ...boards.

RUBENSTEIN: But, but when he got elected governor... he started controlling things so he could get re-elected.

BASH: So, he could get re-elected, but also so he could, so he could control things that are far beyond what he... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

BASH: ...constitutionally was supposed to do.

FISHER: He actually, the law in Louisiana was a governor was one term.

BASH: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: One term, okay.

And that, was it, a two... FISHER: So, he immediately went to his people and changed it... BASH: He changed the law.

FISHER: ...so he could run again.

RUBENSTEIN: And what year?

Was it a two-year term?

FISHER: It was a four-year term.

RUBENSTEIN: Four-year term, so he gets elected initially in 1870... FISHER: Two.

RUBENSTEIN: Two.

And then, uh, is there a lot of violence when he gets elected, or any people killed as a result of this as, as he's getting elected or not?

BASH: Well, when he was elected, no, but it was the next election.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so... FISHER: It was, it, it grew.

There was always violence.

And the question of who voted and how they voted, and would Blacks be allowed to vote, and which parties would they belong to... Eventually, in Louisiana, you had four political parties, all offshoots of each other, which led to the presidential elections later on, where you had two Republicans running.

So, the violence started to prevent people from voting, and it led to something, uh, called the Colfax Massacre, which, I have to admit, I had not heard about.

And it's one of the most brutal stories in American history.

And these were people who voted, who wanted to vote.

And White supremacists, uh, was called the White League, but it was really the Ku Klux Klan, went and slaughtered 150 Black people.

They'd started with a battle, but then it became a massacre.

They captured them, and they killed them.

They shot them, and they shot them in the most brutal ways.

They would put two of them together to see if a bullet would go through both of them and... BASH: And they, they burned a lot of them alive.

RUBENSTEIN: In what year does that occur?

FISHER: 1873.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, okay, so... FISHER: Late 1873.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, he's elected governor in 1872.

FISHER: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And then he's got ways he's trying to make money.

He's trying to, uh, retain power.

But can he run again in 1876?

BASH: He, he changed the law, but then there was backlash on a lot of things that he did.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so, he didn't run.

BASH: So, he didn't end up running.

He was impeached, uh, as, as governor.

And then, by the time the upper chamber of the legislature got around to it, he was no longer in office, so they said that they couldn't actually go through with it.

But he decided that he wanted to be senator.

But back then, US senators were not elected.

They were appointed by the governor.

So, he was still, even though he wasn't running again for governor, he was pulling the strings.

RUBENSTEIN: But he had a candidate he had wanted to be governor.

BASH: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And did that person get elected in 1876?

BASH: No one got elected.

RUBENSTEIN: Oh.

FISHER: You have to back up a little to... BASH: Yeah, let's back up.

FISHER: ...1874, the midterm elections, which were chaos, and nobody knew who won.

And in fact, you had the Republican legislature, which was the legal legislature meeting every day.

And you had a Democratic legislature meeting every day.

There's a great story about two judges literally fighting over the chair in the courtroom.

Who would be the judge?

RUBENSTEIN: And does the federal government do anything to get involved?

BASH: Yes, finally.

And I just wanna actually just take a step back about the fraud.

You know, today, in today's times, there are allegations of fraud.

So, there's fraud, and then there's fraud.

Back then, there was actual real fraud, like beyond anything that we, in modern times, can imagine, much of which David was explaining, but it was happening on both sides.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

BASH: It really was.

So, it was truly impossible to know who really won.

And so, that was, in part, the reason why the federal government got involved.

Number one, to send troops to keep the peace because things got so violent, and number two, to try to calm things down in the hopes that the people of Louisiana would find a way to figure out who's governing them, because things got so bad that they... I mean, they weren't picking up the trash.

They weren't, um, uh, collecting taxes.

The basic functions of government ceased to happen.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so then, how does that get resolved?

Is some, the federal government sends in troops, or does that, some federal court make a decision?

FISHER: It doesn't get resolved.

BASH: It doesn't.

RUBENSTEIN: Right, okay.

BASH: There was a commission in Congress.

Even back then, they were making commissions in Congress to try to figure things out that, shockingly, did not work.

RUBENSTEIN: So.

FISHER: What happened was the presidential election of 1876, because there were, in Louisiana, two sets of electors who went to Washington... It was four states that actually sent two sets of electors.

There were not enough votes cast to elect a president.

And Tilden, who was running against Hayes, was one vote short, one electoral vote short.

And oddly enough, there was a big debate over what right the vice president had in counting the votes.

Is it just ceremonial, or does he actually, can he actually decide who votes?

BASH: And the reason why there were four states that sent two slates of electors is because the problems that we just described in Louisiana spread because other southern states said, Oh, okay.

So that's the way we do it.

That's the way we, the White supremacists... tried to keep it in.

RUBENSTEIN: Some background... BASH: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: ...Lincoln is assassinated in, uh, 1865... BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Succeeded by Andrew Johnson.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: He doesn't run for re-election, and he is succeeded by, uh, Ulysses S. Grant... BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: ...who serves two terms.

You were allowed to serve more at the time, but he chose, because he wasn't that popular toward the end, not to run for a third term.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: So, the Republicans nominate Rutherford B. Hayes.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Who was the governor of Ohio, and the Democrats nominate Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: The only time ever we've had two sitting governors, uh, in a campaign for president.

And so, they have this election, and they don't know who really wins because, in the southern states, if I understand it... BASH: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: ...particularly Louisiana, it was unclear who really won.

BASH: Right.

But it was, a-a-a-and again, at that point, there were four states it was unclear who won because there was so much fraud because it was about voter suppression against the new Black voters.

RUBENSTEIN: Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon.

BASH: Exactly.

RUBENSTEIN: Alright, I think, uh, Tilden gets like 184 electoral votes, and, um, and, and Hayes has like 160-some.

But if he gets all the disputed votes from those four states, he could get... BASH: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: ...185 electoral votes.

And so, they have to have a commission to figure out what's going on.

BASH: Another commission.

This is not the same commission as the earlier commission.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so, what happens?

The commission does... BASH: They... RUBENSTEIN: ...the right thing and... BASH: This is... FISHER: They make a deal.

BASH: A backroom deal, and they agree that Hayes would be president, who was the Republican.

And in exchange for giving the Republican the White House, the agreement was, wink and a nod, that the federal troops would be pulled out of the South.

RUBENSTEIN: And when the federal troops are pulled out, there's nobody to enforce the laws.

BASH: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And as a result, what happens in Louisiana and the other southern states?

BASH: Jim Crow for 100 years.

But I wanna go back to, uh, what David was talking about, this Colfax Massacre, because, first of all, just to also say, did you know about the Colfax Massacre?

RUBENSTEIN: I did not.

BASH: Okay.

I, for me, I'm sure this is true for a lot of people, particularly in the North.

It was Civil War, Civil War, Civil War in history class, and then it was, and then Reconstruction happened, and then post-Reconstruction.

We never really learned about the things in Reconstruction and why Reconstruction ended.

And there were lots of reasons, but one of the most important reasons was, it goes back to this Colfax Massacre because the federal government was trying to find a way to find justice for these 150 mostly Black men who were murdered.

They knew that there was not really a chance that the courts in the state of Louisiana were gonna convict these people.

BASH: So, they thought, "Aha, we're gonna new, use the new federal laws, the amendments to the Constitution that protect the civil rights of, uh, of freed slaves of, of, of Blacks, and we're gonna try them not for murder but for, for civil rights infringements."

Because of that, it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States.

And in a crucial decision called Cruikshank... FISHER: U.S.

v Cruikshank.

BASH: U.S.

v Cruikshank, and Cruikshank was one of the murderers.

The Supreme Court said the federal government has no role in state elections and, and beyond elections, and so that's really what set the stage for Jim Crow.

So, if you think about all of the arguments that you heard, particularly in the '60s as, as the Civil Rights Movement really started to take hold, you heard so much about states' rights.

That goes back to Cruikshank because the federal government got out of the business of protecting the civil rights of people in the South.

RUBENSTEIN: And there's no federal troops there.

BASH: For 100 years, almost when, uh, the federal troops went back to try to protect.

RUBENSTEIN: So, on the commission that is supposed to decide the presidential election of 1876... FISHER: That commission did not exist.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

FISHER: It was not written, it was all... BASH: Smoke and mirrors.

FISHER: ...done secretly.

Everybody denied... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

FISHER: ...uh, participating in it.

There were 15 members, seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and one supposed independent.

And that one person decided who the President of the United States... RUBENSTEIN: Did he... FISHER: ...was going to be.

RUBENSTEIN: Did he stay on the commission, or did he stay, get off?

FISHER: And the interesting thing is, before the, the person who did it, they picked somebody else who was at great prestige, and the Republicans told him that if he sided with them, they would give him the Senate seat from Illinois.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

FISHER: So, he took the Senate seat and withdrew from the commission.

You know, you talked about bribery.

They, uh, 50,000, $100,000 in 1872.

You're talking about millions of dollars in bribes.

At one point, Warmuth made a big deal about turning down a $50,000 bribe.

And the person who supposedly offered, offered it to him said, "Well, of course, he turned it down.

He demanded 75,000."

(laughter).

I mean, that's how... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

FISHER: That's how the... BASH: That's how things worked.

FISHER: That's just politics.

RUBENSTEIN: So, what happens ultimately is the Presidential Electoral Commission votes for Rutherford B. Hayes... BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: ...even though the popular vote was in favor of Tilden.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Tilden had a majority of the popular vote.

I think it was over 50%.

So, he loses the election.

Uh, Hayes becomes president, and then, uh, he pulls the troops out, and that's really what began the end of Reconstruction as we know it, and really, the beginning of the Jim Crow laws.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And where'd the name Jim Crow come from, by the way?

FISHER: Jim Crow was a minstrel performer.

Um, the minstrel shows were just starting to get popular in the South at this point, and Jim Crow was a, a leading Black figure.

RUBENSTEIN: So, as a result of all the, uh, violence that goes on in Louisiana, a result of these 1872 elections, 1874, 1876, how many people lost their lives?

BASH: Oh, my God.

Yeah, I don't even think we know, thousands.

FISHER: Nobody knows.

BASH: Nobody knows.

FISHER: Nobody knows.

The estimate's 15,000, 25,000, because you're talking about a period of eight years, um, where hangings were, uh, common.

People just disappeared.

You know, when we call it the most violent election, we're not just limiting it to that period.

We're talking about what happened in the next 100 years, that this, in fact, deprived a huge segment of the population of their rights for 100 years.

And the atrocities that went on, I mean, the co-Colfax was one, but there was the Coushatta Massacre.

There was... you could, you can trace it through Southern history.

RUBENSTEIN: Had Lincoln lived, would Reconstruction have actually worked or not?

BASH: I mean... RUBENSTEIN: Nobody knows?

BASH: Who knows?

Who knows?

But I mean, that's, I mean, look, you can do that throughout, throughout all of history.

But even with this, I mean, imagine if the guy hadn't taken the bribe to go be the, um, Senator from Illinois.

Imagine if, imagine if.

I mean, things could have been so different with just one little change in somebody's approach to something, in somebody's attitude towards something.

And maybe Jim Crow would've happened because another event would've taken place that didn't have to take place.

But that was one of the things that really struck me as we learned more about this is that period of time could have gone so differently.

There could have been real reconciliation.

I mean, obviously, everything was raw.

The North was really; they were upset.

So many, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of people were killed.

Same with the South.

Um, the South, they were, their whole economy was upside down.

There are incredibly racist people there.

But imagine if there was a figure, maybe it would've been Lincoln.

Maybe it would've been somebody else.

Imagine if there was a figure or figures who could have found a way towards recon- uh, reconciliation.

What a different country we would be in post-Civil War.

RUBENSTEIN: So, of the people you wrote about in this book, are there anybody, people you admire, or, eh, everybody was a scoundrel?

FISHER: You know, as a writer who looks for stories, there's just great stories.

And, and this was a, a... it wasn't just Colfax.

Have you ever heard of the Battle of Liberty Place?

RUBENSTEIN: No.

FISHER: Uh, i-it, astonishing.

This was a pitched battle with thousands of people with machine guns in the streets of New Orleans.

BASH: Mm-hmm.

FISHER: It's a part of American history that impacted this country in an extraordinary way that... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

FISHER: ...I certainly didn't know about.

BASH: And a lot of people I've talked to, a lot of people from Louisiana and, um, and in New Orleans, in particular, they didn't really learn about this in school.

I mean, they know about the Battle of Liberty Place 'cause there are, if you go to New Orleans, there are statues there, which don't really depict what actually happened because... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

BASH: ...they were erected by... RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, today... BASH: ...the people who were in charge.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, now that you've done this book, it's a best-selling book.

You have another collaboration in the works?

FISHER: We do.

BASH: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Can you tell us what it's about?

Or it's a secret?

BASH: Can we talk about it?

FISHER: Sure.

BASH: It's the most consequential elections in human history.

The, the elections that have taken place, not just in America, but around the world, and going back to the beginning of the time, basically, that we know about, that have fundamentally impacted and changed the course of history.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Are any of them U.S.

Presidential elections?

FISHER: 1796, which, uh, was the first state's rights, versus federal powers of the federal government in 1860.

But there have been other consequential elections.

We think Ronald Reagan's election as governor, two years after Barry Goldwater had been defeated, created a conservative movement that had ceased to exist with the defeat of Goldwater.

And there was, so there was lots of elections around the world.

RUBENSTEIN: So, today, um, how has, um, your job as a CNN anchor changed from the time you first started?

Is it harder to cover political figures and presidents than it used to be, or easier?

BASH: It's harder in some ways, easier in other ways, which it sounds like a cop-out answer, but I'll explain.

It's easier... I'll start with that, because of the internet and because it's much easier to get information about where they are, what they're doing, who's, who's i-in the White House, talking to them, um, you know, who's, who's around them.

Um, I can actually text people who are there.

Whereas before, you had to, like, pick up the phone, a hard-line phone 'cause cell phones were just starting to exist when I started, um, and get either their assistant on the phone.

And I have much more direct access to people because they have phones.

It's harder for so many reasons.

Um, one of the reasons is because of how fractured our media is, and that actually goes back to the book because one of the things that I never really thought through is objective media is a pretty recent phenomenon.

Back then, the reason why all of this, um, was available, and we could really see what each side was thinking, is because the papers, and there were many papers, were all partisan.

And so, Henry Warmoth and, and, and McEnery, they were all getting their information out through their partisan newspapers, through the partisan media.

And, at the time, the big innovation was the telegraph, so they could do it fast.

RUBENSTEIN: It's a really interesting book.

Uh, you have a great combination.

I'll look forward to your next book.

BASH: Thank you.

RUBENSTEIN: And, uh, thank you very much for being here.

We've been in conversation with Dana Bash and David Fisher about their new book, "America's Deadliest Election."

Thank you very much.

BASH: Thank you, David.

FISHER: Thank you.

♪ (music plays through the credits) ♪