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Samuel Tilden's Lament

Music and Lyric by David W. Jacobsen
Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Rutherford Hayes is on my mind
Been robbed by circumstance and by time
I'm acting bitter, we all know why
Rutherford Hayes's job should be mine

Rutherford Hayes's job should be mine
I never got to make that great climb
A brief few years in Albany,
Largely forgotten by history

Rutherford Hayes

Down in Washington they made the deal
Trading favors, my fate they'd seal
Sold out the black man, gave up the fight
Gave him what was mine, it was my right

Rutherford Hayes

Notes:

This is the only song on Potus that isn't a first person narrative by a president, and the only one to use the president's name. Instead, it's from the perspective of the person who actually won the election. The election of 1876 was flat-out stolen. The electoral vote was contested under sketchy circumstances and ultimately, as would happen 124 years later, a small group of people in Washington D.C. decided who would get Florida's electoral votes. They very likely should have gone to Samuel Tilden, but a backroom deal to withdraw northern troops from the South, allowed for them along with a few other states, to go to Rutherford B. Hayes. Samuel Tilden is the only person to win an outright majority of the popular vote, while allegedly losing the Electoral College. H. Clinton, Gore, and Cleveland (1888) only won pluralities.

This was the first president song I wrote for this collection, and it is an obvious homage and reference to "Purple of Haze." It started as a joke on the Hendrix song, but developed from there.

From the album Potus
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