1876 by Gore Vidal

First published: 1976

Type of plot: Historical chronicle

Time of work: 1875-1877

Locale: New York City and Washington, D.C.

Principal Characters:

• Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, the novel’s narrator, a journalist and historian
• Emma, Schuyler’s daughter, who was reared in Europe and is visiting America for the first time
• John Day Apgar, Emma’s suitor
• James Bennett, Schuyler’s newspaper publisher
• William Cullen Bryant, a renowned American poet and newspaper editor
• Charles Nordhoff, a journalist
• William Sanford, a millionaire dabbler in politics
• Denise Sanford, William’s wife and a close friend to Emma
• Roscoe Conkling, a prominent Republican politician and a presidential aspirant
• James G. Blaine, Conkling’s Republican rival
• President Ulysses S. Grant, who is serving his second term
• Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate for President
• John Bigelow, Secretary of State in New York and Tilden’s supporter
• James Garfield, a Republican congressman

The Novel

1876 is written in the form of a journal that Charles Schuyler is keeping for himself. After a more than thirty-year absence, he is returning with his daughter to the United States, which is on the eve of its centennial year. The panic of 1873 (a monetary crisis initiated by the passage in that year of the Silver Act, which ended the coinage of silver and thus reduced the amount of currency in circulation) has wiped out his capital, and he is forced to solicit journalistic assignments and to secure a wealthy husband for his widowed daughter. His main aim is to help Samuel Tilden, governor of New York, get elected president, for which Schuyler hopes to be rewarded with a diplomatic post in France.

Schuyler is a self-described “Rip Van Winkle” who is awakening to what is, for him, a new country. Thus his journal is filled with commentary on the manners and morals of the populace, on the way that Americans speak, dress, neglect to bathe frequently enough, and so on. He is a Europeanized American who is alternately amused and irritated by the crudeness of the cultural and political climate. Mark Twain, for example, is viewed as a kind of professional roughneck whom Schuyler detests. Twain has “cunningly” played “the fool” for his own enormous profit and popularity, but in Schuyler’s view, Twain has also “come to hate himself, but lacks the courage either to crack the mirror or to change, if he could, that deliberately common face which it so faithfully reflects.” Corrupt politicians and businessmen conspire to defraud the public of millions, and thus Schuyler is confirmed in his support of Tilden’s candidacy as a reformer and as one of the few men in public life who is not afraid to expose corruption.

At the same time, Schuyler’s critique of America is tempered by his awareness of his own connivance in corruption. After all, he assiduously courts well-to-do New York families, such as the Apgars, who have eligible sons who might marry his daughter. He is troubled by his role as journalist, since that also means kowtowing to the powerful in order to gather information and commissions for more work. He prefers the guise of the historian who can afford to take a more impartial and objective view of politics and society. He is best known in Europe for his book, Paris Under the Commune.

As the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr (Schuyler is also the narrator of Vidal’s Burr, 1973), as a writer who has covered nearly a half-century of American and European history, and as a partisan deeply involved in the upcoming election, Schuyler is in a perfect position to bring a very complex consciousness to his descriptions of personalities and issues. Having compromised some of his own principles for money, Schuyler can tolerantly record the schemes of politicians such as James G. Blaine and show how they fit into a nation bent on efficiently consolidating its power and prosperity. As Schuyler says of Cornelius Vanderbilt,

it must be said in the old villain’s favour that before he managed through theft, violence, and fraud to put together his railroad empire, a passenger from New York City to Chicago was obliged to change trains seventeen times during the course of the journey.

Schuyler is hardly an apologist for capitalism, but he cannot gainsay the service that Vanderbilt has provided to the public any more than he can overlook “such a vast floating criminal class” and the “grinding poverty in grisly contrast to the awful richness of the sort of people” he has been seeing in New York. If he is not as fiercely dedicated to reform as his journalist colleague, Charles Nordhoff, Schuyler is a more aloof and therefore a more reliable observer of politics.

As the nation heads indifferently toward electing a new president, Schuyler and his daughter alternately court and criticize society. Emma is something of a Bonapartist and is attracted to politicians such as Blaine who are not bothered by the brokering of principles as long as they advance to higher offices of power. Schuyler, on the other hand, is allied to the legalistic Tilden, who would do more for the poor and bring order to the slipshod procedures of President Ulysses Grant’s corrupt government. Father and daughter, in other words, are excellent exemplars of the conflicts and contradictions that beset mid-century America.

The Characters

As is the case with all of Vidal’s historical novels, characters are vividly described and balanced carefully against one another. The women exhibit considerable wit and shrewdness. Emma is every bit as sly as any of the politicians in the book, withholding information from her father when she believes that it will hurt him and treating her fiance, John Apgar, tactfully even when it is clear that she is receiving this unimaginative man’s attentions for the sake of relieving Schuyler’s anxiety over her security. Similarly, Denise Sanford becomes Schuyler’s dear friend and confederate and Emma’s closest companion, for Denise has a subtle feel for the politics of human relationships that surpasses the rather dull or comic conventionality of most of the Americans Schuyler meets. Complicating the friendship of Denise, Emma, and Charles is the presence of William Sanford, an opportunist and intriguer whom Schuyler despises and yet must tolerate when it becomes clear that Emma’s happiness depends on the favors of Denise’s husband. Once again, the compromises of private life and politics are skillfully intertwined in Vidal’s fiction.

The historical figures, particularly James Garfield, stimulate Schuyler’s perplexity over American politics. On one hand, Garfield is well educated in the classics, argues from the standpoint of clearly articulated principles, and seems able to balance private and public interests. On the other hand, he is a part of the crass maneuvering that secures the presidency for Rutherford B. Hayes even though Tilden wins the popular vote by 250,000 votes.

As in Lincoln (1984), Ulysses Grant is something of a mystery. He appears deliberately to conceal his true nature. Thought to be inept by some, regarded as fundamentally uninterested in politics by others, Grant is, in Schuyler’s estimation, far from being the fool that others take him to be. On the contrary, while Grant practices politics and is probably aware of the corruption of his colleagues, he does not commit himself to any kind of public positions that would make him accountable for the failures of his administration.

James G. Blaine is Grant’s opposite, for he shamelessly courts popularity, makes deals with those who hold incriminating evidence against him, and wins an enormous following by ostentatiously exercising his forceful personality. Whereas Blaine ultimately fails to secure his party’s nomination for president because he has been involved in more financial scandals than even he can finesse, his rival Roscoe Conkling is denied the nomination because of his affair with a senator’s wife. Conkling is too much the preening politician to prevail in a Republican party that finally settles for a more demure, if obscure, candidate.

Critical Context

1876 is one of a series of novels by Vidal that provide a lively and incisive history of the American republic. It is less exciting than Burr and Lincoln because it lacks a dominant historical figure about whom events and themes naturally cluster. Yet Schuyler is a thoroughly convincing narrator, and his account of the election provides an exciting and instructive denouement of the novel. Although it is a historical fact that Tilden lost the election, and therefore it would seem impossible for there to be any suspense in a detailed recounting of his campaign, Vidal manages to devise a plausible, almost day-by-day, rendering of how Tilden almost won.

This devotion to the 1876 election is characteristic of Vidal’s effort as a historical novelist to show history in the making, to identify those moments when the past nearly turned in a direction different from its eventual outcome. There is, in other words, nothing inevitable about how history has developed. It might easily have been otherwise, Vidal implies, when he has Schuyler speak of Tilden’s “chance” to reject legalistic maneuvering in determining the winner of the presidential election. Tilden’s failure to act as the leader of his party and his reluctance to appear to be intervening with the legislative branch’s authority to determine who won the disputed election cost him all of the twenty disputed electoral votes—only one of which he needed to become president.

Without question, Gore Vidal is America’s premier historical novelist. He has adhered to the documentary record while debating the meaning of that record and the motivations of those who have promulgated the official history of the republic. As a result, there is in his historical novels a constant dialectic between fact and fiction that dramatizes history as a dialogue which is never finished, never definitive. Vidal’s work is the perfect antidote to pious versions of American history; it is impossible to become complacent about the idea of America as a fact of life, Vidal implies, when so much of it is a construct of the imagination.

Bibliography

Baker, Susan, and Curtis S. Gibson. Gore Vidal: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. The first full-length study to include Vidal’s most recent works. A biographical sketch precedes a general discussion of Vidal’s early writings, followed by critical discussions of individual novels. The discussions include sections on plot and character development, thematic issues, narrative style, and critical approaches. Includes an essay on 1876.

Goodman, Walter. “History as Fiction.” The New Leader 71 (May 16, 1988): 11-12. Vidal defends himself against critics who charge that his books are “unhistorical or antihistorical exercises.” Although Goodman believes that the harsh criticism is unwarranted, he argues that Vidal’s novels should “best be taken for what they are, which is something different from history.”

Parini, Jay, ed. Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. A collection of essays by various critics that covers the important works of Vidal’s career. An interesting overview that places Vidal’s historical fiction within the context of the entire body of his work.

Vidal, Gore. “The Importance of Being Gore.” Interview by Andrew Kopkind. The Nation 257 (July 5, 1993): 16-19. Vidal discusses the influence of his same-sex orientation on his work. Although he does not specifically discuss 1876, he gives examples from history where the sexual preference of certain important figures could have been a factor in determining the course of events.

Vidal, Gore. Interview by Jay Parini. The New England Review 14 (Fall, 1991): 93-101. Vidal talks about his career as a novelist and television scriptwriter. He cites writers who have influenced him, including Jonathan Swift and William Golding. He also shares his views on contemporary literary criticism. A revealing interview that offers valuable insight into Vidal’s artistic motivations.