Clemens celebrated an early electoral college count, which gave Hayes the 185 electoral votes necessary for election, to Tilden’s 184 (including six from Connecticut). This result was challenged, however, once it became clear that Tilden had won the popular vote and that he claimed 20 of the electoral votes—from Oregon, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida— initially tallied for Hayes. The resulting dispute led to a congressional act, signed by President Grant on 29 January 1877, creating an electoral commission consisting of five senators, five representatives, and five Supreme Court judges, to investigate the matter, with its decision to be final unless both houses of Congress rejected it. The commission, on which Republicans outnumbered Democrats 8 to 7, began its investigation of the contested electoral votes on 1 February 1877. On 28 February, by a strictly partisan vote, it awarded all of them to Hayes. On 2 March 1877, two days before the presidential term was to begin, the House of Representatives rejected the commission’s decision, but the Senate accepted it and Hayes was declared the winner. Although Clemens was jubilant when he thought Hayes had won a clear-cut victory, it is not known how he felt by the time the electoral commission had done its work. Recalling the episode thirty years later, however, he called Hayes’s election a “cold-blooded” swindle (see 11 Oct 76 to Howellsclick to open link, n. 9; “Hayes Elected,” Hartford Courant, 9 Nov 76, 2; “The Battle Won,” New York Times, 9 Nov 76, 1; DAH , 1:286–87; Annual Cyclopaedia 1877 , 163–221, 747–48).

Howells’s responses to this telegram and the preceding one, if any, have not been found.