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History is lost on prosecutors, it's lost on all these debate shows, it's lost among lawyers who talk about January 6th, "Oh, it was an insurrection." No, it wasn't. We've had contentious presidential elections in the past, I mean really contentious. Some have almost led to civil wars, one did. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and his chosen vice presidential pick, Aaron Burr, tied for first place. Because back then, the ballots were separate for president and vice president, even though they might run in the same party. And it was 73 to 73 electors, due to a communication error among Democratic Republican electors, or a Burr led conspiracy depending on whom you believe. In other words, Burr was disloyal to Jefferson. Jefferson was really running against Adams at the time, but he only got 65 electoral college votes. So the first of only two times in American history, the election went to the House of Representatives. They had over 30 votes back and forth, and back and forth, the House was to choose the next president, Alexander Hamilton had enormous power. He disliked Jefferson immensely, but he hated Aaron Burr. So finally what happens is Alexander Hamilton, of course he was the first Treasury Secretary, he turned the tide by lobbing his fellow Federalists to throw their support to Jefferson. A couple years later, the famous duel that took place between Burr and Hamilton, where Burr killed Hamilton and then Burr fled the country. It seems a little more contentious than what took place on January 6th in the last election, but there's more here. Let's take a look. 1824, this was a doozy. There were four candidates, they were all the Federalist party, had dissolved, they were all Democrat Republicans. Then there was Andrew Jackson, you might recall, the hero of the war of 1812. He won the popular vote by fewer than 39,000 votes. Captured 99 electoral votes. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, he took 84 electoral votes, came in second, 41 votes, went for William Crawford, he was the Treasury Secretary, and 37 for the House Speaker, Henry Clay. So no candidate earned a majority of the electoral votes. The election again went to the House of Representatives. Clay was eliminated, he was the lowest vote-getter. Only three candidates can be considered, but the House still controlled. After a month of back and forth negotiations, it went on and on. Henry Clay's supporters threw their weight behind John Quincy Adams, even though he had gotten less votes than Jackson, less electoral college votes than Jackson. So Adams would become president and he would choose Henry Clay as his Secretary of State. Soon after his inauguration, this enraged Andrew Jackson. He resigns from the Senate, he called it a corrupt bargain, he said the whole election was a fraud, and then he would go back and run again the next time around and he would defeat Adams. But this almost led, almost led to a civil war. Then 1860, presidential election wasn't just contentious, as is pointed out, it tore the nation apart. Abraham Lincoln got about 39% of the popular vote. He was running against Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democrat from Illinois, they were both from Illinois actually. Also, running for president was John Breckenridge, as well as John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln won, as I said, about 39% of the vote, but took most of the electoral college votes in the North and California and Oregon. Breckenridge won the electoral votes in most of the South, along with Maryland, Delaware. Bell won Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia, Douglas captured only Missouri, despite finishing second in the popular vote. You had a real mess. Just weeks after Lincoln's victory, South Carolina voted to secede. Six more southern states followed, forming the Confederate States of America in February 1861, and they elected Democrat Jefferson Davis as their president. I would say that was pretty contentious, America, but it also gave us Abraham Lincoln. Here's the biggest, 1876. Democrat Governor Samuel Tilden of New York won 250,000 more votes in the popular vote than Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican. He also got 19 more electoral college votes, but Tilden was still one electoral vote, one, short of the required 185 majority, and 20 votes remained uncounted. In Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, why? Because their votes were too close to call. Each party accused the other of fraud. And yet in Oregon, one elector was declared illegal and replaced with controversial results. So you had a crisis here, the greatest electoral crisis in American history. And threats of another Civil War was 1876. So what happened here? Congress established a 15-member commission of senators, congressmen, and Supreme Court justices. So they said, you know, we can't free this out. Let's have a commission. So this is about as far as from the popular vote in the electorate as you can get. But keep something in mind. Congress is making all these decisions. Not a Department of Justice, not a prosecutor. In every one of these cases where fraud is alleged, where there's lobbying, where there's pressure on state legislatures, and so forth and so on, it's the give and take of politics. And Congress has the final say under the Constitution. Congress and nobody else. So they set up this 15-member commission of senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, seven Republicans, seven Democrats, one independent, ultimately to decide the election. After that swing vote turned to Hayes, that one controversial elector goes to Hayes. Hayes, even though he is 20 Electoral College votes behind, even though he got 250,000 less votes than did Tilden, it goes to Hayes. And so what does the commission say? Well, the swing guy went for Hayes. We'll give the other 19 Electoral College votes to Hayes. So the commission picks the president, Rutherford B. Hayes, who had the less popular vote, the less Electoral College vote, and they threw the 20 Electoral College votes remaining to Hayes. And after the Democrats, they said, you know what, we don't have to put up with this. We're going to filibuster this and block the official vote count that's going to take place. So what did they do after that? Well, they met at a hotel in Washington in February 1877, and they worked out a compromise. The Democrats would accept Hayes' victory, provided that Hayes removed all federal troops from the South. The compromise consolidated Democrat control of the region, the South, effectively ended Reconstruction, reversing the gains that African-Americans had made during the post-Civil War era. So the Democrats not only did that, they undermined the efforts that had been undertaken by a Republican president earlier, Ulysses S. Grant, to send the U.S. Army into the South to destroy the Klan. All that changed as a result of the 1876 election. Now, later, they'd pass the statute to try and work all these things out. But it's amazing. Nobody was indicted, Mr. Producer. Nobody was charged with anything. It's just incredible that we have the election of 2000. Al Gore, George W. Bush, all came down to Florida, a couple of hundred votes. Al Gore brings the first lawsuit, and it becomes litigation hell. Different districts throughout the state, forum shopping by both sides, trying to find judges that would uphold this part of the law, that part of the law. Meanwhile, the radical left-wing Democrat controlled Florida Supreme Court steps in and keeps changing the law, changing the law, changing the law to try and get Gore over the finish line. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court steps in and says that's enough. That's enough. The voting has to stop at some point. The Supreme Court of Florida can't keep changing the rules. They are destroying one person, one vote, the entire concept. And so George Bush winds up being the winner. And he wins the Electoral College by five votes. He also lost the popular vote by over half a million votes. That was a very contentious election, and we all know it.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.