Imagine an election jammed with tension … voter intimidation … threats of violence … and then after the vote, months of bitter dispute over the electoral votes of four divided states. The election of 1876 almost plunged the country back into civil war. Part of the stakes, says University of Maryland historian Michael Ross, was the course of Reconstruction, the Republican regime that posted federal troops in the old Confederacy to protect former slaves. Learn more about this election in Ross' book, "The Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era."