Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction
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![]() On the night before President Grant's term expired, the Senate announced Hayes had been elected President. The New York Times of March 2 reported on how Hayes learned of his election on his way by train to Washington: ....Early this morning, before the train reached Baltimore, Gov. Hayes was informed by telegraph at one of the way stations of the completion of the Electoral count. The news created quite a jubilee among the Governor's friends on board the train, who congratulated him on his being able to enter the capital of the nation as the actual President-elect, with no further doubt resting upon his title to the office.... New York Times, March 2, 1877 After Hayes took office, he followed through in withdrawing the federal troops from the South. The Republican governments in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina collapsed, bringing Reconstruction to a formal end and the eventual imposition throughout the South of racial segregation and the disfranchisement of black voters. Southern blacks were forced to make their living working the land under the sharecropping system, which offered little opportunity for economic advancement. Politically, the Compromise of 1877 also led to the Democratic Party supplanting the Republicans in control of the state governments and Congressional representation of the southern states. Democratic dominance in the Congress, along with the power of seniority as long-serving southerners ascended to key leadership positions, also served to block civil rights measures for well into the next century. Hayes as president The controversy over the election of Hayes continued to impact his presidency, with his critics deriding him as "Rutherfraud Hayes" and addressing him as "Your Fraudulency." But he did attempt to address growing concern over political corruption, supporting civil service reform which was later enacted in the Pendleton Act of 1883. and he saw to the enforcement of the Resumption of Specie Act, which placed the United States back on the gold standard. His pragmatic, measured response to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877—remaining neutral between strikers and management, and only allowing the limited use of federal troops to keep the peace when state or local officials requested assistance—probably saved lives and property. By the end of his term, economic prosperity had returned. A supporter of a single-term presidency, he declined to run for reelection. |