1877
THE COMPROMISE OF 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was an informal agreement between Southern Democrats and allies of the Republican Rutherford Hayes to settle the result of the 1876 presidential election; it marked the end of the Reconstruction era.
Immediately after the presidential election of 1876, it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina—the only three states in the South with Reconstruction-era Republican governments still in power. As a bipartisan congressional commission debated the outcome early in 1877, allies of the Republican Party candidate Rutherford Hayes met in secret with moderate Southern Democrats to negotiate acceptance of Hayes’s election.
The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes’s victory on the condition that Republicans withdraw all federal troops from the South, thus consolidating Democratic control over the region. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 (or Compromise of 1876), Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic once again, effectively bringing an end to the Reconstruction era.
Since the early 1870s, support had been waning for the egalitarian policies of Reconstruction, a series of laws put in place after the Civil War to protect the rights of African Americans, especially in the South. Many Southern whites resorted to intimidation and violence to keep Blacks from voting and restore white supremacy in the region.
Beginning in 1873, a series of Supreme Court decisions limited the scope of Reconstruction-era laws and federal support for the so-called Reconstruction Amendments, particularly the 14th Amendment and 15 Amendment, which gave African Americans the status of citizenship and the protection of the Constitution, including the all-important right to vote.
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