[Illustration:  A MISSISSIPPI RIVER COTTON STEAMER.]

[Sidenote:  Failure of reconstruction. Source-Book, 349-351.]

456.  Anarchy in the South.—­Meantime reconstruction was not working well in the South.  This was especially true of Louisiana, Arkansas, and South Carolina.  In Louisiana, and in Arkansas also, there were two sets of governors and legislatures, and civil war on a small scale was going on.  In South Carolina the carpetbaggers and the negroes had gained control.  They stole right and left.  In other Southern states there were continued outrages on the negroes.  President Grant was greatly troubled.  “Let us have peace,” was his heartfelt wish.  But he felt it necessary to keep Federal soldiers in the South, although he knew that public opinion in the North was turning against their employment.  It was under these circumstances that the election of 1876 was held.

[Sidenote:  Election of 1876. Higginson, 331-334.]

[Sidenote:  The electoral commission.]

[Sidenote:  Hayes inaugurated, 1877.]

457.  Election of 1876.—­The Republican candidate was Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio.  He was a gallant soldier of the Civil War, and was a man of the highest personal character.  His Democratic opponent was Samuel J. Tilden of New York—­a shrewd lawyer who had won distinction as governor of the Empire State.  When the electoral returns were brought in, there appeared two sets of returns from each of three Southern states, and the vote of Oregon was doubtful.  The Senate was Republican, and the House was Democratic.  As the two houses could not agree as to how these returns should be counted, they referred the whole matter to an electoral commission.  This commission was made up of five Senators, five Representatives, and five justices of the Supreme Court.  Eight of them were Republicans and seven were Democrats.  They decided by eight seven that Hayes was elected, and he was inaugurated President on March 4, 1877.

[Sidenote:  Southern politics Higginson, 334-335.]

[Sidenote:  Troops withdrawn.]

458.  Withdrawal of the Soldiers from the South.—­The People of the North were weary of the ceaseless political agitation in the South.  The old Southern leaders had regained control of nearly all the Southern states.  They could not be turned out except by a new civil war, and the Northern people were not willing to go to war again.  The only other thing that could be done was to withdraw the Federal soldiers and let the Southern people work out their own salvation as well as they could.  President Hayes recalled the troops, and all the Southern states at once passed into the control of the Democrats.

[Illustration:  THE RUINS AFTER THE PITTSBURGH RIOTS.]

[Sidenote:  Panic and hard times.]

[Sidenote:  The Pittsburgh riots, 1877.]