meaning measures benefiting particular groups,
whether labor unions or railroad companies or farm
organizations. Nearly all had supported Reconstruction
at the start, but by the early 1870s most were including
southern blacks among the special interests that ought
to be left to their own devices. Their observation of
urban corruption and of unrestricted immigration led
them to disparage universal suffrage, which, one of
them said, “can only mean in plain English the govern-
ment of ignorance and vice.”
The Democrats also nominated Greeley in
1872, although he had devoted his political life to
flailing the Democratic party in the Tribune. That
surrender to expediency, together with Greeley’s
temperamental unsuitability for the presidency,
made the campaign a fiasco for the reformers.
Grant triumphed easily, with a popular majority of
nearly 800,000.
Nevertheless, the defection of the Liberal
Republicans hurt the Republican party in Congress.
In the 1874 elections, no longer hampered as in the
presidential contest by Greeley’s notoriety and
Grant’s fame, the Democrats carried the House of
Representatives. It was clear that the days of military
rule in the South were ending. By the end of 1875
only three southern states—South Carolina, Florida,
and Louisiana—were still under Republican control.
The Republican party in the South was “dead as a
doornail,” a reporter noted. He reflected the opinion
of thousands when he added, “We ought to have a
sound sensible republican... for the next President
as a measure of safety; but only on the condition of
absolute noninterference in Southern local affairs, for
which there is no further need or excuse.”The Disputed Election of 1876
Against this background the presidential election of
1876 took place. Since corruption in government was
the most widely discussed issue, the Republicans
passed over their most attractive political personality,
the dynamic James G. Blaine, Speaker of the House
of Representatives, who had been connected withThe Disputed Election of 1876 425A major Reconstruction project was the development of Birmingham, Alabama as a center of the iron industry. Here iron moulders cast molten
iron into rectangular blocks (“pigs”).