174 a short history of the united states
Davis, an inde pendent. But this intended arrangement was foiled when
the Illinois legislature elected Davis to the U.S. Senate and he was re-
placed on the Electoral Commission by Justice Joseph P. Bradley, a
Republican.
The commission began its hearings in early February 1877 , and on
Februar y 7 it voted to give all the disputed votes to Hayes. The vote
was 8 to 7 , along strict party lines. The Democratic-controlled House
threatened to prevent, by filibustering, the formal and constitutional
requirement that Congress count the ballots. As March 4 , the day of
the inauguration, approached, there was fear that the Grant adminis-
tration would expire without anyone constitutionally qualified to take
its place. Southern congressmen were lobbied to vote for Hayes with
promises that as President he would withdraw all federal troops from
the South, appoint at least one southerner to the cabinet, and provide a
generous share of federal patronage and suffi cient funds to rebuild the
South’s shattered economy.
And that did it. On March 2 , 1877 , at four AM, Rutherford B.
Hayes was declared the new President by an electoral vote of 185 to 184.
The result was predictable. The Democrats, and Tilden in partic ular,
failed to provide leadership in settling the dispute. They failed to un-
dertake a public protest for the justice of their cause. They failed to
encourage southerners to denounce what was declared in dispute. They
failed to ask Hayes to concede at the very beginning of the contest,
when he might have done so. And by their failures they encouraged the
opposition to pursue an admittedly unlikely course of action that ulti-
mately led to Hayes’s victory.
Because March 4 fell on a Sunday, Hayes was inaugurated privately
in the Red Room of the White House, with Chief Justice Morrison R.
Waite administering the oath of office. On Monday, March 5 , the pub-
lic inauguration took place without demonstrations or trouble. On the
same day, Hayes appointed David M. Key of Tennessee as postmaster
general, thus fulfilling one part of the bargain involved in his election.
One month later the President withdrew all federal troops from the
South, bringing Reconstruction to a close. It had taken exactly twelve
years to finally stitch the Union back together again.
But any number of people regarded this election as one more ex-
ample of the political corruption that existed in Washington and was