The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

The Freedmen’s Bureau built 4,329 schools, attended by some

250,000 former slaves, in the postwar South. Many of the teachers

in these schools were abolitionists or missionaries from New

England. The schools drew African Americans of all ages, from

children to grandparents, who were eager for the advantages

offered by education.

417

Robert Brown Elliott of South Carolina, addresses Congress in 1872.

Gulf of Mexico

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Democrat

Republican

Independent Democrat

Greenback

46th Congress: elected 1878,

served 1879–1881

Demise of the Republican Party in the SouthBy 1878, Democrats, all of them white,

recaptured seventy-seven of the eighty-three House seats in the South. All of the black House

representatives had been defeated. No Republican was elected in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana,

Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, or North Carolina. The South was not exactly

“solid”—independent Democrats and Greenback representatives won a handful of seats. But

the South would remain a Democratic bastion for over a century.

Questions for Discussion

■Which states had elected solely Republican representa-

tives in 1870?

■How did these states vote in 1878? What explains the shift?

military district, never experienced a period of Republican

domination; in Virginia, the Democrats were firmly back in

power by 1869.

“Scalawags,” white Southerners who endorsed the
Republican party, did take some seats in areas with white
majorities. Usually these victories were in districts that had
been Whig strongholds.

Collapse of the Republican Party

in the South, 1878

With the Compromise of 1877 and subsequent withdrawal
of Union troops, the Republican political power in the
South collapsed. Tennessee, excluded from the Union