policies. On the eve of the commission’s decision in
the Florida controversy, he was apparently ready to
vote in favor of Tilden. But the Republicans subjected
him to tremendous political pressure. When he read
his opinion on February 8, it was for Hayes. Thus, by
a vote of eight to seven, the commission awarded
Florida’s electoral votes to the Republicans.
Grant, a Republican and a Union war hero, won
easily in 1868 and 1872 because ex-Confederates,
many of whom had voted Democratic, were barred
from the polls. By 1876, however, white Democrats
had regained political control in much of the South,
creating the electoral stalemate that led to the
Compromise of 1877.
The rest of the proceedings was routine. The
commission assigned all the disputed electoral votes
(including one in Oregon where the Democratic gov-
ernor had seized on a technicality to replace a single
Republican elector with a Democrat) to Hayes.
Democratic institutions, shaken by the South’s
refusal to go along with the majority in 1860 and by
the suppression of civil rights during the rebellion,
and further weakened by military intervention and
the intimidation of blacks in the South during
Reconstruction, seemed now a farce. According to
Tilden’s campaign manager, angry Democrats in fif-
teen states, chiefly war veterans, were readying
themselves to march on Washington to force the
inauguration of Tilden. Tempers flared in Congress,
where some spoke ominously of a filibuster that
would prevent the recording of the electoral vote
and leave the country, on March 4, with no presi-
dent at all.
The Election of
Forces for compromise had been at work behind the
scenes in Washington for some time. Although
northern Democrats threatened to fight to the last
ditch, many southern Democrats were willing to
accept Hayes if he would promise to remove the
troops and allow the southern states to manage their
internal affairs by themselves. Ex-Whig planters and
merchants who had reluctantly abandoned the car-
petbag governments and who sympathized with
Republican economic policies hoped that by sup-
porting Hayes they might contribute to the restora-
tion of the two-party system that had been
destroyed in the South during the 1850s. Ohio
Congressman James A. Garfield urged Hayes to find
“some discreet way” of showing these Southerners
that he favored “internal improvements.” Hayes
replied, “Your views are so nearly the same as mine
that I need not say a word.”
Tradition has it that a great compromise between
the sections was worked out during a dramatic meeting
at the Wormley Hotel^2 in Washington on February 26.
Actually the negotiations were drawn out and infor-
mal, and the Wormley conference was but one of
many. With the tacit support of many Democrats, the
electoral vote was counted by the president of the
Senate on March 2, and Hayes was declared elected,
185 votes to 184.
Like all compromises, the Compromise of
1877 was not entirely satisfactory; like most, it was
not honored in every detail. Hayes recalled the last
troops from South Carolina and Louisiana in
April. He appointed a former Confederate general,
David M. Key of Tennessee, postmaster general and
delegated to him the congenial task of finding
Southerners willing to serve their country as officials
of a Republican administration. But the alliance of
ex-Whigs and northern Republicans did not flourish;
the South remained solidly Democratic. The major
significance of the compromise, one of the great
intersectional political accommodations of American
history, was that it ended Reconstruction and inaugu-
rated a new political order in the South. More than
the Constitutional amendments and federal statutes,
this new regime would shape the destinies of the
four million freedmen.
For many former slaves, this future was to be
bleak. Forgotten in the North, manipulated and then
callously rejected by the South, rebuffed by the
Supreme Court, voiceless in national affairs, they and
their descendants were condemned in the interests of
sectional harmony to lives of poverty, indignity, and
little hope. But many other former slaves managed to
thrive during the last third of the nineteenth century.
Their hard work, discipline, and financial savvy ele-
vated them into a property-owning middle class
whose existence—more than Union armies—marked
the end of slavery.The Promise and Failure of Reconstructionat
http://www.myhistorylab.comWatchtheVideoThe Compromise of 1877 427(^2) Ironically, the hotel was owned by James Wormley, reputedly the
wealthiest black person in Washington.