Greenback party's first appearance in the national field, and it remained in until after the presidential election of 1884. In 1876 it demanded the repeal of the resumption act of 1875, and during its whole career advocated the withdrawal of national bank currency and the substitution therefor of United States notes or greenbacks.

The elections of 1876 and the disputed count which followed it constituted the most exciting and disturbing presidential contest in American history. The Republicans lost New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Indiana, in the North, all of which went Democratic, and it seemed at first that they had not carried a single State in the South, all of which were claimed by the Democracy. One of Oregon's three electoral votes was also claimed by the Democrats, because of the ineligibility, or alleged ineligibility, of a Republican elector. There were double returns, however, in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, one set showing a majority for Tilden and the other for Hayes. These, with the Oregon elector, made twenty votes which were in dispute.

Of the 369 votes in the Electoral College Hayes had 165 without question, and Tilden, also without question, had 184, while 185 was a majority. One of the twenty disputed votes would have given the Democrats the victory, while the Republicans would have to get all of them in order to win. Fraud in the three disputed Southern States was

charged on both sides. The twenty-second joint rule of Congress, under which any electoral votes objected to by either branch were to be thrown out, and which, if in force at the time of this controversy, would have elected Tilden, had been repealed a year earlier by the Republican Senate, or on January 20, 1876.

As the House was Democratic, and the Senate Republican, a dangerous deadlock and possible civil war were inevitable over the counting of the votes. To avert these calamities, the Electoral Commission to pass upon the disputed returns was created. This consisted of fifteen members-five Senators, five Representatives and five Justices of the Supreme Court. The Senators were, three Republicans (George F. Edmunds, Oliver P. Morton and Frederick T. Freylinghuysen) and two Democrats (Thomas F. Bayard and Francis Kernan); the Representatives were, three Democrats (Henry B. Payne, Eppa Hunton and Josiah G. Abbott) and two Republicans (James A. Garfield and George F. Hoar), while the Supreme Court Justices were Nathan Clifford, Stephen J. Field, William Strong and Samuel F. Miller, The first two of these were Democrats and the others were Republicans. Those four, who were designated by the Electoral Commission act, were to select a fifth Justice, and they chose Joseph P. Bradley, a Republican.

The Disputed
Electoral

Count.

The Electoral
Commission.

Hayes De

Thus the commission consisted of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. The decision of that body could not be reversed, except by clared Elected. the concurrent vote of both branches of Congress. On every material point in controversy the commission divided on party lines.

The twenty

disputed votes were given to the Republicans, making Hayes' total 185 and Tilden's 184.

Some dissatisfaction with the result was felt by Democrats, but as the creation of the commission was considered by most persons to be a legitimate exercise of power by Congress, and as it afforded the only chance of a peaceful settlement which could be devised at the time, its decision was acquiesced in by everybody. That was the last of the crises which imperiled the nation. Henceforward politics was to be less volcanic, and "third" parties were to be prominent factors in every national campaign.

28

CHAPTER V.

THE

POLITICS IN THE NEW UNION.

HE years 1876-77 may be said to mark the beginning of a period of profound political change in the United States. Old issues and leaders were being forced into the background and new ones were coming to the front. "Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States," said President Hayes in his inaugural address, March 4, 1877, "that it is my earnest desire to regard and promote their truest interests, and to put forth my best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will forever wipe out in our political affairs the color line and the distinction between the North and the South, to the end that we may have not merely a united North or a united South, but a united country.”

* * *

This assurance the President made good by appointing an ex-Confederate officer and Democrat, David McKay Key, Postmaster General, and by removing the troops from South Carolina and Louisiana a few weeks after he entered office.

New Issues.

An ex-Confederate Put in the Cabinet.

ties Appear.

Forces had already begun to assert themselves which dictated this course. Two new parties, the first minor organizations which appeared "Third" Parsince 1860, nominated presidential tickets in 1872. These were the Labor Reform and the Prohibitionist. Two-the Greenback and the Prohibitionist-entered the national canvass of 1876. None of these had any concern in the Southern question. The Grangers, or Patrons of Husbandry, a secret association in the interest of workingmen, especially of farmers, which affiliated with the Greenback party in politics, captured the Legislatures of Illinois and Wisconsin in 1873 and 1874 and assailed the railroads for "extortion and unjust discrimination," thus starting a crusade which resulted in the enactment of the interstate commerce law of 1887. The attack extended to other corporations and monopolies " shortly afterward.

Most of the old leaders had passed off the stage with the old issues. Of the men who dictated Republican policy at any time between the foundation of the party, in 1854, to the date of the readmission of the last of the seceded States to representation in Congress, in 1870, Fessenden, Collamer, Stevens, Corwin and Henry Winter Davis were dead; Seward, Greeley, Sumner, Wilson, Hale and Chase died before Hayes' election, and Morton died in Hayes' first year of service. Wade, Trumbull, Doolittle, Colfax and Julian were in retirement, all of them except Wade and Colfax being also out of harmony with the party. Among the Republican leaders at the beginning of the Hayes administration New Leaders. were Sherman, Blaine, Conkling, Morrill, Allison, Dawes, Hoar and