

representatives, five senators and five Supreme Court justices. To resolve the dispute, Congress set up an electoral commission in January 1877, consisting of five U.S. Meanwhile, in Oregon, the state’s Democratic governor replaced a Republican elector with a Democrat (alleging that the Republican had been ineligible), thus throwing Hayes’ victory in that state into question as well. With both sides accusing each other of electoral fraud, South Carolina, along with Florida and Louisiana, submitted two sets of election returns with different results. A clash between black militia and armed whites in Hamburg in July ended in the death of five militia men after their surrender, while at Camboy (near Charleston), six white men were killed when armed blacks opened fire in a political meeting. Supporters of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wade Hampton, a former Confederate general, had used violence and intimidation to confront the African-American voting majority. In South Carolina, the election had been marred by bloodshed on both sides of the party line. As of 1876, these were the only remaining states in the South with Republican governments. The Republicans refused to accept defeat, however, and accused Democratic supporters of intimidating and bribing African-American voters to prevent them from voting in three southern states– Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. By midnight, Tilden had 184 of the 185 electoral votes he needed to win, and was leading the popular vote by 250,000. On Election Day that November, the Democrats appeared to come out on top, winning the swing states of Connecticut, Indiana, New York and New Jersey.

Knights of Labor Compromise of 1877: Election Results As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 (or Compromise of 1876), Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina became Democratic once again, effectively bringing an end to the Reconstruction era. The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes’ victory on the condition that Republicans withdraw all federal troops from the South, thus consolidating Democratic control over the region. As a bipartisan congressional commission debated over the outcome early in 1877, allies of the Republican Party candidate Rutherford Hayes met in secret with moderate southern Democrats in order to negotiate acceptance of Hayes’ election. Immediately after the presidential election of 1876, it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina–the only three states in the South with Reconstruction-era Republican governments still in power. The Compromise of 1877 was an informal agreement between southern Democrats and allies of the Republican Rutherford Hayes to settle the result of the 1876 presidential election and marked the end of the Reconstruction era. Compromise of 1877: The End of Reconstruction.
