Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/678

646 States productive of violence and rioting; and the Democrats continued to control important States like Ohio and New York, beside carrying both Houses of Congress in 1878. At the same time a new party sprang up and rapidly grew into importance upon a platform calling for the repeal of the Specie Resumption Act and the issue of a currency of government paper. In the years after 1872 there had appeared a non-partisan farmers' movement in the West, in the form of societies known as "Granges," agitating against railway monopolies and discriminations. When the panic occurred, these led to the National or "Greenback" party, which made its first campaign in 1876, nominating Peter Cooper, a well-known New York philanthropist, and casting a small vote mainly in the Grange States ; but in 1877 and 1878 its numbers swelled five-fold, and the organisation spread all over the North, drawing mainly from the Democrats. It carried one State, Maine, in coalition with the Democrats, and elected sixteen members to the House.

During their period of Congressional control, the Democratic party made an attempt to break down the Federal election laws by forbidding the use of troops and refusing appropriations for marshals and deputies. At first the struggle was between a Democratic House and a Republican Senate, later between Hayes and a united Democratic Congress; but, although the Democrats were persistent, Hayes unflinchingly vetoed every provision of this character, even when attached as a "rider" to a general appropriation bill. This wrangling struggle lasted during the greater part of Hayes's administration, and led to no less than seven vetoes and the occasional failure of army and judicial appropriations; but the President triumphed, for the Democrats lacked the two-thirds majorities necessary to override him. The utmost gained was the passage of an Act forbidding the use of Federal troops as a posse comitatus. This Democratic policy did not help their party, for it seemed more factious than statesmanlike ; and when, in 1879, the agricultural discontent was suddenly ended by a crop failure in Europe, with a great rise in the price of wheat, and at the same time the resumption of specie payment was accomplished, it became evident that the reaction was at an end. In the elections of 1879 great Republican gains appeared ; the large States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York were easily carried; and the "greenback" vote fell off. The period thus terminated may be regarded as resulting in a drawn battle. The Republican party of 1868, with its reconstructed South, its financial pledges, and its complete mastery over the country, had undergone a series of defeats ; but by good fortune the party had not been crushed, nor had all its measures been reversed. The Reconstruction policy, it is true, had by 1879 become an almost hopeless failure. The negroes had abundantly shown their incapacity for decent government; the Southern States had all been regained by "rebels"; and all that remained of the programme so relentlessly forced through in 1867-72 was