Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/814

784 in other States, the whites fell into a steady tendency towards violence. A widespread secret society, the

“Ku-Klux-Klan,” beginning with the effort to overawe the negro population by whipping and arson, was rapidly driven into political murders. The reconstructed Governments resisted as best they could. They tried to use the force of the State against the offenders; but the best part of the force of the State was the white element, which was most deeply involved in the resistance to the legal Government. On the application of the legislature of a State, or of the governor if the legislature cannot be summoned, the president may send Federal troops to suppress rebellion (§ 125). The reconstructed Governments called on President Grant for such aid, and received it. But the whites were the stronger race, struggling for property, and knowing well the letter of the law. They refused to resist the smallest atom of Federal authority: a large force of them, mainly old Confederates and excellent fighting men, who had seized the city of New Orleans and overturned the reconstructed Government (1874), retired quietly before a detachment of United States troops, and allowed the State Government to be restored. The little United States army in the South was kept busy. Wherever it appeared, resistance ceased at once, breaking out at the same time elsewhere. The whites had to gain but a single victory; as soon as they secured a majority in a State legislature they so arranged the election laws and machinery that a negro majority was thenceforth impossible. The legislatures and governors, with nearly all the local officers, were then Democrats; calls for Federal troops ceased at once; and the Republicans of the North, the dominant party of the nation, were reduced to the necessity of seeing their Southern vote disappear, without the ability to do any thing to check the process. As the election of 1876 drew near, the reconstructed Governments of all the seceding States, except Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, had become Democratic.

319. Congress, which was controlled by the Republicans, had not been idle. The Civil Rights Act (1870) provided that fines and damages should be imposed for any attempt to violate or evade the 15th amendment or for conspiracy to deprive the negroes of the right of suffrage.

The Election Act (1870) exercised for the first time the right to alter or amend State laws as to Federal elections which the constitution had given to Congress. This was strengthened by another Act in the following year. The

Force Act (1871) went farther than the instincts of the American people could follow Congress. It provided that any conspiracy or combination strong enough to deprive the negroes of the benefits of the 14th amendment should be evidence of a “denial by the State of the equal protection of the laws” to all its citizens; that the president should be empowered to use the army, navy, and militia to suppress such combinations; that, when any combination should appear in arms, the act should be a rebellion against the United States; and that, in such case, the president should have power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in the rebellious territory (§ 305).

320. It was plain that the Southern whites meant to govern their States with little present regard to the last two amendments, and that it was impossible to defeat their purpose without cutting up the State system in the South by the roots. Even in 1872 a strong element of the Republican party thought that the party policy had gone too near the latter course. It held a convention of

its own, under the name of the Liberal Republican party, and nominated Greeley and Brown. The Democratic party, anxious to save local government and State rights in the South, but completely discredited by its opposition to the war, accepted the Liberal Republican platform and

nominations. Its action was in one sense a failure; Greeley had been one of the bitterest and angriest critics of the Democratic party, and so many of the Democrats refused to vote for him that his defeat was hardly ever

doubtful. The Republicans renominated Grant, with Henry Wilson for vice-president; and they received the votes of 286 of the 349 electors, and were elected. The action of the Democratic party in adopting the Liberal Republican platform, and thus tacitly abandoning its opposition to reconstruction, brought it back into the lines of political conflict and made it a viable party.

321. The election of 1876 was the first really contested election since 1860. The Democrats nominated Tilden and Hendricks (p. 789) and the Republicans Hayes and Wheeler (p. 790). The platforms showed no distinct grounds of party struggle, except that of the ins and the outs. The election turned on the votes of the Southern States in which the reconstructed Governments still held their own or claimed to do so; and the extra-constitutional device of an electoral commission resulted in a decision in favour of Hayes and Wheeler. As a part of the result, some arrangement had been made for the settlement of the Southern difficulties, for Grant immediately withdrew the troops from Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, and the reconstructed Governments of those States surrendered without a struggle. All the Southern States were now Democratic; the negroes had every right but that of voting; and even this was permitted to a sufficient extent to throw a veil over the well-understood general state of

affairs. Colorado, the thirty-eighth State (and the last, up to 1887), was admitted in 1876 and took part in this election.

322. The Hayes administration was a welcome period of calm. The main subject of public interest was monetary, and much of it was due to the change of conditions during and since tho war. In order to sell bonds during the war it had been necessary, not only to make the interest very high (in some cases 7.3 per cent.), but to sell them for the Government's own depreciated paper. The Act of 1869, to restore the public credit, pledged the faith of the United States that the bonds should be paid in coin. This bad seemed very inequitable to some, but was

acquiesced in. When the price of silver had fallen, in July 1876, to 47d., a ratio for gold and silver of 20 : 1, and it was found that an Act of 1873 had dropped the silver dollar from the coinage, the people jumped to the conclusion that this was a trick of the bondholders to secure a further advantage in the payment of their bonds in the more valuable metal only. It was useless to urge that for forty years before 1873 the silver dollar had been token money, and that its average coinage had been only about $150,000 a year; the current was too strong to be resisted, and Congress passed (1878) an Act to restore the silver dollar to the coinage, to compel the coinage of at least $2,000,000 in silver per month, and to make the silver dollar legal tender to any amount. The Act is still (1887) in force, in spite of the recommendations of successive presidents and secretaries of the treasury for

its repeal. The operation of refunding had been begun under the Act of July 14, 1870, authorizing the issue of 5, 4½, and 4 per cent. bonds, to take the place of those at higher interest which should be payable. This first refunding operation was completed in the year of the resumption of specie payments (1879). The issues were $500,000,000 at 5 per cent., $185,000,000 at 4½, and $710,345,950 at 4, reducing the annual interest charge from $81,639,684 to $61,738,838. One secret of the success of the Government and its high credit was the persistence of the people in urging the payment of the national debt. The work was begun as soon as the war was ended; before all the