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 Justices of the Supreme Court to pass upon the whole matter and declare the result of the election. This commission. contained eight Republicans and seven Democrats. After long and painstaking consideration, it finally decided that Hayes and Wheeler had received 185 and Tilden and Hendricks 184 electoral votes, and that the former were therefore elected. Although bitterly protested against by Democrats, this decision was loyally acquiesced in and its substantial justice has been strongly confirmed by the deliberate judgment of posterity. It may be added that of the popular vote the Democratic ticket received about 4,300,000 and the Republican ticket about 4,035,000 votes. The Greenback party, seeking payment of the national debt with irredeemable paper money, polled 81,737 votes for Peter Cooper of New York and the Prohibitionists 9,522 for Green Clay Smith of Kentucky.

Soon after his installation as President, Mr. Hayes withdrew the Federal troops from the southern states, which had been used to protect negroes in their right to vote, and in consequence the negro vote was almost entirely suppressed by terrorism, force and fraud, and the governments of the southern states and their delegations to Congress became and long remained solidly Democratic. In the first half of Hayes's term the Senate was Republican and the House Democratic, and in the second half, from 1879 to 1881, both were Democratic. In these circumstances there was and could be little profitable legislation. The Senate and President at first, and afterward the President alone, prevented the Democrats from repealing the Resumption act or destroying the protective tariff system, while the Democrats of the House did all they could to embarrass