nov 16, 1876 - Disputed 1876 Presidential Election

Description:

The presidential contest between Republican
Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden came down to the election results
of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana; the candidate that received the electoral
votes from those three states would win. Widespread violence, intimidation, and fraud
helped Tilden and Democratic governors win the vote counts in all three states. Amidst the controversy following the disputed results in three states, both parties claimed
victory and inaugurated separate governors in South Carolina and Louisiana (while
Florida’s supreme court settled the dispute there). Congress appointed a 15-member
commission to decide the presidential election, and its members voted for Hayes by an
8-to-7 vote.

The state elections in South Carolina and Louisiana remained unresolved,
and with the two Southern states each having inaugurated two opposing governments,
fears of a new civil war spread. To defuse the situation, President Hayes agreed to
remove federal troops in South Carolina and Louisiana, leaving no protection for
the Republican governments and thus ending them. “Home rule” now prevailed, and
Democratic governments now controlled all Southern states. Historians commonly cite
Hayes’s removal of the few remaining federal troops from the South as the end of the
Reconstruction era

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