Democratic Party regains control of former Confederate state governemnts (jan 2, 1870 – nov 2, 1876)

Description:

1870: Tennessee
1871: Georgia
1873: Texas
1873: Virginia
1874: Alabama
1874: Arkansas
1875: Mississippi
1876: Florida
1876: Louisiana
1876: North Carolina
1876: South Carolina

While violence and intimidation toward freedpeople and their white Republican allies
occurred in every Southern state, by 1873 four states were already in the hands of
a Democratic governor and legislature. In fact, the efforts to roll back the effects of
Radical Reconstruction began as soon as those laws and policies took hold. For states in
which blacks comprised small minorities of the population, “Redemption” came earliest.
Tennessee and Virginia Democrats never lost control of their state legislatures, and
they elected Democratic governors in 1870 and 1873, respectively. Georgia Democrats
regained control of their state’s legislature in 1870 and the governorship in 1871. All
of these states pioneered the implementation of poll taxes and similar measures, not
forbidden by the Fifteenth Amendment, to further diminish the power of the African
American voting bloc.2 Meanwhile, Texas returned to Democratic rule in 1873, largely as
a result of an influx of white immigrants who generally voted Democratic.

These trends, combined with discontent with Republican governance in the face of the economic
depression that began in 1873, enabled Democrats to regain control of the US House of
Representatives in a historic landslide in 1874.

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