The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [124]
An economic downturn called the Panic of 1873 caused the Republican Party to lose seats in the House and Senate reducing the Radical Republican’s strength. Political events in 1876 finally ended Reconstruction. In the presidential election of 1876 a dispute arose over who won, Rutherford Hayes (R) or Samuel Tilden (D). Tilden, the Democrat, won the popular vote, but because of a third party candidate neither Hays nor Tilden gained enough electoral votes to win the presidency; however, the Democrat needed only one electoral vote to take the presidency. This deadlock threw the election into the Congress. What happened is a mystery; however, most say a deal ended the deadlock, and Republican Rutherford B. Hays became president after winning all the disputed electoral votes. The deal seemed to be that Union troops would leave the South. The Union troops marched out in 1877. Soon thereafter the white southern culture rebounded, finding ways to limit black voting by restrictions not openly based on race. The methods successfully ended black suffrage in the South for about 100 years.
The Reconstruction era added three Constitutional Amendments: the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to all persons born in the United States or naturalized and established civil rights for all citizens; the Fifteenth Amendment secured the right to vote no matter what a person’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These amendments did not pass easily, and their provisions raise serious questions today because the southern states, not yet back in the Union, did not vote on the Amendments. Please note that the Fifteenth Amendment failed to give women the right to vote. Odd as it may seem, men of all races would have the right to vote but no woman could vote.[146]
As President Grant assumed his second term scandals and corruption were rife. Newspapers found immense corruption in the Federal government and the Reconstruction governments in the South causing Republicans to lose political power. With western farmers asking for cheap money (greenbacks—paper money not backed by gold or silver) and no tariffs, and the eastern businesses battling for tight money (money backed by gold or silver) and high tariffs, the Republicans lost voters in the west. As the South came back into the Union all the previously Confederate states voted universally for Democrats; thus, Republicans started losing governorships, senatorial seats, and soon would lose the House of Representatives altogether. As the blacks came under increasing pressure in the South, Republicans balked at responding fearing the loss of even more political power. When the Republican Party restrained its Congressional actions the states stepped in and started handling previously federal issues as local matters. The South refused to obey Federal laws on voting, and eventually the Supreme Court struck down the Reconstruction civil rights laws Republicans had pushed through during Reconstruction.
The Civil War era had ended at last, or so it seemed in 1877. However, it had not. In the 1960s, under the leadership of Martin Luther King and others, blacks in the South again attempted to gain the civil and voting rights enjoyed by white citizens of the United States. The civil rights movement once again caused the North to attack the South, only this time legislatively through its majorities in Congress. Northern institutions began to pound southern culture using the federal courts and federal law enforcement. Northern newspapers and TV reporters characterized southerners as Neolithic in customs and