HAYES 



2731 



HAYES 



shown in a letter to John Sherman : "You feel, I 

 am sure, as I do about this whole business. 

 A fair election would have given us about forty 

 electoral votes at the South at least that 

 many. But we are not to allow our friends to 

 defeat one outrage and fraud by another. 

 There must be nothing crooked on our part." 

 It is only justice to Tilden to say that he ex- 

 pressed himself in similar fashion. 



Hayes' Administration (1877-1881). Hayes 

 appointed a strong. Cabinet, including William 

 M. Evarts as Secretary of State, John Sherman 

 as Secretary of the treasury, Carl Schurz as 

 Secretary of the Interior and David M. Key as 

 Postmaster-General. The appointment of Key, 

 who had been a Confederate officer, indicated 

 the conciliatory attitude of the administration 

 toward the South. Only twelve years had 

 elapsed since the end of the War of Secession, 

 and already a Federal general summoned a 

 Confederate officer to aid him in the govern- 

 ment of a reunited nation. 



End of Reconstruction. In South Carolina 

 and Louisiana there were two sets of state offi- 

 cers and two legislatures, one Republican and 

 one Democratic, each claiming to have re- 

 ceived a majority of the popular vote. In 

 both states the Republican officers were in 

 possession of the state house and the govern- 

 ment records, but only through the support 

 of Federal troops. Most of the influential 

 white citizens had given their support to the 

 Democratic candidates. President Hayes had 

 already made up his mind that the use of 

 United States troops to maintain one faction 

 in the South against another must come to an 

 end, and when he had received assurances 

 from Southern leaders that they would use 

 their influence for the maintenance of order 

 and the rights of all classes of citizens, he 

 ordered the withdrawal of the troops in April, 

 1877. With the withdrawal of the soldiers the 

 "carpetbag" governments inevitably came to 

 an end, and the government of the South again 

 passed into the hands of its native citizens. 

 See CARPETBAGGERS. 



Negro Exodus. The end of reconstruction 

 was at least partly responsible for the move- 

 ment of large numbers of negroes from the 

 South to Northern and Western states. The 

 movement began early in 1879 and continued 

 in full force for over a year. Over 40,000 

 negroes settled in Kansas alone, and large 

 numbers also went to Indiana and Missouri. 

 The explanations given for this movement by 

 the negroes were that they were asked to pay 



exorbitant rents and prices in the South, and 

 that they were kept at an economic and polit- 

 ical disadvantage. Whatever the reasons may 

 have been, most of the negroes were poor and 

 reached their destinations half-starved, penni- 

 less and without promise of work; it was only 

 through the generosity of many Northerners 

 that hundreds were saved from starvation. 



Labor Troubles. The panic of 1873, at the 

 beginning of Grant's second term, was followed 

 by a period of financial and economic depres- 

 sion, during which thousands of laboring men 

 were out of work or were earning less than 

 their former wages. Laborers were discon- 

 tented, and gave expression to their feelings 

 by frequent strikes, the most serious of which 

 was the railroad strike of 1877. It began on 

 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, spread to the 

 Pennsylvania System, and affected practically 

 every line east of Chicago and north of the 

 Ohio River. At one time about 100,000 men 

 were on strike. Thousands of dollars worth of 

 property was destroyed, about 100 lives were 

 lost, and Federal troops were sent to Pennsyl- 

 vania, Maryland and Illinois to preserve order. 



There were serious strikes of miners in West 

 Virginia, where Federal soldiers were again 

 needed to preserve the peace. It was also in 

 that year, 1877, that the power of the Molly 

 Maguires was finally broken. This was a secret 

 organization, formed in the Pennsylvania coal 

 regions about 1854; after some years it be- 

 came so powerful that it did not stop at mur- 

 der to gain its ends. It brought about a great 

 strike among the coal miners in 1875, and for 

 two years its members dominated the coun- 

 cils of the miners. The mine owners bitterly 

 opposed it, and through their efforts it was 

 broken up and several of its leaders were exe- 

 cuted for murder. Equally typical of the dis- 

 content among laborers was the growing power 

 of the Knights of Labor (which see), and the 

 farmers continued to express their opposition 

 to capital through the Grange (which see). 



Financial Legislation and Resumption of 

 Specie Payments. After the law of 1873 re- 

 moved the silver dollar from the list of stand- 

 ard coins, gold was the only unlimited legal- 

 tender metallic money in the United States. 

 In January, 1878, Congress adopted a joint 

 resolution making all bonds of the United 

 States payable, at the option of the govern- 

 ment, in silver dollars, and a month later it 

 passed the Bland- Allison Act. This act did 

 not restore the free and unlimited coinage of 

 silver, but it required the Secretary of the 



