fer himself as a candidate for a third term; but the nearly unanimous adoption by the House of Representatives of a resolution declaring that a third term "would be unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with peril to our free institutions," put an end to the project for the time being. There was wide popular following for James G. Blaine, of Maine, the leading Republican of the House, and for six years its Speaker: but his statesmanship was not of the highest or purest order, his attitude towards the South was hostile rather than conciliatory, and there were charges of misconduct which told heavily against him. The Secretary of the Treasury, Benjamin H. Bristow, prominent for his vigorous prosecution of the "whiskey ring" frauds, had a strong following. Of the Democratic leaders, Samuel J. Tilden, Governor of New York, was far the ablest and the most prominent. Next to the question of the policy to be pursued towards the South, the most important question before the country was that of the resumption of specie payment. The Greenback, or Independent National, party demanded the "immediate and unconditional repeal" of the Resumption act and the establishment of a paper currency. The Republican platform, fearing to endorse the Resumption act directly, lest votes should thereby be lost, demanded "a continuous and steady progress to specie payment." The Democratic platform denounced everything that the Republicans had done, including the Resumption act, and demanded thoroughgoing reform, but on the currency issue offered no definite proposals. The Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, an able, conservative, high-minded man of solid rather than distinguished ability, and William

A. Wheeler, of New York. The Democrats nominated Tilden.

The campaign was without distinctive features. The result of the election, however, showed an extraordinary and unprecedented situation. From each of the four States of South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon there were two sets of returns. In Oregon the eligibility of a Republican elector was in dispute. In South Carolina and Florida there were charges of fraud and intimidation, while in Louisiana there were two rival governments. If the Republicans could secure the entire electoral vote of all four States, they would elect their candidate by a majority of one, but the loss of a single vote would give the election to the Democrats. The Republicans immediately determined to "claim everything." The popular excitement was intense. The publication, in 1878, of certain "cipher despatches" led to the charge that the Democrats had sought for a Republican elector who could be bribed. There was even heated talk of seating the Democratic candidate by force—a step which President Grant quietly took measures to prevent.

On January 29, 1877, an act of Congress provided for counting the electoral vote. After regulating the procedure of the two Houses, the act created an electoral commission composed of five Senators, five Representatives, and five justices of the Supreme Court, to whom all questions regarding disputed returns should be referred, and whose decision should be final unless both Houses agreed in setting it aside. The ten members of Congress chosen were, of course, evenly divided between the two parties, while of the four justices specified in the act, two

were Republicans and two Democrats. The respon- . sibility of final decision would rest, therefore, upon the fifth justice, who was to be chosen by the other four. It was supposed, while the bill was under discussion, that the choice would fall upon Justice David Davis, in whose ability and impartiality there was general confidence. Just before the passage of the act, however, Davis was chosen United States Senator from Illinois. The remaining justices available were Republicans, and the choice fell upon Justice Joseph P. Bradley. The decisions of the commission sustained the Republican contentions, and as the Republican Senate and Democratic House took opposite views in each case, the decisions were not reversed. Hayes and Wheeler were accordingly declared elected. The Democrats, of course, charged their opponents with partisanship and fraud, and many refused to admit the legality of the result, but the decision was generally acquiesced in by the country.

The majority of Republicans had been agreed in desiring a candidate who, if elected, would put an end to the Grant régime in the South. They found such a leader in President Hayes. Grant had already begun the withdrawal of the federal troops from the South. Hayes shortly withdrew the remainder, and left the southern States to manage their political affairs without interference. The Republican governments in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, which had been maintained only by military force, speedily fell, and Democratic administrations took their place. There was once more a "solid South." The course of the President was severely criticised by the radicals, who still believed in blood and iron, but there are few who now doubt

that it was as wise as it was patriotic. For the continuance of military rule in any part of the country in time of peace there can be, under our system of government, no justification, and least of all where the purpose is only to uphold a particular administration or party. Vital, too, as was the ballot to the uplifting of the negro race, it was better that the negro should be compelled to achieve political influence through education, industry, and a moral life than that he should be permanently sustained in a position of unhealthy and adventitious importance by federal aid. Military government in a democracy, in time of peace, is not only an intolerable anomaly, but a dangerous impediment also to the individual liberty upon whose free exercise the welfare of the community depends. It was the cardinal mistake of reconstruction, not that it enfranchised the negro or imposed conditions on the readmission of the States, but that it systematically bred enmity between the races by discriminating against the whites at the same time that it did nothing to educate the negroes whom the national power had freed. It is to the lasting credit of President Hayes that he brought the dark period of coercion and restraint to an end, and left the South to adjust the question of political control for itself, subject only to the Constitution, the law, and the obligations of a Christian civilization.

THE

XXIV

THE NEWEST HISTORY

'HE administration of President Hayes marks a transition from the period of which the Civil War and its resulting reconstruction of the South were the climax, to the period in which we now live. Historical periods and social movements can never be very accurately bounded by dates or particular events, nor is there ever a complete doffing of the old habit and donning of the new. Political and social conditions which have lost their significance, and influences which have spent their force, often continue to be talked about and to affect public thought and action after their real vitality has been dissipated, albeit the advent of a new time is more or less clearly apprehended. It was the peculiar distinction of Hayes's administration that it stood thus between the old and the new, between a closed past and an opening future. The great issues born of slavery, State rights, nullification, secession, and reconstruction were dead, save as narrow-minded leaders, for the sake of making political "capital" by vicious appeal to partisan prejudices, chose to keep alive the memory of them. Men no longer discussed the nature of the constitutional compact or the relative powers of the nation and the States. Only the Supreme Court, with the lawyer's desire to avoid change