These considerations had much to do with the return of
scalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggers
from Southern politics. There was no longer anything in it, they said;
let the Negro have it!

It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the
elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi
in 1875. Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and
barbarism, and that the whites under the radical regime had no
opportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made
use of every method of influencing the result that could possibly come
within the radical law and they even employed many effective methods
that lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge from
employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radical
ticket; there were nightriding parties, armed and drilled "white
leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much
plain talk assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloody
outbreaks occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana
had been carried by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radical
returning board had reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in
rebellion and turned out Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President
Grant intervened to restore him to office. The "Mississippi" or
"shot-gun plan"* was very generally employed, except where the contest
was likely to go in favor of the whites without the use of undue
pressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but the
average white man had determined to do away with Negro government even
though the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congress
investigated the elections in each State which overthrew the
reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the population
rapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three States
were left under radical government--Louisiana and Florida, where the
returning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and South
Carolina, where the Negroes greatly outnumbered the whites.

* See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The
Chronicles of America").

Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential
campaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed States
had escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and little real
desire of regaining them.