can legislators had appealed, ejected the five new members. The
Republicans re-entered the house, and the Democrats thereupon withdrew.
Subsequently a congressional committee made unsuccessful attempts to
settle the dispute. The democratic members finally returned, and a
sullen acquiescence in the Kellogg government gradually prevailed.

[1876]

By 1876 every southern State was solidly democratic except Louisiana,
South Carolina, and Florida, and in these republican governments were
upheld only by the bayonet.

The presidential election of 1876 was a contest of general tendencies
rather than of definite principles. The opposing parties were more
nearly matched than they had been since 1860. The Democrats nominated
Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, and Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana.
Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, and William A. Wheeler, of New York,
became the republican standard-bearers. The election passed off quietly,
troops being stationed at the polls in turbulent quarters. Mr. Tilden
carried New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and Connecticut. With a solid
South, he had won the day. But the returning boards of Louisiana,
Florida, and South Carolina, throwing out the votes of several
democratic districts on the ground of fraud or intimidation, decided
that those States had gone republican, giving Hayes a majority of one in
the electoral college. The Democrats raised the cry of fraud. Suppressed
excitement pervaded the country. Threats were even muttered that Hayes
would never be inaugurated. President Grant quietly strengthened the
military force in and about Washington. The country looked to Congress
for a peaceful solution of the problem, and not in vain.

The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate shall, in
presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the
[electoral] certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." Certain
Republicans held that the power to count the votes lay with the
President of the Senate, the House and Senate being mere spectators. The
Democrats naturally objected to this construction, since Mr. Ferry, the
republican president of the Senate, could then count the votes of the
disputed States for Hayes.

The Democrats insisted that Congress should continue the practice
followed since 1865, which was that no vote objected to should be
counted except by the concurrence of both houses. The House was strongly
democratic; by throwing out the vote of one State it c