Covers the end of the Reconstruction Era, focusing on the Compromise of 1877, the rise of the Democratic Redeemers, the Colfax Massacre, the Battle of Liberty Place, the beginning of Southern segregation under the Jim Crow laws, and the establishment of Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute.

1. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 3: Reconstruction and Urbanization
Part 5: Reconstruction Ends

2. THE COMPROMISE
OF 1877
• As the end of Ulysses S. Grant’s
second term approached, the
presidential election of 1876
was hotly contested.
• The Republican candidate,
Rutherford B. Hayes, lost to the
Democratic candidate, Samuel
Tilden, by a wide margin: more
than 200,000 individual votes
and more than twenty votes in
the Electoral College.
• However, the Electoral College
votes of Florida, Louisiana,
South Carolina, and Oregon
were in dispute.

3. THE COMPROMISE
OF 1877
• Behind the scenes, Republican
dealmakers arrived at a
compromise with Democratic
dealmakers. The Democrats
agreed to let the Republicans
claim the remaining Electoral
College votes, thereby
awarding the Presidency to
Hayes, if the Republicans
agreed to withdraw all federal
troops in the South, bringing
Reconstruction to an end.
• Ulysses S. Grant began
removing the troops towards
the end of his term.

4. THE REDEEMERS
TAKE CONTROL
In the South, the Republican Party
had maintained power through a
coalition of carpetbaggers,
scalawags, and freedmen.
Following the withdrawal of troops,
the Republicans lost power in the
South to Democratic ‘Redeemers,’
who established state governments
on the principle of white supremacy.

5. THE GREAT
RAILROAD STRIKE
• One of Hayes’ first challenges
as President was the Great
Railroad Strike of 1877.
• In 1873, the American economy
crashed, and since then the
major railroad companies had
suffered financial losses.
• In 1877, they attempted to
make up for these losses by
cutting the wages of workers.
• In July 1877, workers in West
Virginia walked off the job.

6. THE GREAT
RAILROAD STRIKE
• Hayes feared that the strike
would turn into a riot, so he
sent federal troops to intervene.
But instead of finding a riot in
progress, the troops found only
a peaceful protest.
• However, their intervention
sparked riots elsewhere. Before
July was over, riots had broken
out in Baltimore, Pittsburg,
Chicago, and St. Louis.
• Hayes dispatched more federal
troops, who finally put down
these riots to end what was the
largest labor dispute until then.

7. THE NEZ PERCE
UPRISING
• At about the same time, an
attempt to move the Nez Perce
Indians onto a reservation
provoked an Indian uprising.
• The Nez Perce entered a
conflict with the United States
Army. Then, under the
leadership of Chief Joseph,
the tribe fled to Canada to meet
with Sitting Bull, who was in
exile after the Battle of the Little
Bighorn, to request assistance
from the Lakota Sioux.

8. THE NEZ PERCE
UPRISING
• After Sitting Bull declined to
offer assistance, the Nez Perce
were pursued and captured by
William T. Sherman and sent to
a reservation in Kansas.
• The Nez Perce uprising
demonstrated that Native
American resistance to the
policies of removal and
relocation remained strong.
• This resistance would culminate
in a spiritual movement with an
element of civil disobedience,
towards the end of the century.

9. RECONSTRUCTION
ENDS
• In the early 1870s, paramilitary
groups emerged in the South,
including the White League of
Louisiana and the Red Shirts,
founded in Mississippi.
• These groups essentially
adopted the objectives of the
Ku Klux Klan without adopting
the Klan’s theatrical tactics.
• Their main objective was to
keep Republicans out of office.
• The history of the White League
was especially notorious...

10. THE WHITE LEAGUE
• In 1873, during a gubernatorial
election in Louisiana, three
hundred white men, mostly
Confederate Army veterans,
attempted to take control of the
government of Grant Parish.
• About five hundred freedmen
surrounded and dug trenches
around the courthouse in the
town of Colfax to stop the white
militiamen from taking over.
• The militiamen captured most of
the freedmen. They slaughtered
fifty in cold blood and killed up
to a hundred more in a conflict
known as the Colfax Massacre.

11. THE WHITE LEAGUE
• These militiamen went on to
form the White League in 1874.
• Later that year, having amassed
about five thousand members,
they forced more than three
thousand police and state
militiamen to remove the
Republican Governor from
power in New Orleans.
• Their efforts led to armed
conflict in what is known as the
Battle of Liberty Place. The
Governor was removed by
force, but restored when federal
troops intervened.

12. JIM CROW BEGINS
• Towards the end of the 1870s,
in the middle of Hayes’ term as
President, many members of
these groups joined the state
militias that replaced federal
troops in the South.
• They helped the Democratic
Redeemers gain power over the
Republicans. Once in power,
the Redeemers began passing
what would become known as
the Jim Crow laws.
• In 1879, Congressional
Democrats managed to repeal
the Enforcement Acts that
outlawed the Ku Klux Klan.

13. JIM CROW BEGINS
• The Jim Crow laws segregated
the Southern states. Black and
white citizens were held to be
‘separate but equal.’
• These laws did not deny the
rights of black citizens, but they
empowered groups and
established systems that
impeded or inhibited attempts
to exercise those rights.
• In the process, they separated
black citizens from white
citizens, effectively creating two
classes of citizenship, while
technically allowing black
citizens to retain ‘equal’ rights.

14. BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON
• Despite the removal of federal
troops from the South and the
rise of Democratic Redeemers,
the struggle for true African
American equality continued.
• In 1881, Hayes’ final year in
power, Booker T. Washington,
an African American teacher,
founded the Tuskegee Institute
in Alabama on the site of a
former slave plantation.
• The Institute’s purpose was to
help black workers to develop
the technical skills required for
particular jobs, empowering
them through employment.

15. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 3: Reconstruction and Urbanization
Part 5: Reconstruction Ends