the check imposed during the first two years by a Democratic House of Representatives (and during the second two years by an opposition in both houses) made the period of Hayes's administration a transition from the era of Reconstruction to the era of dominant economic and reform agitation.
332. When he withdrew the troops which sustained the Republican governments in Louisiana and South Carolina, those states returned to the rule of the white Democrats. In the Congress elected in 1878 the former slave states chose 101 Democrats to the House of Representatives and only four Republicans. Leading Republicans like Blaine protested vigorously against the policy, declaring that the men who saved the Union should govern it; and on the other hand the Democrats in Congress added “riders” to appropriation bills designed to starve the administration into complete cessation of the use of troops and Federal deputy marshals at Southern elections. Extra sessions had to be summoned in 1877 and 1879 to provide supplies for the government, due to this policy. Hayes assisted his party by vetoing these coercive attempts of the Democrats and it was not until later that Federal attempts to supervise Southern elections entirely ceased.
333. As his early policy toward the South had dissatisfied many of the leaders of his party, his opposition to the spoils Civil Service Reform. system alienated others. In 1877 a Civil Service Reform Association was formed in New York, and under the leadership of reformers like George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, John Jay and Dorman B. Eaton, it extended to other states. In June 1877 President Hayes issued an executive order against the participation of Federal officers in political management, and he furnished evidence of his sincerity by removing Alonzo B. Cornell, the naval officer of New York, who was also chairman of both state and national Republican committees, and Chester A. Arthur, collector of the port of New York. As both men were friends of Senator Roscoe Conkling of that state, the leader of the Grant men, this was a bold challenge. The “Stalwarts” answered it by soon afterward securing the nomination of Cornell as governor of New York and Arthur as vice-president of the United States.
334. The monetary question rose to primary importance at this time. Hayes himself had campaigned in Ohio successfully Coinage Act of 1873. against the Greenback movement, and he chose as his secretary of the treasury, John Sherman, former senator from that state, whose long service as chairman of the finance committee had made him familiar with conditions and influential with moderate men of all factions. The per capita circulation of the nation had fallen from $20.57 in 1865 to $15.58 in 1877 and was still declining. The remarkable increase in the production of silver, as the new mining regions were opened, was accompanied by a fall in its ratio to gold from 15 to 1 in 1860 to 17 to 1 in 1877. Congress had, in 1873, passed an act dropping the standard silver dollar from the list of coins; but the significance of this omission of a coin not widely circulated, although it came at a time when European nations were adopting the gold standard, passed almost unnoticed at the moment; but the demonetization of silver was afterward stigmatized as a conspiracy, “the crime of 1873.” As the date (January 1, 1879) for the redemption of the greenbacks in specie approached, demands were renewed for the replacement of national bank notes by greenbacks, for the postponement, or abandonment of resumption, for the free coinage of silver, and for the use of silver as well as gold in the payment of bonds redeemable in “coin.” Sectional grouping of the debtor against the creditor regions, rather than party alignment, showed itself in the votes, for each party had its “soft money” as well as its “hard money” followers. Many who could not support the Greenback party in its theory that currency derived value from purchasing power based on the government's credit and authority rather than on convertibility, would, nevertheless, make larger use of paper money; while men who did not assent to the free coinage reasoning opposed the single gold standard as too narrow and too much under the influence of the speculative and banking interests, and would adopt some system of bi-metallism.
335. A Monetary Commission, appointed in 1876, reported in 1877, but without agreement or real influence upon the The Bland-Allison Act. country. The president took strong ground against free coinage (though he would resume coinage of silver in limited quantities) and against the payment of bonds in silver; but the House of Representatives passed the measure, known as the Bland Bill, for the free coinage of silver, by a vote of 163 to 34. In the Senate this was amended, and as it finally passed both houses it was known as the Bland-Allison Act after the two leaders, the Democratic representative from Missouri and the Republican senator from Iowa. This compromise was carried over the veto of President Hayes and became a law on the 28th of February 1878. In the vote of the 15th of February, all but one of the senators from New England, New York and New Jersey opposed it, while the states West of the Alleghanies furnished only four opposing votes. The law restored the legal tender character of the silver dollar and authorized the secretary of the treasury to buy silver bullion at the market price, to an amount of not less than $2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 per month, and to coin the bullion into silver dollars. Silver certificates of denominations not less than ten dollars were to be issued upon deposit of silver dollars. As neither the silver nor the certificates circulated freely the denominations of the certificates were reduced in 1886, when they filled the deficiency in the contracting banknote circulation.
336. Hardly had the Bland-Allison compromise been effected on the silver issue when an act was passed (May 31, 1878) forbidding the further retirement of greenbacks, which remained at $346,681,000. Substantially the same sectional alignment was followed in the vote on this bill as in the silver votes. Not satisfied with this legislation, nearly a million voters cast their ballots for Greenback party candidates at the Congressional elections in the autumn of 1878. The preparations of Secretary Sherman had been so carefully made, and the turning tide of trade brought coin so freely to the United States, that before the date of resumption of specie payments a gold reserve had been accumulated to the amount of $133,000,000 in excess of matured liabilities and the greenbacks rose to par before the date of redemption.
337. In the campaign of 1880, Hayes and Tilden both declined to stand for renomination. Thus the issue of the “fraud of Party Platforms of 1880. 1876,” which the Democratic platform called the paramount issue, was subordinated. Nor was it possible for the Republicans to force the tariff question into a commanding position, for although the Democratic platform declared for a tariff for revenue only, a considerable wing of that party led by Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, favoured protection. General Winfield S. Hancock, a distinguished soldier in the Civil War, whose nomination for the presidency by the Democrats was designed to allay Northern distrust, refused to make the tariff a national issue. The recent adjustment of the monetary question and the return of prosperity relegated the discussion of the currency also to a subordinate place, so that the Greenback party was able to poll only a little over 300,000 votes instead of the million which it commanded two years before. It favoured unlimited coinage of silver as well as the replacement of bank-notes by greenbacks.
338. The Republicans, after a heated convention in which the followers of Grant (who had recently returned from a several Garfield Elected President. years' trip round the world), Blaine and Sherman, fought each other to a deadlock, selected General James A. Garfield (q.v.) of Ohio, who was political manager for Sherman in the convention. This was a blow to the Grant, or “Stalwart” wing, which was partly placated by the nomination of Arthur for the vice-presidency. Garfield's popular plurality was only a little over seven thousand out of a total vote of over nine millions; but his electoral vote was 214 to Hancock's 155. The area of the former slave
