COMPROMISE OF 1877

COMPROMISE OF 1877 The disputed national presidential elec­tion of 1876 was settled by the so-called "Compromise of 1877." Southern Democrats agreed to accept a Republican president (Rutherford B. Hayes) in exchange for Republican assurances that federal troops and federal interference in the affairs of southern states would be removed. This intersectional "bar­gain," of course, formally "ended" the period of Reconstruction and restored "home-rule" to white southerners. More significant is the fact that the Compromise of 1877 represented the abandon­ment of southern freedmen by northern politicians. Without fear of direct federal interference, white southerners were now able to effectively restore white-rule and institutionalize Jim Crowism throughout the former Confederacy. The hapless black freed­men and their descendants, according to historian John A. Garraty, "were condemned in the interests of sectional harmony to lives of poverty, indignity, and little hope." See also: BLACK REPUBLICAN RECONSTRUCTION and JIM CROWISM.