It is true that the Republican majority in Congress had not taken this high ground concerning the public credit and sound money without some wavering. The President himself had become frightened by the panic of the autumn of 1873, and in his annual message of December 1st following had made recommendations that might be regarded as favorable to an inflation of the existing body of paper money. His party friends in
The inflation bill
of 1874 and the
veto of it by the
President.
While at the moment this law for the resumption of specie payments in the short period of four years, or rather less, from the time of its enactment seemed a rather hazardous, not to say desperate, move on the part of the Republicans, it soon became manifest that they could have done nothing so calculated to strengthen the hold of the party upon the solid and conservative men of the country as just this very thing. Many of these men who had usually voted with the Republicans disapproved of the Southern policy of the party, and were on the point of turning against it. With the Resumption Act the financial policy of the Republican party, and of the country, was dragged to the front, and the Southern policy was forced backward, and made to constitute a less prominent issue in the campaign of 1876. This was not only wise party management, but it was also a fortunate thing for the entire country. The country was not yet in a position to endure a Democratic administration, and, on the other hand, it was surfeited with reconstruction Republican administrations. It wanted a sound money Republican administration, which would devote itself to the development of the economic interests of the whole people, and would let the "State" governments in the South have a chance to work out their own salvation. And this was just what it got in the election of 1876, and in the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1876 AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
[The Republican National Convention of 1876—The Platform]—[The Nominees]—[The National Democratic Convention of 1876—The Platform]—[The Nominees]—[The Campaign and the Election]—[The Count and the Twenty-second Joint Rule]—[Views in Regard to the Power to Count the Electoral Vote]—[The Republicans in Advantage in the Count of the Vote]—[The Electoral Commission Bill]—[The Passage of the Bill]—[The Members of the Commission]—[The Fifth Justice]—[Justice David Davis]—[The Counting of the Electoral Vote by Congress]—[The Double Returns from South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Oregon]—[The Counsel before the Commission]—[The Republican Position]—[The Democratic Position]—[The Decisions of the Commission]—[Mr. Hayes Declared President]—[The Truth in Regard to the Election]—[Mr. Hayes's Southern Policy]—[The Result of His Policy]—[Reconciliation between the North and the South].
When the managers of the Republican party met in National nominating convention at Cincinnati, on the 14th of June, 1876, they rightly