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Governor Samuel Tilden, Democrat of New York, won the popular and electoral vote. However, the Republicans wanted to challenge the vote returns in a few Southern states, claiming that some freedmen (ex-slaves) had not been allowed to vote. They threatened to hold up Tilden's inauguration with a legal challenge.

The Democrats in Congress (particularly the ones from the South) decided to compromise. They would allow some electors to "throw" the election to the loser, Rutherford B. Hayes, in return for removing the Federal troops and election overseers from the South. This happened in early 1877, and is regarded as the end of Reconstruction.

Hayes was a very weak president, as you might well imagine. In the last year of his term (1880), he hadn't a prayer of being reelected and didn't wish to run anyway. The Republicans looked for a better candidate. The strongest potential candidate was ex-President Grant, who had just returned from a trip around the world and said he might be willing. But everyone remembered the Grant Administration as being full of scandals and chicanery.

So the candidate was Rep. James Garfield of Ohio, a lawyer with a reputation for personal integrity and an excellent war record. He was elected and then quickly assassinated

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12y ago

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