The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure rather because of a change in public opinion in the North than because of the resistance of the Southern whites.The North of 1877, indeed, was not the North of 1867.A more tolerant attitude toward the South developed as the North passed through its own period of misgovernment when all the large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as in New York under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbia under "Boss" Shepherd.The Federal civil service was discredited by the scandals connected with the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and the Star Routes, while some leaders in Congress were under a cloud from the "Salary Grab" and Credit Mobilier disclosures.** See "The Boss and the Machine", by Samuel P.Orth in "The Chronicles of America").
The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew attention away from sectional controversies.Settlers poured into the plains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new industries sprang up;unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered; railroads were built.Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an interest in the financial readjustments of the time.Many thousand people followed the discussions over the funding and refunding of the national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed lowering of tariff duties.Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the panic of 1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions.
These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved all tended to divert public thought from the old political issues arising out of the war.Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new interest.The Alabama claims controversy with England continued to hold the public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration in 1872.President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for two years (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for an American naval base in the West Indies.But the United States had race problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused to sanction the acquisition.Relations with Spain were frequently strained on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban insurgents.Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness toward such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing no other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban insurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held back.The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high seas the Virginius* with a filibustering expedition on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among them eight Americans.For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quickly and effected a peaceable settlement.
* See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The Chronicles of America"), p.119.
It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North solidly Republican.Toward Negro suffrage, for example, Northern public opinion was on the whole unfriendly.In 1867, the Negro was permitted to vote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut.Before 1869, Negro suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota.The Republicans in their national platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, while Negro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must remain a local question in the North.The Border States rapidly lined up with the white South on matters of race, church, and politics.
It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made generally effective in the elections.The skillfully managed radical organization held large majorities in every Congress from the Thirty-ninth to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and 1879 seemed to show that the conservative opposition was insignificant.But these figures do not tell the whole story.
Even in 1864, when Lincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was as eighteen to twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man in the United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand over Seymour, and this majority and more came from the new Negro voters.Four years later with about a million Negro voters available and an opposition not pleased with its own candidate, Grant's majority reached only seven hundred thousand.At no one time in elections did the North pronounce itself in favor of all the reconstruction policies.The break, signs of which were visible as early as 1869, came in 1874 when the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.
