[3] While the ongoing end of Reconstruction in the South was one of the main reasons for the shift, turn-of-the-century historian James Ford Rhodes explored the multiple causes of the results in the North:[4] In the fall elections of 1874 the issue was clearly defined: Did the Republican President Ulysses S. Grant and Congress deserve the confidence of the country?

Since 1861 the Republicans had controlled the House and now with its loss came a decrease in their majority in the Senate ...Rhodes continues: The political revolution from 1872 to 1874 was due to the failure of the Southern policy of the Republican party, to the Credit Mobilier and Sanborn contract scandals, to corrupt and inefficient administration in many departments and to the persistent advocacy of Grant by some close friends and hangers-on for a third presidential term.

Some among the opposition were influenced by the President's backsliding in the cause of civil service reform, and others by the failure of the Republican party to grapple successfully with the financial question.

Bands of women of good social standing marched to saloons before which or in which they sang hymns and, kneeling down, prayed that the great evil of drink might be removed.

Sympathizing men wrought with them in causing the strict law of the State against the sale of strong liquor to be rigidly enforced.

Since Republicans were in the main the instigators of the movement, it alienated from their party a large portion of the German American vote.In 1845, Congress passed a law providing for a uniform nationwide date for choosing Presidential electors.