Compromise of 1877
[1] The existence of an informal agreement to secure Hayes's political authority, known as the Bargain of 1877, was long accepted as a part of American history.
[2] Under the compromise, Democrats controlling the House of Representatives allowed the decision of the Electoral Commission to take effect, securing political legitimacy for Hayes's legal authority as President.
Neither Abram Hewitt's papers nor a 1901 history written by select committee secretary Milton H. Northrup mentions any sort of deal to secure Hayes's presidency, though Woodward argues that neither man would have been privy to such talks.
"[11] Despite the lack of solid contemporary accounts, after the crisis the story of a "Bargain of 1877" had gradually come to plausibly explain how Southern Democrats, though convinced that Tilden was the lawful President, were persuaded to recognize Hayes's authority.
They met secretly at Wormley's Hotel in Washington to forge a compromise with aid to internal improvements: bridges, canals and railroads wanted by the South.
Under Woodward's Compromise theory, Southern Democrats acknowledged Hayes as president by ending their filibuster of the election,[13][14] on the understanding that Republicans would meet certain demands.
For instance, Speaker of the House Samuel J. Randall was from Pennsylvania and was more interested in ensuring that the Radical state government in Louisiana was abandoned than in any southern railroad.
[17] Peskin argues that Tilden would have been unable to challenge the election successfully, and thus the abandonment of the filibuster by Randall was pragmatic recognition of limited bargaining power, rather than a quid pro quo.
Instead of a negotiated compromise between opposing factions, Downs frames the dispute in a transnational context of "state fragility" and "state stabilization" in a period when many Americans feared "Mexicanization" of politics, whereby force would be used to settle a presidential election, resulting in a chaotic spiral of violent reprisals which were associated with foreign intervention and foreign domination of the Mexican Republic.
"[18] The prospect of delegitimization or dual presidencies during a period of relative fragility in an international context was feared to "Mexicanize" the United States.
[19] Until the end of the 19th century, black Republicans continued to elect numerous candidates to local office, although Democrats controlled most state representative and statewide seats, except for a brief period, roughly between 1877 and 1900, during which some fusion governments and candidates – supported both by Republicans and by Populists or another third party – were occasionally elected to state-level offices, particularly in North Carolina prior to the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.
