Excerpt from Contemporary American History 1877-1913 I have omitted with a light heart many of the staples of history in order to treat more fully the matters which seem important from the modern point of view. I have also refused to mar the pages with black type, para graph numbers, and other apparatus which tradition has prescribed for manuals. Detailed election sta tistics and the guide to additional reading I have placed in an appendix. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Contemporary American History 1877-1913 In teaching American government and politics, I constantly meet large numbers of students who have no knowledge of the most elementary facts of American history since the Civil War. When they are taken to task for their neglect, they reply that there is no textbook dealing with the period, and that the smaller histories are sadly deficient in their treatment of our age. It is to supply the student and general reader with a handy guide to contemporary history that I have undertaken this volume. I have made no attempt to present an "artistically balanced" account of the last thirty-five years, but have sought rather to furnish a background for the leading issues of current politics and to enlist the interest of the student in the history of the most wonderful period in American development. The book is necessarily somewhat "impressionistic" and in part it is based upon materials which have not been adequately sifted and evaluated. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to be accurate and fair, and at the same time to invite on the part of the student some of that free play of the mind which Matthew Arnold has shown to be so helpful in literary criticism. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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When President Hayes was inaugurated on March 4, 1877, the southern whites had almost shaken off the Republican rule which had been set up under the protection of Federal soldiers at the close of the Civil War. In only two states, Louisiana and South Carolina, were Republican governors nominally in power, and these last "rulers of conquered provinces" had only a weak grip upon their offices, which they could not have maintained for a moment without the aid of Union troops stationed at their capitals. By secret societies, like the Ku Klux Klan, and by open intimidation, the conservative whites had practically recovered from the negroes, whom the Republicans had enfranchised, the political power which had been wrested from the old ruling class at the close of the War. In this nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution and other measures designed to secure the suffrage for the former bondmen, President Grant had acquiesced, and it was openly rumored that Hayes would put an end to the military r�gime in Louisiana and South Carolina, leaving the southern people to fight out their own battles.