In The Compromise Of 1877 Republicans Sold Blacks Into The Period Knows As Jim Crowe.….

The Republican par­ty was formed in the 1850s, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, to oppose the expan­sion of slav­ery into what was char­ac­ter­ized as US Territories. More accu­rate account­ing, gives a date of March 20^th, 1854.
For the record, US ter­ri­to­ries in this con­text mean oppos­ing the exten­sion of slav­ery into Western territories.
In addi­tion to the fact that the par­ty was formed to pre­vent the expan­sion of slav­ery into west­ern ter­ri­to­ries, after the Civil war, the Republican Party also fought to pro­tect African American’s rights, dur­ing the Civil War.
On sev­er­al occa­sions, this writer has detailed that even though the Nation’s 16^th pres­i­dent, the Republican Abraham Lincoln, did sign the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, oth­er­wise known as the Emancipation Declaration, Lincoln had no com­punc­tion about leav­ing enslaved Blacks enslaved, if it suit­ed his purpose.
Abraham Lincoln made it clear to New York Newspaper pub­lish­er Horace Greely that his war (the civ­il war) was not about free­ing enslaved Blacks, but rather about pre­serv­ing the Union.

Abraham Lincoln wrote:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours on the 19^th. Addressed to me through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any state­ments, or assump­tions of fact, which I may know to be erro­neous, I do not, now and here, con­tro­vert them. If there be in it any infer­ences which I may believe to be false­ly drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be per­cep­ti­ble in it an impa­tient and dic­ta­to­r­i­al tone, I waive it in def­er­ence to an old friend, whose heart I have always sup­posed to be right.
As to the pol­i­cy, I “seem to be pur­su­ing,” as you say, I have not meant to leave any­one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would keep it the short­est way under the Constitution. The soon­er the nation­al author­i­ty can be restored, the near­er the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If some would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slav­ery, I’m afraid I have to dis­agree with them. If some would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slav­ery, I can’t entire­ly agree with them. My para­mount object in this strug­gle is to keep the Union and not either save or destroy slav­ery. If I could save the Union with­out free­ing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by free­ing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by free­ing some and leav­ing oth­ers alone, I would also do that. I do about slav­ery and the col­ored race, I do because I believe it helps save the Union; and what I for­bear, I for­bear because I do not believe it would help keep the Union. I shall do less when­ev­er I think what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more when­ev­er I believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to cor­rect errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stat­ed my pur­pose accord­ing to my view of offi­cial duty, and I intend no mod­i­fi­ca­tion of my oft-expressed per­son­al wish that all men every­where could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

We have dis­cussed Lincoln’s atti­tude towards the key ques­tion of slav­ery in this medi­um on sev­er­al occa­sions, most­ly to offer some per­spec­tive, to push back against [black or white], those who hold the view that some­how the Black com­mu­ni­ty owes to Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, a debt of grat­i­tude for the Emancipation proclamation.
We have also dis­cussed ad nau­se­am the dif­fer­ent stances adopt­ed by the two polit­i­cal par­ties after the civ­il war, includ­ing the two mon­u­men­tal pieces of leg­is­la­tion passed by the Democrats and signed into law by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, a south­ern Democrat from the state of Texas.
The two pieces of leg­is­la­tion I speak of are the July 2^nd, 1964, sign­ing of the Civil Rights Act into law by Johnson, and the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law on August 6^th, 1965 Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Even though some his­to­ri­ans have char­ac­ter­ized Johnson as crass and boor­ish, and even though it is alleged that Johnson was not spar­ing in his use of the “N” word, he stead­fast­ly believed that America would be a bet­ter place if all Americans had the same rights, and that includes the right to vote.

One event occurred in 1876. That may have been the event that changed how some blacks looked at the Republican par­ty that they had come to admire as the par­ty that “end­ed slav­ery,” albeit that the nos­tal­gia they har­bored may have been mis­placed to a cer­tain degree.
That event was the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion between Rutherford B Hayes the Republican nom­i­nee„ and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, the gov­er­nor of New York.
Tilden won the pop­u­lar vote by approx­i­mate­ly 250,000 votes. However, the Democratic and the Republican par­ties in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina each sent their own con­flict­ing bal­lot results to Washington. Because there were two sets of results from each state– with each party’s tal­ly declar­ing its own can­di­date to be the vic­tor – Congress appoint­ed a 15-mem­ber com­mis­sion to deter­mine the win­ner of each state’s elec­toral votes. (History​.com)
The com­mis­sion, which had a Republican major­i­ty, chose to award the dis­put­ed elec­toral votes to Hayes. Southern Democrats agreed to decide if the Republicans would recall the fed­er­al troops that were sup­port­ing Reconstruction. At the Southern Democrats’ urg­ing, the Republicans also agreed to appoint at least one Southerner to Hayes’ cab­i­net. When the com­mis­sion vot­ed to award all the con­test­ed elec­toral votes to Hayes, he tal­lied 185 elec­toral votes to Tilden’s 184. Hayes was declared the win­ner on March 2, 1877. He took the pres­i­den­tial oath of office in a pri­vate cer­e­mo­ny at the White House the next day, a pub­lic inau­gu­ra­tion fol­lowed on March 5. Northern Democrats who were unhap­py with the out­come declared that Hayes had stolen the elec­tion. (History​.com)

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Where have we heard that about the Republican Party before.….….….….……?
Southern Democrats agreed to decide if the Republicans would recall the fed­er­al troops that were sup­port­ing Reconstruction.
After the civ­il war, the peri­od of Reconstruction saw Southern Blacks being empow­ered, as I wrote in a pre­vi­ous article.
Linked above, in 1867, the peri­od when rad­i­cal recon­struc­tion began, Black Americans vot­ed in huge num­bers across the South, elect­ing a total of 22 Black men to serve in the U.S. Congress (two in the Senate).
Much of these gains were accom­plished because Federal troops were sta­tioned in the south to sup­port reconstruction.
Now, here is where the rub­ber met the road. Southern Democrats, the par­ty that sup­port­ed slav­ery at the time, were pre­pared to give Rutherford B Hayes the four years in a pres­i­den­tial term to remove fed­er­al troops from the region, there­by allow­ing them to install the igno­ble apartheid sys­tem. That peri­od became known as the Jim Crowe era.

In my esti­ma­tion, the Republican par­ty’s actions in sell­ing African-Americans to gain tem­po­rary pow­er were among the most extra­or­di­nary acts of treach­ery in human history.
By that design, which became known as the “Compromise of 1877″, The Republican par­ty vir­tu­al­ly sold the recent­ly freed black peo­ple, into an equal­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble peri­od of apartheid, that was to devel­op and take root, with the removal of fed­er­al troops from the south, called the Jim Crow era.
Within his first year in office, President Rutherford B Hayes with­drew fed­er­al troops from states still under occu­pa­tion. He made fed­er­al dol­lars avail­able for infra­struc­ture improve­ments in the South, and appoint­ed Southerners to influ­en­tial posts in high-lev­el gov­ern­ment positions.
While these actions sat­is­fied Southern Democrats, they antag­o­nized some mem­bers of his own party.
It was no secret that this peri­od that his­to­ri­ans record nos­tal­gi­cal­ly as nec­es­sary toward cement­ing the union, also revealed that many north­ern­ers sup­port­ed the south’s cause.
Still today, some of the most racists liv­ing in the United States, are not Southerners; they live in states in the North and Midwestern states.

The com­pro­mise of 1877, and the sign­ing of both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts may have some­thing to do with why the vast major­i­ty of Black Voters vote Democratic.
Yup, Lincoln did “free the slaves,” but once released from plan­ta­tions. Those peo­ple became free thinkers, which can­not be reversed.
They under­stood what Lincoln meant when he said; My para­mount objec­tive in this strug­gle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.
They also under­stood that the Republicans in 1877 sold them back into a form of slav­ery just as bad as when they had shack­les on their ankles.
Sure we have had real­ly stu­pid and dan­ger­ous pres­i­dents before; President Rutherford B Hayes, speak­ing of the tele­phone, said quote; “It’s a great inven­tion, but who would ever want to use one?’”

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.