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Highlights for March 2
1807 Congress abolishes the African slave trade
The U.S. Congress passes an act to "prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States...from any foreign kingdom, place, or country."
The first shipload of African captives to North America arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619, but for most of the 17th century, European indentured servants were far more numerous in the North American British colonies than were African slaves. However, after 1680, the flow of indentured servants sharply declined, leading to an explosion in the African slave trade. By the middle of the 18th century, slavery could be found in all 13 colonies and was at the core of the Southern colonies' agricultural economy. By the time of the American Revolution, the English importers alone had brought some three million captive Africans to the Americas.
After the war, as slave labor was not a crucial element of the Northern economy, most Northern states passed legislation to abolish slavery. However, in the South, the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton a major industry and sharply increased the need for slave labor. Tension arose between the North and the South as the slave or free status of new states was debated. In January 1807, with a self-sustaining population of over four million slaves in the South, some Southern congressmen joined with the North in voting to abolish the African slave trade, an act that became effective January 1, 1808. The widespread trade of slaves within the South was not prohibited, however, and children of slaves automatically became slave themselves, thus ensuring a self-sustaining slave population in the South.
Great Britain also banned the African slave trade in 1807, but the trade of African slaves to Brazil and Cuba continued until the 1860s. By 1865, some 12 million Africans had been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, and more than one million of these individuals had died from mistreatment during the voyage. In addition, an unknown number of Africans died in slave wars and forced marches directly resulting from the Western Hemisphere's demand for African slaves.
1877 Congress approves Hayes' election; Reconstruction ends
On March 2, 1877, Congress accepts an electoral commission's decision that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the disputed presidential election of the previous November. Three days later, Hayes was inaugurated as the 19th U.S. president. The result was greeted with outrage by some Northern Democrats, who thereafter referred to Hayes as "His Fraudulency." One of President Hayes' first acts was to end the federal military occupation of the South and to recognize Democratic control over the region, thus bringing the Reconstruction era to a close.
On November 7, 1876, Democratic presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden received more popular votes than Hayes, and early returns indicated a Democratic victory in the electoral college as well. However, Republicans refused to concede on the grounds that returns from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina were still in dispute, and because a presidential elector in Oregon, who voted for Hayes, was found ineligible. The Oregon elector, John Watts, served in the appointive position of postmaster for one week after learning he was chosen to be an elector. Although he resigned well before the December electoral vote, Democrats claimed he violated the constitutional clause that no elected or appointed official may serve as a presidential elector.
A candidate needed 185 electoral votes to win, and with these 20 electoral votes still undecided Tilden had 184 votes to Hayes' 165 votes. Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina each sent two sets of electors to the electoral college, and the Republicans and Democrats each claimed the disputed Oregon vote. The Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives could not decide how to count the votes, and a deadlock ensued. Finally, at the end of January 1877, Congress voted to establish a special electoral commission to decide the disputed presidential election, with five members from each house of Congress and five members from the Supreme Court. There were seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and one independent, Supreme Court Justice David Davis. However, before any voting occurred, Davis resigned from the commission when he was elected a U.S. senator from Illinois. The justice who replaced him was Joseph Bradley, a staunch Republican.
The commission voted along party lines, with Hayes receiving eight votes to Tilden's seven, and Democrats in Congress launched filibusters and other delay tactics to block approval of the decision. Finally, in late February, some House Democrats began to support Hayes' claim. Although no bargain was publicly revealed, it is known that Southern Democrats were assured of a conciliatory attitude toward the South under a Hayes administration, including acceptance of Democratic governors and a withdrawal of federal troops. In the early morning of March 2, Congress agreed to award the contested votes to Hayes, giving him a bare majority over Tilden, and he won the presidency.
Shortly after Hayes' inauguration, the Republican Party's radical Reconstruction policies, which dominated Southern politics for nearly a decade, all but collapsed. If Tilden had been elected, however, the result would likely have much been the same. During Hayes' four years in the White House, the Southern Republican Party vanished, as Southern state governments effectively nullified the 14th and 15th Amendments, stripping Southern African Americans of the right to vote. It would be nearly a century before the nation would again attempt to establish equal rights for African Americans in the South.
Other Highlights for March 2
: Texas Independence Proclaimed
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