, which was charged with the official responsibility of counting the votes. If the Democrats could delay the vote count by filibuster until March 4, Hayes would be unable to take office and the entire country would be thrown into chaos. The Compromise of 1877 averted this crisis at the last second.18The Democrats in the House would allow Hayes to be elected, but in return the Republicans had to make a number of commitments, which included removing the last of the federal troop support for southern Carpetbagger governments. Furthermore, the Republicans had to agree to fund major public works in the South, and to appoint Democrats to federal positions which were be held by Carpetbaggers.19With Democratic rule in the South, the door was left open for the subordination of African-Americans. The climate of public opinion had turned against blacks, and many in the North met this subordination with tacit approval. Through legislation, which added restrictions to voter registration that most Southern African-Americans could not possibly meet (such as the common restriction that ones grandfather must have been a registered voter, in order to register), the Southern states effectively nullified the African-American franchise without specifically repealing any of the pertinent legislation.20Then, in 1896, a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Plessy v. Ferguson, opened the way for further legal restrictions on African-American liberty through the infamous Jim Crow laws.21Homer Plessy, an African-American, challenged a Louisiana law, which required railroad passengers to be separated by race. When the Supreme Court upheld this law, it effectively made the separate but equal doctrine, which had been taking shape in the South, legal on a nationwide basis.22Numerous Jim Crow laws followed which further established the legal boundaries of segregation between races and effectively subordinated African-Americans to white rule.23Thus, the South, ...
