shown over the contest, and the Democrats,
with a real majority of popular votes, maintained that they had been
robbed of the Presidency. Excepting this, there was no issue that
clearly separated the followers of Hayes from those of Tilden when the
former took the oath of office. There was likewise, unhappily for Hayes,
no common bond by which the President could hold his own party together
and make a successful administration.

Like three of his predecessors, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and
Martin Van Buren, Hayes was carried into office by the weight of a
well-organized machine, rather than by his own hold upon the people.
Like all of them he fought faction as a consequence, and every new step
in administration forced upon him increased his embarrassment in
conducting the Government. At the start, he alienated many Republicans
by his policy toward the South.

Before the election Hayes had reached the conclusion that coercion in
the South must be abandoned. The people must be left in control of their
own institutions, and if they mishandled them must take the
consequences. This meant that the last of the States, in which only the
army garrisons had kept the Republicans in office, must revert to the
control of the Democrats. It also meant an attack upon the President by
those who still believed the South a menace, and those who cherished it
as a political issue,--the "sentimentalists controlled by knaves," in
Godkin's language. Hayes acted upon his conviction as soon as he took
office, withdrew the troops, and turned over to the South her own
problems. Political reconstruction, as shaped by Congress, had broken
down in every part, and it remained to be seen whether the
constitutional reconstruction, as embodied in the amendments, would be
more permanently effective.

In addition to taking their issue from them, Hayes deprived the
politicians of their plunder. The personal conduct of his household
added nothing to his popularity in Washington, for his wife served no
wines and gave to the White House the atmosphere of the standard
middle-class American family. His official family struck a blow at the
political use of offices.

Although many of the Liberal Republicans of 1872 were still dissatisfied
and saw no prospect of a change of heart for their party, most of them
had voted for Hayes, and one of them was taken into the new Cabinet.
Carl Schurz became Secretary of the Interior, bringing into office for
the fir