Compromise of 1877

Hayes ends federal military support for the last Reconstruction state governments

Hayes's Louisiana order sent the soldiers to barracks "in the vicinity." It was a short march across a city, not an evacuation of the South.

Two orders, two states, one April

On 3 April 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered the federal detachment occupying the South Carolina State House in Columbia returned to its previous camp. The order was carried out at noon on 10 April.

On 20 April he directed that the infantry detachment beside Louisiana's disputed statehouse, the Mechanics' Institute in New Orleans, be moved to regular barracks nearby. That movement took place at noon on 24 April.

What actually changed

In South Carolina the Republican claimant Daniel Chamberlain abandoned his claim immediately after the withdrawal, leaving the Democrat Wade Hampton III in control. A parallel transfer favoured Francis T. Nicholls over the Republican Stephen B. Packard in Louisiana.

The soldiers were withdrawn from statehouses, not from states. Federal troops remained in South Carolina as a potential guarantee of civil and political rights, and the Army did not leave the South.

"Forced by the Compromise" is an interpretation

Describing the withdrawals as a condition forced by the Compromise of 1877 adopts C. Vann Woodward's disputed reading. Hayes already favoured a conciliatory Southern policy, and scholars disagree over whether the troop decisions and Democratic acquiescence formed a genuine exchange.

Florida's Republican state government had already yielded to the Democrat George F. Drew in January, before Hayes took office.

1877 is the conventional textbook endpoint of Reconstruction, but the periodisation is interpretive: some modern scholarship and National Park Service work use a longer Reconstruction extending well beyond it.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 8 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at 1877-04.

What the sources leave uncertain

This was a sequence, not a single-day event: South Carolina was ordered April 3 and executed April 10; Louisiana was ordered April 20 and executed April 24.
Calling the withdrawals a condition 'forced' by the Compromise of 1877 adopts C. Vann Woodward's disputed interpretation. Hayes already favored a conciliatory Southern policy, and scholars disagree over whether Democratic acquiescence and the troop decisions formed a true exchange.
The familiar claim that Hayes withdrew the 'last federal troops from the South' is literally misleading. The detachments left state-government buildings for nearby military quarters; the Army did not vanish from the South.
1877 is the conventional textbook endpoint of Reconstruction, but periodization is interpretive. Some modern scholarship and National Park Service work use a longer Reconstruction extending well beyond 1877.