re: #41 HappyWarrior

Not familiar with that. Explain, please, sorry.

Southern politicians got fed up with Federal troops being deployed in the South during Reconstruction, so managed to pass the Posse Comitatus Act, limiting the ability of Federal troops to be deployed inside the United States.

The Act, 15 of the appropriations bill for the Army for 1879, found at 20 Stat. 152, was a response to, and subsequent prohibition of, the military occupation by United States Army troops of the former Confederate States during the ten years of Reconstruction (1867-1877) following the American Civil War (1861-1865). The president withdrew federal troops from Southern states as a result of a compromise in one of the most disputed national elections in American history, the 1876 U.S. presidential election. Samuel J. Tilden of New York, the Democratic candidate, defeated Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio in the popular vote. Tilden garnered 184 electoral votes to Hayes’ 165; 20 disputed electoral votes remained uncounted. After a bitter fight, Congress struck a deal resolving the dispute and awarding the presidency to Hayes.

In return for Southern acquiescence regarding Hayes, Republicans agreed to support the withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederate states, ending Reconstruction. Known as the Compromise of 1877, South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana agreed to certify Rutherford B. Hayes as the President in exchange for the removal of Federal troops from the South.[1] The U.S. Constitution places primary responsibility for the holding of elections in the hands of the individual states. The maintenance of peace, conduct of orderly elections, and prosecution of unlawful actions are all state responsibilities, pursuant of any state’s role of exercising police power and maintaining law and order, whether part of a wider federation or a unitary state.

During the local, state, and federal elections of 1874 and 1876 in the former Confederate states, all levels of government chose not to exercise their police powers to maintain law and order.[1] Many acts of violence, and a suppression of the vote of some political and racial groups, resulted in the election of state legislators and U.S. congressmen who halted and reversed political reform in the American South.[1]