9,487
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
m
no edit summary
==Background==
The origins of institutionalized segregation may be traced to the contentious [[Wikipedia:United States presidential election, 1876|1876 election]] of president [[Wikipedia:Rutherford B. Hayes|Rutherford B. Hayes]], who ordered the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending the Reconstruction period.
Pensacola played a pivotal role in the so-called [[Wikipedia:Compromise of 1877|Compromise of 1877]] that delivered Florida's electoral votes (and thereby the election) to Hayes. One of the Florida's electors for Hayes, Pensacolian [[Frederick C. Humphreys]], faced objections by the Democrats that he was constitutionally ineligible to cast a vote because he also held a federal office as shipping commissioner of the [[Port of Pensacola]]. Humphreys was able to provide proof that he had resigned from the shipping position a month before the election, and with the matter resolved, "it was such as to give all but absolute assurance that the next President will be Rutherford B. Hayes."<ref>"The Electoral Tribunal." ''New York Times'', February 8, 1877.</ref>
