The Removal of Federal Troops by David Barton

In 1884, John Roy Lynch became the first black American to preside over a national political convention – the Republican National Convention in Chicago. 296 While Lynch was the first black American to preside over a national political convention, he was not the last: U. S. Senator Edward Brooke presided over the 1968 Republican National Convention, and Rep. J. C. Watts presided over the 2000 Republican National Convention. 298 While three black Americans have presided over National Conventions for Republicans, to date Democrats have never had a black American preside over any of their National Democratic Conventions.

Following the removal of federal troops from the South after the agreement of 1876, federal troops could no longer protect African American rep. john r. lynch was the first African American to preside over a national political convention – the 1884 republican national convention in Chicago voting. Republicans therefore sought different means to preserve the rights of black Americans in the South. For example, they posted handbills reminding southern Democrats first of the federal laws protecting black voting rights and then warning of huge fines for violations.

The presidential election of that year was between Republican James A. Garfield and Northern Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock. Hancock had been a successful Union General during the Civil War, but after the War he was reassigned because of his leniency toward unreconstructed Democrats. It is because Hancock was a Democrat, a handbill not. The reasons given in that piece would today be considered as inflammatory language; at that time, however, the declarations were nothing more than reminders – that is, the facts recorded in that piece were already widely known by the voters of that day:

Why I Will not Vote the Democratic Ticket. I am opposed to the Democratic Party, and I will tell you why. Every State that seceded from the United States was a Democratic State. . . . Every man that shot Union soldiers was a Democrat. . . . Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was a Democrat.

The man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat. Every man that sympathized with the assassin – every man glad that the noblest President ever elected was assassinated – was a Democrat. . . .

Every man that wept over the corpse of slavery was a Democrat. Every man that cursed Lincoln because he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation – the grandest paper since the Declaration of Independence – every one of them was a Democrat. . . .

Soldiers! Every scar you have got on your heroic bodies was given you by a Democrat. Every scar, every arm that is lacking, every limb that is gone, every scar is a souvenir of a Democrat.

That handbill then contrasted the Republicans with the Democrats: 1880 voter handbill The Republicans have done some noble things – things that will be remembered as long as there is history. But there are some things they did not do. They did not use an army to force slavery into Kansas. . . . They were not “Knights of the Golden Circle.”