In the election, they swept all of the Northern "States" by heavy popular majorities, and with their election machinery in the Southern "States" they captured a majority of these also. In those Southern "States" which were free from carpet-bag negro rule the Greeley electors were chosen, that is in Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas. In the North, a very large number of Democrats had failed to go to the polls. They could hardly have elected Greeley, however, had they all voted for him. They were pretty sure of this, and they took the opportunity of administering a rebuke to their chiefs for not nominating candidates who were members of their own party. [Sidenote: The effect of the triumph of the Republicans.] While there is no doubt that the re-election of General Grant, and the election of a strong Republican majority in Congress, quieted the mind of the North, there is also no doubt that they caused great {268} discouragement among the white people of the South, since they operated as an encouragement to the adventurers and the negroes to persevere in their corrupt and conscienceless management of the "State" governments. In several of the reconstructed "States" the Democrats had made strong efforts to secure control of the "State" governments. The Amnesty Act of May 22d, 1872, had removed the disqualifications of the Fourteenth Amendment from all the Southern leaders, except such as had been members of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses, or had held judicial, military, naval, or diplomatic office under the United States, or had been heads of departments in ministerial office. A large number of these leaders had thus been placed in a position to participate as candidates for office and legislative position in the election, and to aid greatly in the work of rescuing their "States" from negro Republican rule. In Alabama and Louisiana they had very nearly succeeded. In Alabama they had elected the Governor and a majority of the members to the lower house of the legislature in the autumn of 1870, and in 1872 they claimed to have elected a majority of the members to both houses. [Sidenote: Events in Alabama.] In Alabama, the Democratic members-elect of the legislature convened in the capitol, and the Republican members-elect in the court-house. The Democratic Governor, Lindsay, recognized the Democratic legislature, and the Democratic legislature then canvassed the votes for Governor and declared the Republican candidate, D. P. Lewis, elected. Lewis then recognized the Republican legislature, and telegraphed to Opelika for United States soldiers to come to Montgomery. They arrived by the next train, and, backed by these, the Governor and his friends, in and {269} out of the legislature, succeeded in constituting a legislature with a small Republican majority in both houses; and the whites fell back again under black rule, discouraged and exhausted by the exertions and the failure to escape from it.