The Warmoth Board Governor and legislature undertook to set up government also, sustained as they undoubtedly were both by the law, and by public opinion in Louisiana and probably throughout the country, and partially organized a militia force. It was the fighting between this militia and the metropolitan police in the streets of New Orleans which occasioned the suppression of the McEnery government at last by United States soldiers. [Sidenote: The downward course between 1872 and 1874.] [Sidenote: The elections of 1874.] For two years more now the government of the adventurers, based on negro support, continued in the "States" south of the Tennessee line, except Georgia. Property was decreasing in amount and value; taxes were being doubled; and new bond issues were being made, and the bonds sold at a great reduction upon their face value, or stolen outright. But the day of deliverance was coming. The conscience of the Nation had been aroused, and in the elections of 1874 the voters throughout the country delivered a stunning rebuke to the party responsible for the hideous situation in the South. It is true that other issues were influential in producing the _bouleversement_ of 1874, especially the financial panic of 1873 and the corruption in the circles of the Federal Administration itself, the Whiskey ring frauds, and the Indian agent peculations. We must also {273} remember that at this very election several of the Southern "States" relieved themselves of Republican rule and sent solid, or almost solid, Democratic delegations to Congress. But with all proper allowance for the effect of these things, there still remained, as the chief cause of the change of view in the North, the revolt of the popular conscience against being any longer dragooned into the support of the policy of the Republican party in the Southern "States," and the popular disgust at the everlasting "waving of the bloody shirt" whenever the dominance of that party seemed anywhere threatened. At any rate, it was a clean sweep, and from a majority of two-thirds in the Forty-third Congress, the Republicans found themselves in possession of only about one-third of the seats in the Lower House of the Forty-fourth Congress. [Sidenote: The change in Alabama, Arkansas and Texas.]