It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi in 1875. Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and barbarism, and that the whites under the radical régime had no opportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made use of every method of influencing the result that could possibly come within the radical law and they even employed many effective methods that lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge from employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radical ticket; there were night-riding parties, armed and drilled "white leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much plain talk assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloody outbreaks occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana had been carried by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radical returning board had reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in rebellion and turned out Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President Grant intervened to restore him to office. The "Mississippi" or "shot-gun plan" ¹ was very generally employed, except where the contest was likely to go in favor of the whites without the use of undue pressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but the average white man had determined to do away with negro government even though the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congress investigated the elections in each State which overthrew the reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the population rapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three States were left under radical government--Louisiana and Florida, where the returning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and South Carolina, where the negroes greatly outnumbered the whites. ¹ See The New South, by Holland Thompson (in The Chronicles of America). Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential campaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed States had escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and little real desire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this year the radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party." The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern issue but planned a forward-looking, constructive reform.