Fraud, violence, and intimidation at elections were neither suspected nor charged by anyone, for everyone knew that no occasion existed for such things.

But after the State and Congressional elections of 1874 there was a complete change of front.

The new order of things was then set aside and the abandoned methods of a few years back were revived and readopted.
It is no doubt true that very few men at the North who voted the Republican ticket in 1872 and the Democratic ticket in 1874 were influenced in changing their votes by anything connected with Reconstruction.

There were other questions at issue, no doubt, that influenced their action.

There had been in 1873, for instance, a disastrous financial panic.