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.
* 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.
To some of the Republican leaders, however, among whom was James G.
Blame, it was clear that the Republican party, with its unsavory record under Grant's Administration, could hardly go before the people with a reform program.

The only possible thing to do was to revive some Civil War issue--"wave the bloody shirt" and fan the smoldering embers of sectional feeling.

Blame met with complete success in raising the desired issue.

In January 1876, when an amnesty measure was brought before the House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be excepted on the ground that he was responsible for the mistreatment of Union prisoners during the war.