  And so it seemed. There followed a brief, euphoric period of statutory freedom during which Black people held elective and appointive offices in many states that had been part of the Confederacy and otherwise made initial significant gains in other areas of life.  However, a post-war (1877) so-called compromise between Republican economic and political forces in the North and East and those of Democrats in the South settled a disputed presidential election (a contest Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden) and allowed a South not completely vanquished by the lost war to regain power in its region in exchange for Republican hegemony in the federal government.