The Louisiana Democrats, their claims are intertwined with the choice of presidential electors for this year in the Hayes-Tilden dispute, claim that General Francis T. Nicholls is the winner in the gubernatorial contest in 1876, but the Republicans claim that S. B. Packard has won.

The Republicans manipulate the state returning board and send two sets of election returns to Congress, and the Democrats send their returns.

The freed black citizen, whose vote represents the balance of power in Louisiana, becomes the pawn in the electoral struggle between the state's Democrats and Republicans after 1876.

Both Nicholls and Packard take the oath as governor in January 1877 and set up rival governments, which continue until President Hayes, elected as a part of a bargain, orders the withdrawal of federal troops from the capital on April 20, 1877, and the white Democratic Party is left in control.

The withdrawal, on April 24 of Federal troops from Louisiana ends “Black Reconstruction” or “carpetbag rule” by Radical Republicans in the South. (Henceforth, Southern whites, in full control of their states, proceed systematically to nullify in practice Negro civil rights as guaranteed in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. This successful nullification will last well past the mid-twentieth century, despite continuous struggles against it.)