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In the fifteen years following Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural, the Democrats managed to survive the slur of disloyalty put upon them during the war, the loss of thousands of disenfranchised Southern members during the early years of Reconstruction, the corruption of New York’s Tammany Hall under William M. Tweed, and severe factional disputes within the party itself. In 1874, largely as the result of economic dislocations after the Panic of 1873, the Democrats made a sweeping recovery, gaining power in the House of Representatives and winning governorships.
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