Describe how Reconstruction was brought to an end by white terror and the Compromise of 1877.

The "White terror" of which you speak were organizations
such as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the White Camellia, and in South Carolina the
Red Shirt Campaign. These organizations were comprised of white Democrats who used
various methods of terror to frighten both Blacks and Republican whites from
participating in politics, particularly in voting. To the discredit of the
Reconstruction Congress, the Federal Government virtually abandoned attempts to
rehabilitate former slaves.

The Compromise of 1877 was the
result of the disputed election of that year. Rival governments in the South sent rival
electoral votes to Congress such that no one had a majority in the Electoral college. A
committee of fifteen comprised of five members each of the House, Senate, and Supreme
Court was formed to resolve the issue. By terms of the Compromise, Rutherford B. Hayes
was declared the winner of the election, in exchange for which federal troops were
removed from the South, and reconstruction came to an end, even though its work was not
finished. Former slaves were free, but the Fourteenth Amendment notwithstanding, had few
freedoms and civil rights. They were hardly better off because they had been abandoned
by the North in the face of white terrorism.