"The Compromise of 1877 marked the abandonment of principles and of force and a return to the traditional ways of expediency and concession.  The compromise laid the political foundation for reunion.  It established a new sectional truce that proved more enduring that any previous one and provided a settlement for an issue that had troubled American politics for more than a generation.  It wrote the end to Reconstruction and recognized a new regime in the South.  More profoundly than any Constitutional amendments and wordy statutes it shaped the future for four million freedmen and their progeny for generations to come.  It preserved one part of the fruits of the 'Second American Revolution' -- the pragmatic and economic part -- at the expense of the other part -- the idealistic an humanitarian part.  The settlement was not ideal from any point of view, nor was it very logical either.  But that is not the way of compromises."

C. Vann Woodward, Reunion & Reaction