After a disputed presidential election, Rutherford B. Hayes recognized the depths of the division within the country and sought to calm the situation with his Inaugural Address, delivered on March 5, 1877. The United States had seemed to be on the verge of a second civil war during the winter of 1876–1877. The bitter dispute over the outcome of the election was finally resolved in favor of Hayes, the Republican candidate, yet many Americans remained convinced that the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden was the actual winner. As the date of Hayes’s inauguration approached, even his supporters worried that he could never overcome the poisonous atmosphere that surrounded the contest. Talk of an armed invasion of Washington, D.C., to install Tilden in the White House was in the air. In his address, Hayes signaled his desire to move beyond the conflicts of Reconstruction toward a lasting reconciliation between the North and South.