"Give In to Them or They Would Starve the Government to Death"

"The riders were about troops and voting, but at issue was the very structure of American government. President Hayes and Minority leader Garfield recognized that if an extremist faction in Congress could force its will on the country by holding government finances hostage, it would erase the power of the president and destroy the basic structure of the American government’s separation of powers. Even moderate Democrats, who didn’t particularly like the idea of troops enforcing black rights, agreed that the threat was truly revolutionary and menaced the Constitution. If the extremists’ tactics worked, this would be only the first of their demands, and the country would fall, as one Democrat said, under 'the absolute despotism of an irresponsible and unrestrained partisan majority' in Congress."

Heather Cox Richardson in Salon looks back to when Southern Congressmen threatened to shut down the federal government in 1879.