Reconstruction came to an end as a direct result of too many Southerners opposing the reconstruction. When all efforts for reconstruction were met with a battle, the spirits of the Northerners to reconstruct the South began to wane because they did not want to constantly be met with confrontation while trying to reconstruct the area. In 1877, Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the south, and the bayonet-backed Republican governments collapsed, thereby ending Reconstruction. Over the next three decades, the civil rights that blacks had been promised during Reconstruction crumbled under white rule in the south.