Congress overrode his veto, but Hayes's monetary policy forged a compromise between inflationists and advocates of hard money. He used federal troops cautiously to avoid violence in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, one of the largest labor strikes in U.S. history. Hayes tried to reconcile the social mores of the South with the civil rights laws by distributing patronage among Southern Democrats. 'My task was to wipe out the color line, to abolish sectionalism, to end the war and bring peace,' he wrote in his diary. 'To do this, I was ready to resort to unusual measures and to risk my own standing and reputation within my party and the country.' In the ensuing years and decades, African Americans would be almost completely disenfranchised. In 1861, Congress had significantly raised tariffs with the passage of the Morrill Tariff, which funded the Civil War and also protected American industries like iron and steel.