45th United States Congress

45th United States Congress
44th ← → 46th
United States Capitol (1877)
March 4, 1877 – March 4, 1879
Members	76 senators 293 representatives 8 non-voting delegates
Senate majority	Republican
Senate President	William A. Wheeler (R)
House majority	Democratic
House Speaker	Samuel J. Randall (D)
Sessions
Special[a]: March 5, 1877 – March 17, 1877 1st: October 15, 1877 – December 3, 1877 2nd: December 3, 1877 – June 20, 1878 3rd: December 2, 1878 – March 3, 1879

The 45th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1877, to March 4, 1879, during the first two years of Rutherford Hayes's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1870 United States census. The Senate had a Republican majority, and the House had a Democratic majority.

The 45th Congress remained politically divided between a Democratic House and Republican Senate.^[1] President Hayes vetoed an Army appropriations bill from the House which would have ended Reconstruction and prohibited the use of federal troops to protect polling stations in the former Confederacy.^[1] Striking back, Congress overrode another of Hayes’s vetoes and enacted the Bland-Allison Act that required the purchase and coining of silver.^[1] Congress also approved a generous increase in pension eligibility for Northern Civil War veterans.^[1]

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