Through the winter, Chamberlain and Hampton both claimed to lead the lawful government, but Chamberlain's found it nearly impossible to raise the money or military force to function beyond the rooms in which it met. Chamberlain left South Carolina in April 1877 when President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew Federal troops to barracks from their place protecting the Republican government and ended the interventions that had taken place intermittently in the state since the Civil War. Embittered, Chamberlain blamed the President for having betrayed the mass of South Carolina's voters; the population was 58% African American. In later years, however, he grew disillusioned with Reconstruction and contended that letting black people vote had been a mistake.