After the war, Candler settled in Jonesboro, Georgia, then Gainesville, Georgia. He turned to farming, then politics; he was one of many conservative Democrats pushing to wrest control of the state back from the ReconstructionRepublican state government, which was backed by the occupying Union Army. In 1872, he was elected Mayor of Gainesville. In 1873, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, serving there until his election to the Georgia Senate in 1878, where he served just two years. During this time, Candler was also involved in manufacturing and was the president of a railroad. In 1882, Candler was elected to the 48th Congress, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1883 to 1891. In 1886, he triggered a community conflict when he proposed a piece of legislation on behalf of some of his constituents. The law would set aside federal pension funds "for the relief of the First Georgia State Troops," the regiment organized by Union officer James G. Brown in 1864. Almost immediately after Congressman Candler offered his pension bill, north Georgia rebels burst into angry protest, calling the soldiers "first Georgia hogback Yankey fellers." In his third term as U.S. Representative, he was the chairman of the Committee on Education. Candler declined to run again in the 1890 election. Candler served as Secretary of State of Georgia from 1894 to 1898 before resigning to pursue the Governorship. Campaigning as the "one-eyed ploughboy from Pigeon Roost" he won with 70% of the vote against Populist candidate J. R. Hogan. After a first two-year term, Candler was returned to office in 1900, defeating Populist candidate George W. Trayler. reviewing the parade at the Atlanta Peace Jubilee, December 15, 1898. Candler was known as a conservative governor. While he established pensions for Confederate widows, he otherwise cut back both taxes and government expenditures. Candler pushed for the establishment of a whites-only Democratic primary based on the legal notion that the Democratic Party was a private organization and therefore not subject to the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment giving all Americans the right to vote, regardless of race. Since the Democratic Party had a monopoly on power in Southern states, the real selection of officeholders in Georgia occurred during the Democratic primary to select Democratic candidates for the fallgeneral election. Democrats consistently won all of these offices from the end of Reconstruction in 1871 until the 1970s. Candler's tenure as governor coincided with some of the most violent lynchings in Georgia's history. Although he publicly denounced mob violence, at the same time he blamed the victims of these incidents on black criminality and the increasing annoyance among whites of blacks demanding equal treatment. In an incident which culminated with the notorious lynching of Sam Hose in 1899, he berated the "better class" of blacks for not aiding authorities in his apprehension. These views were prominently printed in the Atlanta newspapers alongside those of the editors which urged the mobs on. Candler did ask the courts for speedier trials to head-off mob violence, and even admonished white women for not curtailing this blood-thirsty tendency in their men.
Death and legacy
After leaving the Governor's office, Candler served as the State's first compiler of records until his death in 1910 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was buried at Alta Vista cemetery in Gainesville. Candler County, Georgia, was named in 1914 for Candler in for his passion and diligence in compiling and editing nearly thirty volumes of the State's historical records from the Colonial, Revolutionary and Confederate periods.
