21
CH 21
STUDY GUIDE
THE POLITICAL SYSTEM UNDER STRAIN
PEOPLE, PLACES & EVENTS
1. The “World’s Columbian Exposition”
2. The political system in America & the economic and social revolutions
3. US political climate of the quarter-century after the Civil War
4. The “politics of paralysis” & the Gilded Age from Ohio or New York.
5. Politics in America
6. Republican platform
7. Third-party movements
8. The “bloody shirt”
9. The Pendleton Act of 1883
10. The tariff issue
11. Rutherford B. Hayes
12. Grover Cleveland
13. Reform initiatives at the state and local levels
14. Farmer’s frustrations
15. The Interstate Commerce Commission
16. The Alliance movement & “cooperatives”
17. The British & U.S. Navies by 1900
18. The Alliance movement government warehouses for crop storage
19. The Populists
20. “free silver”
21. The depression of the 1890s
22. Coxey’s Army
23. New attitudes toward poverty and government responsibility
24. The 1896 election was important because:
a. it showed that the American people will reject radicalism.
b. it brought progressive politicians into power.
25. Free silver & the industrial Northeast
26. The Election of 1896
27. The money question in 1896
28. Disfranchisement of African Americans
29. Booker T. Washington vesus W. E. B. DuBois
30. William McKinley
31. Americans & the race for empire
32. American justifications for expansion in the 1890s
33. American expansion in the 1890s
34. Global power alignments in 1900 & US-Great Britain relations
35. American ideology of imperialism & commercial opportunity
COMPLETION
1. The Pendleton Act of 1883, the first piece of federal legislation to begin breaking down the
spoils system, created a bipartisan [
] commission to
supervise the federal job application process.
Chapter 21: The Political System Under Strain
2. In the South, poor farmers suffered; at the heart of their problem was [
.]
3. After the grange movement lost ground, another wave of farm protest organizations arose in
the later 1880s, collectively known as the [
] movement.
4. William Jennings Bryan garnered more votes than any previous candidate in American
history, but still lost the critical presidential election in the year [
] to
William McKinley.
5. The “talented tenth” should speak out in protest against Jim Crow practices, argued the
scholar [
].
IDENTIFICATION
Students should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts, individuals, and places,
and explain their significance:
Terms and Concepts
Populism
Mugwumps
Pendleton Act
McKinley Tariff
Bland-Allison Act
Patrons of Husbandry
Granger laws
Ocala Demands
Depression of 1893
Free silver
Niagara Movement
White Man’s Burden
Imperialism
crop-lien system
Anti-Saloon League
protective tariff
bimetallism
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Interstate Commerce Commission
Southern Alliance
Populist platform, 1892
anarchism
disfranchisement
Social Darwinism
Open Door
Anti-imperialists
Individuals and Places
Thomas E. Watson
Charles W. Macune
Ignatius Donnelly
Marcus Hanna
Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. DuBois
Alfred Thayer Mahan
James Garfield
Mary Elizabeth Lease
Jacob Coxey
William Jennings Bryan
Tuskegee Institute
Admiral George Dewey
Isthmus of Panama
MAP IDENTIFICATIONS
Students have been given the following map exercise: On the map on the following page, label
or shade in the following places. In a sentence, note their significance to the chapter.
1. States whose electoral votes went for William McKinley in 1896
2. States whose electoral votes went for William Jennings Bryan in 1896
3. States most urbanized
4. States least urbanized
1. .
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Chapter 21: The Political System Under Strain
1.
CRITICAL THINKING
EVALUATING EVIDENCE (MAPS)
1. The election of 1896 marked a dramatic realignment in American politics. What does the
election map on page 687indicate about the geographic nature of the new alignment? What
does geography tell us about the Republican and Democratic constituencies?
2. Although Democrat William Jennings Bryan and Republican William McKinley were less
than a million popular votes apart in the election of 1896, McKinley received nearly twice as
many electoral votes. Why?
EVALUATING EVIDENCE (ILLUSTRATIONS AND CHARTS)
1. Compare the men “waiting for bread” (in the drawing on page 685) during the depression of
1893. Who might they be? How can you tell? The drawing, by Charles Dana Gibson, is not
particularly characteristic of his work. Consult an encyclopedia and explain why.
2. Why is Bryan depicted as a snake swallowing itself in the political cartoon on page 686?
What is its message?
3. What kind of class is being taught at the Tuskegee Institute, pictured on page 683? Why is
such a class being taught in a school whose principal mission is to train students in
agriculture and manual trades? How are the students segregated? Why?
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Students have been asked to read carefully the following excerpt from the text and then answer
the questions that follow.
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Chapter 21: The Political System Under Strain
As the campaign of 1892 heated up, white Populists found themselves barred from their
churches by hostile fellow citizens, denied credit at local stores, driven from their homes.
Citizens of both races nevertheless worked eagerly for Watson. One young black
preacher, the Reverend H. S. Doyle, made over 60 speeches on the candidate’s behalf.
When a lynch mob threatened Doyle, Watson gave him haven on his own lands and
protected him with some 2,000 Populists. They arrived on “buggies and horses foaming
and tired with travel.” “We are determined,” said Watson, “in this free country that the
humblest white or black man that wants to talk our doctrine shall do it, and the man
doesn’t live who shall touch a hair of his head, without fighting every man in the people’s
party.”
Still, upright intentions could not outweigh fraud and violence. As many as 15 blacks
died in the Democratic campaign of intimidation. Whiskey was dispensed liberally to
persuade citizens to vote Democratic. Blacks were trucked in from across the South
Carolina line to vote. Many Democrats stuffed more than one ballot box, and cash bribes
routinely changed hands. After winning through such a convincing show of force,
Watson’s opponents expected that their adversary had learned his lesson—was so
badly beaten that he would have to be laid out like a corpse at a funeral. Watson was
having none of it. “We decided not to die,” he announced, on behalf of his Party. “We
unanimously decided to postpone the funeral.”
PRIMARY SOURCE: “TARIFF ON THE BRAIN”*
The tariff was a major source of controversy in the late nineteenth century. Industrialists favored
it, claiming that it protected American business from foreign competition and kept workers’
wages up. Advocates of free trade, many farmers among them, opposed it with counterclaims
that American industry no longer needed protection and consumers no longer needed to pay
tariff-inflated prices. The following song appeared in a Populist newspaper in the 1890s.
Come all you honest people,
Whoever you may be,
And help the honest workingmen
Resist monopoly.
‘Tis headed by the brokers—
They deal in bonds and stocks;
They cite us to the tariff
While they’re getting in their knocks.
CHORUS: Tariff on the brain!
Tariff on the brain!
Look out for politicians
Who have tariff on the brain.
The goldbugs, knowing Grover
To their scheming would agree,
They put him in the White House,
Their agent there to be.
They robbed us of our silver
*From
a Populist newspaper, 1890s, reprinted in Kansas Quarterly 1 (Fall, 1969).
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Chapter 21: The Political System Under Strain
And grabbed up all our gold—
They cite us to the sheriff
And leave us in the cold.
CHORUS
They’ve a scheme to throttle labor
And monopolize the land,
To make of us a servile herd
While they are rich and grand.
Their schemes cause want and hunger,
And they may be foiled perhaps;
Or will our fair Columbia
By their greediness collapse.
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