Cover Slide
The American
Pageant
Chapter 23
Political Paralysis
in the Gilded Age,
1869-1896
Adapted from: Ms. Susan M. Pojer
Horace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The 1868 Republican Ticket
The 1868 Democratic Ticket
Waving the Bloody Shirt!
Waving the Bloody Shirt!
• Republicans nominated Civil War
General Ulysses S. Grant
– great soldier
– had no political experience
• Democrats?
– could only denounce military Reconstruction
– couldn’t agree on anything els e= were
disorganized.
Waving the Bloody Shirt!
• The Republicans got Grant elected
(barely) by “waving the bloody shirt”
– =reliving his war victories
• used his popularity to elect him
• popular vote was only slightly ahead of rival
Horatio Seymour.
• Seymour = Democratic candidate
– didn’t accept a redemption-of-greenbacks-formaximum-value platform, and thus doomed his party.
• Since election = close Republicans could
not take future victories for granted.
1868 Presidential Election
President Ulysses S. Grant
The Era of Good Stealings
• Despite the Civil War, the population
grew
– Partially due to immigration
• politics became very corrupt
• Railroad promoters cheated gullible
customers.
• Too many judges and legislators put
their power up for hire.
The Era of Good Stealings
• Jim Fisk and Jay Gould
– notorious millionaires
– In 1869, they concocted a plot to corner
the gold market
– Plan would only work if the treasury
stopped selling gold
– they worked on President Grant directly
and through his brother-in-law
– plan failed when the treasury sold gold.
The Era of Good Stealings
• Tweed Ring (AKA, “Tammany Hall) of
NYC
– Headed by “Boss” Tweed
• Used bribery, graft, and fake elections to
cheat the city of as much as $200 million
• caught when The New York Times secured
evidence of his misdeeds
• died in jail.
The Tweed Ring
in NYC
William Marcy Tweed
(notorious head of Tammany Hall’s political machine)
[Thomas Nast  crusading cartoonist/reporter]
Who Stole the People’s Money?
A Carnival of Corruption
• Grant
– failed to see corruption going on
– many of his friends wanted offices
– his cabinet was totally corrupt
Credit Mobilier
• railroad construction company that paid
itself huge sums of money for small
railroad construction
• Tarred Grant
• NY newspaper reported it
• 2 members of Congress were formally
censured
– company had given some of its stock to
the congressmen
– Vice President was shown to have
accepted 20 shares of stock
Whiskey Ring
• 1875- public learned that the Whiskey
Ring had robbed the Treasury of millions
– group of officials were importing whiskey &
using their offices to avoid paying the taxes
on it, cheating the treasury out of millions of
dollars.
– when Grant’s own private secretary was
shown to be one of the criminals, Grant
retracted his earlier statement of “Let no
guilty man escape.”
– 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap
was shown to have pocketed some
$24,000 by selling junk to Indians
And They Say He Wants a Third Term
The Election of 1872
 Rumors of corruption
during Grant’s first
term discredit
Republicans.
 Horace Greeley runs
as a Democrat/Liberal
Republican candidate.
 Greeley attacked as a
fool and a crank.
 Greeley died on
November 29, 1872!
1872 Presidential Election
Popular Vote for President: 1872
The Panic of 1873
• Causes:
– Unrestrained speculation on the railroads
– Too easy credit
• Started when…
– failure of the NY banking firm Jay Cooke &
Company, which was headed by the rich Jay
Cooke, a financier of the Civil War.
Depression, Deflation, & Inflation
• Greenbacks that had been issued in
the Civil War were being recalled
– but now, during the panic
• “cheap-money” supporters wanted
greenbacks to be printed en mass again, to
create inflation.
– supporters of “hard-money” (actual gold
and silver) persuaded Grant to veto a bill
that would print more paper money
Depression, Deflation, & Inflation
• Resumption Act of 1875
• government would withdraw greenbacks & maKe
all further redemption of paper money in gold at
face value, starting in 1879.
• Debtors now cried that silver was
under-valued (another call for inflation),
– Grant refused to coin more silver dollars,
which (stopped in 1873)
• new silver discoveries in the later 1870s shot
the price of silver way down. Grant’s name
remained fused to sound money, though not
sound government.
Depression, Deflation, & Inflation
• greenbacks regain their value
– few greenback holders exchange their more
convenient bills for gold when Redemption
Day came in 1879
• 1878, the Bland-Allison Act instructed
the Treasury to buy and coin between $2
million and $4 million worth of silver bullion
each month. The minimum was actually
coined and its effect was minimal on
creating “cheap money.”
Depression, Deflation, & Inflation
• Republican hard-money policy,
– led to the election of a Democratic House of
Representatives in 1874
– Spawned the Greenback Labor Party in 1878
• primarily composed of prairie farmers who went into debt
during the Panic of 1873
• fought for increased monetary circulation through issuance
of paper currency and bimetallism (using both gold and
silver as legal tender)
• supported inflationary
• sought benefits for labor such as shorter working hours
and a national labor bureau.
• wanted the government to print more greenbacks.
Definition: Gilded Age
• “The Gilded Age,”
– term coined by Mark Twain
– times looked good, yet if one scratched a
bit below the surface, there were
problems.
– corruption.
Northern Support Wanes
 “Grantism” & corruption.
 Panic of 1873 [6-year
depression].
 Concern over westward
expansion and Indian wars.
 Key monetary issues:
*
should the government
retire $432m worth of
“greenbacks” issued during the Civil War.
*
should war bonds be paid back in specie or
greenbacks.
1876 Presidential Tickets
“Regional Balance?”
1876 Presidential Election
The Political Crisis of 1877
 “Corrupt Bargain”
Part II?
Hayes Prevails
Alas, the Woes of Childhood…
Sammy Tilden—Boo-Hoo! Ruthy Hayes’s got my Presidency, and
he won’t give it to me!
A Political Crisis: The
“Compromise” of 1877
1. A Two-Party Stalemate
2. Intense
Voter Loyalty
to the
Two Major
Political Parties
3. Well-Defined Voting Blocs
Democratic
Bloc
 White southerners
(preservation of
white supremacy)
 Catholics
 Recent immigrants
(esp. Jews)
 Urban working
poor (pro-labor)
 Most farmers
Republican
Bloc
 Northern whites
(pro-business)
 African Americans
 Northern
Protestants
 Old WASPs (support
for anti-immigrant
laws)
 Most of the middle
class
4. Very Laissez Faire Federal Govt.
 From 1870-1900  Govt. did very
little domestically.
 Main duties of the federal govt.:
 Deliver the mail.
 Maintain a national military.
 Collect taxes & tariffs.
 Conduct a foreign policy.
 Exception  administer the annual
Civil War veterans’ pension.
5. The Presidency as a Symbolic Office
 Party bosses ruled.
 Presidents should
avoid offending any
factions within their
own party.
 The President just
doled out federal jobs.
 1865  53,000 people worked for the federal govt.
 1890  166,000
“
“
“
“
“
“
The Birth of Jim Crow in the
Post-Reconstruction South
• Reconstruction ended …military
returned northward
– whites asserted their power.
– Literacy requirements for voting began,
– voter registration laws emerged
– poll taxes began
– targeted at black voters.
The Birth of Jim Crow in the
Post-Reconstruction South
• Most blacks became sharecroppers
– providing nothing but labor
• Or tenant farmers
– if they could provide their own tools
• Plessy v. Ferguson:
– 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the
case of that “separate but equal”
facilities were constitutional
• “Jim Crow” segregation was legalized.
Class Conflicts & Ethnic Clashes
• Railroad Strike:
– Background:
• 1877, the presidents of the nation’s 4 largest
railroads decided to cut wages by 10%.
– Workers struck back, stopping work
– President Hayes sent troops to stop this,
– violence erupted
– more than 100 people died in the several
weeks of chaos.
Class Conflicts & Ethnic Clashes
• Failure of the railroad strike?
– showed weakness of the labor
movement
– Note: this was partly caused by friction
between races, especially between the Irish
and the Chinese.
• In San Francisco, Irish-born Denis
Kearney incited his followers to terrorize
the Chinese
Class Conflicts & Ethnic Clashes
• Anti-Chinese sentiment:
– 1879-Congress passed a bill severely
restricting the influx of Chinese immigrants
(most of whom were males who had come to
California to work on the railroads
• Hayes vetoed the bill
– Said that it violated an existing treaty with China
– After Hayes left office, the Chinese
Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, was passed,
barring any Chinese from entering the United
States—the first law limiting immigration.
James A. Garfield
• 1880 : Republicans nominated James A.
Garfield
– from Ohio rose to the rank of major general in
the Civil War
– as his running mate, a notorious Stalwart
(supporter of Roscoe Conkling) was chosen:
Chester A. Arthur of New York
• Democrats chose Winfield S. Hancock,
– Civil War general (appealed to the South)
• due to his fair treatment of it during
Reconstruction & a veteran who had been
wounded at Gettysburg, and thus appealed to
veterans.
1880 Presidential Election
James A. Garfield
– campaign avoided touchy issues
– Garfield squeaked by in the popular vote (the
electoral count was wider: 214 to 155).
• Garfield was a good person, but he hated to hurt
people’s feelings and say “no.”
– Garfield named James G. Blaine to Secretary
of the State
• he made other anti-Stalwart acts, but on
September 19, 1881, Garfield died after having
been shot in the head by a crazy but
disappointed office seeker, Charles J. Guiteau,
who, after being captured, used an early version of
the “insanity defense” to avoid conviction (he was
hanged anyway).
Republican infighting
• Stalwarts
Republicans fighting for civil service
reform during Garfield's term; they
supported Cleveland.
• Half-breeds
Favored tariff reform and social reform,
major issues from the Democratic and
Republican parties. They did not seem to
be dedicated members of either party
1881: Garfield Assassinated!
Charles Guiteau:
I Am a Stalwart, and Arthur is
President now!
Chester Arthur
• Chester Arthur surprised many
– Gave cold shoulder to Stalwarts (his chief
supporters)
– called for reform
• Republican party slowly embraces reform
Pendleton Act (1883)
 Civil Service Act.
 The “Magna Carta” of
civil service reform.
 1883  14,000 out of
117,000 federal govt.
jobs became civil
service exam positions.
 1900  100,000 out of
200,000 civil service
federal govt. jobs.
Republican “Mugwumps”
 Reformers who wouldn’t re-nominate
Chester A. Arthur.
 Reform to them  create a
disinterested, impartial govt. run by an
educated elite like themselves.
 Social Darwinists.
 Laissez faire government to them:
Favoritism & the spoils system seen as
govt. intervention in society.
Their target was political corruption,
not social or economic reform!
The
Mugwumps
Men may come
and men may go,
but the work of
reform shall go
on forever.
 Will support
Cleveland in the
1884 election.
1884 Presidential Election
Grover Cleveland
* (DEM)
James Blaine
(REP)
A Dirty Campaign
Ma, Ma…where’s my pa?
He’s going to the White House, ha… ha… ha…!
Little Lost Mugwump
Blaine in 1884
Rum, Romanism & Rebellion!
 Led a delegation of
ministers to Blaine in
NYC.
 Reference to the
Democratic Party.
 Blaine was slow to
repudiate the remark.
Dr. Samuel Burchard
 Narrow victory for
Cleveland [he wins NY
by only 1149 votes!].
1884 Presidential Election
Cleveland’s First Term
 The “Veto Governor” from New York.
 First Democratic elected since 1856.
 A public office is a public trust!
 His laissez-faire presidency:
 Opposed bills to assist the poor as
well as the rich.
 Vetoed over 200 special pension bills
for Civil War veterans!
The
Tariff
Issue
 After the Civil War, Congress raised
tariffs to protect new US industries.
 Big business wanted to continue this;
consumers did not.
 1885  tariffs earned the US $100 mil.
in surplus!
 President Cleveland’s view on tariffs????
 wasn’t really interested in the subject
at first, but as he researched it, he
became inclined towards lowering the
tariff, so in late 1887, Cleveland
openly tossed the appeal for lower
tariffs into the lap of Congress.
The Billion Dollar Congress
• Speaker of the House, Thomas B.
Reed= tremendous debater & very
critical man.
– To solve the problem of reaching a
quorum (having enough voters to vote) in
Congress, Reed counted the Democrats
who were present yet didn’t answer to the
roll call, and after three days of such
chaos, he finally prevailed, opening
the 51st, or “Billion Dollar” Congress—one
that legislated many expensive projects.
Filing the Rough Edges
Tariff of 1888
1888 Presidential Election
Grover Cleveland
(DEM)
Benjamin Harrison
* (REP)
Disposing the Surplus
Price Indexes for Consumer & Farm
Products: 1865-1913
Founder of the National Grange of the Patrons
of Husbandry (1867)
The Grange Movement
 First organized in the 1870s in the
Midwest, the south, and Texas.
 Set up cooperative associations.
 Social and educational components.
 Succeeded in lobbying for “Granger
Laws.”
 Rapidly declined by the late 1870s.
The Farmers Alliances
 Begun in the late 1880s (Texas first 
the Southern Alliance; then in the
Midwest  the Northern Alliance).
 Built upon the ashes of the Grange.
 More political and less social than the
Grange.
 Ran candidates for office.
 Controlled 8 state legislatures & had
47
representatives in Congress during the
1890s.
Platform of Lunacy
The Populist (Peoples’)
Party
 Founded by James B. Weaver
and Tom Watson.
 Omaha, NE Convention in
July, 1892.
 Got almost 1 million popular
votes.
 Several Congressional seats
won.
James B. Weaver, Presidential
Candidate
&
James G. Field, VP
Omaha Platform of 1892
• Politically:
– Direct election of US Senators
– Enacting state laws by voters themselves
• Economically:
– Unlimited coinage of silver increase money supply
– Graduated income tax
– Govt. ownership of RRs, telephone & telegraph
companies.
– Loans and federal warehouses for farmers to enable
them to stabilize prices for their crops
– 8 hour day for industrial workers
Govt.-Owned Companies
1892 Election
Causes of the 1893 Panic
 Begun 10 days after Cleveland took office.
1. Several major corps. went bankrupt.
 Over 16,000 businesses disappeared.
 Triggered a stock market crash.
 Over-extended investments.
2. Bank failures followed causing a contraction of
credit [nearly 500 banks closed].
3. By 1895, unemployment reached 3 million.
 Americans cried out for relief, but the Govt.
continued its laissez faire policies!!
Here Lies Prosperity
Written by a Farmer at the End of the 19c
When the banker says he's broke
And the merchant’s up in smoke,
They forget that it's the farmer
who feeds them all.
It would put them to the test
If the farmer took a rest;
Then they'd know that it's the farmer
feeds them all.
Coxey’s Army, 1894
 Jacob Coxey & his “Army of
the Commonweal of Christ.”
 March on Washington  “hayseed socialists!”
 Wanted gov’t to relieve unemployment
Result of Election Returns
 Populist vote
increased by 40% in
the bi-election year,
1894.
 Democratic party
losses in the West
were catastrophic!
 But, Republicans won
control of the House.
Gold / Silver Bug
Campaign Pins
William Jennings Bryan
(1860-1925)
The “Great Commoner”
William Jennings Bryan
 Revivalist style of oratory.
Prairie avenger,
mountain lion,
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
Bryan,
Gigantic troubadour,
speaking like a siege
gun,
Smashing Plymouth Rock
with his boulders
from the West.
Bryant’s
“Cross of Gold” Speech
You shall not press
down upon the
brow of labor this
crown of thorns;
you shall not
crucify mankind
upon a cross of
gold!
Bryan: The Farmers Friend
(The Mint Ratio)
18,000 miles of campaign “whistle stops.”
Democratic Party Taken Over by the Agrarian Left
Platform  tariff
reductions;
income tax;
stricter
control of the
trusts (esp. RRs);
free silver.
Mark Hanna:
The “Front-Porch” Campaign
William McKinley (1843-1901)
Mark Hanna to Candidate McKinley
“A Giant Straddle”: Suggestion for a McKinley Political
Poster
Joshua A. Levering: Prohibition Party
Into Which Box Will the Voter
of ’96 Place His Ballot?
1896 Election Results
Why Did Bryan Lose?
 His focus on silver undermined efforts
to build bridges to urban voters.
 He did not form alliances with other
groups.
 McKinley’s campaign was well-
organized and highly funded.
Gold Triumphs Over Silver
 1900  Gold Standard
Act
 confirmed the nation’s
commitment to the gold
standard.
 A victory for the forces of
conservatism.
The Wizard
of Oz
by L. Frank
Baum
• Populism: A political philosophy supporting
the rights and power of the people in their
struggle against the privileged elite.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written as
an allegory to the situation that was
happening in the Midwest. Every main
character can be traced to either a
particular person or group of people. Even
the word “Oz” is used to represent the
measurement of gold.
Dorothy:
Represents
everyman. She is
an innocent
Midwest girl who
is able to see
what is really
going on in Oz.
Munchkins:
• Represent the
common
people,
controlled by
the Wicked
Witch of the
East (who
represented
the Eastern
Industrialists
and Bankers.
Scarecrow:
• Represents
the wise but
naïve
western
farmer, taken
advantage of
by the
industrialists
and bankers.
Tinman:
• Represents the
dehumanized
industrial worker. He
is turned into a
machine back the
industrialists
because of his hard
work ethic and not
having another craft
to succeed in. He
eventually becomes
unable to love.
Cowardly
Lion:
Represents
William
Jennings
Bryan,
having a loud
roar but was
unable to
back it up
(bite).
Wicked Witch of the West:
Represents the
Western
industrial
influence and is
ultimately
destroyed by
water
(representing
pure nature, a
removal of
machines).
"Your Silver Shoes will carry you over the
desert.....If you had known their power
you could have gone back to your Aunt
Em the very first day you came to this
country." Glinda explains, "All you have
to do is knock the heels together three
times and command the shoes to carry
you wherever you wish to go." (p.257).
"The Silver Shoes had fallen off in her flight
through the air, and were lost forever in
the desert" (p.259).
The drive for the gold standard to be
replaced with silver was lost when Bryan
lost the election and the Populist party
lost its motivation or drive.
Although the silver had been lost, the
important message is a return to
the Midwest farmer/family. It is
where true happiness remains.
Back in Oz, the Scarecrow now runs
the Emerald City, the Tinman rules
in the west, and the Lion rules over
smaller animals in the forest. Power
has been returned to the people.
1964: Henry Littlefield’s
“Thesis”?
Map 18.4 The Heyday of Western Populism,
1892 (p. 537)
This map shows the
percentage of the popular
vote won by James B.
Waver, the People’s Party
candidate in the
presidential election of
1892. Except in California
and Montana, the
Populists won broad
support across the West
and genuinely threatened
the established parties in
that region.
Why Did Populism Decline?
1. The economy experienced rapid
change.
2. The era of small producers and farmers
was fading away.
3. Race divided the Populist Party,
especially in the South.
4. The Populists were not able to break
existing party loyalties.
5. Most of their agenda was co-opted by
the Democratic Party.
Map 18.5 The Elections of 1892 & 1896
(p. 540)
• In the 1890’s the age of political stalemate came to an end.
Compare the 1892 map with the 1888 map an note especially
Cleveland’s breakthrough in the normally Republican states of
the upper Midwest. In 1896 the pendulum swung n the
opposite direction, with McKinley’s consolidation of Republican
control over the Northeast and Midwest far overbalancing the
Democratic advances in the thinly populated western states.
The 1896 election marked the beginning of forty years of
Republican dominance in national politics.