Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age
1869 - 1896
Republicans & Grant
Election of 1868
Grant
Acted as if the Republic owed him for the war
Almost no political experience
500,000 former slaves voted him in office
“Waving the Bloody Shirt” &
“Vote as You Shot”
Republican platform
Called for continued Reconstruction
(military)
Democrats & Seymour
Democratic Platform
Denounced military Reconstruction
(could agree on little else)
Candidate – NY governor Horatio Seymour
Era of Good Stealings
Population by 1870 – 39 million
3rd largest nation
Waste, Extravagance, Speculation, Graft
Corruption was common
Corruption
Jim Frisk & Jay Gould
1869
Tried to corner the gold
market
Result: “Black Friday”
price of gold went up
Treasury started
releasing gold
Boss Tweed – 1871
Milked NYC for $200
million
(Tammany Hall)
Fraudulent elections
Thomas Nast –
published in NY Times
Prosecuted by Samuel
J. Tilden
More Corruption
Credit Mobilier Scandal
– 1867 – 1868
Railroad construction
company formed by
Union Pacific
Over paid themselves
Paid off members of
congress
Exposed by NY
newspaper
2 congressmen censored
VP accepted stock
Whiskey Ring – 1875
Robbed treasury of
millions in excise tax
Grant’s private sec
was involved
Sec of War William
Belknap – 1876
Pocketed money from
selling Indians junk
Liberal Republican Revolt
1872
Liberal Republican Party
Urged purification of the Washington administration &
end military Reconstruction
Horace Greeley – Presidential candidate
Editor of NY Tribune
Later endorsed by the Democrats
“ate crow”
Republicans renominated Grant
Grant won the election of 1872
Depression & Demands for
Inflation
Panic of 1873
Caused by unbridled capitalist expansion
Produced too much – price goes down, businesses collapse
Banks – loans were not being repaid
Jay Cooke & Company – NY banking firm / first
to collapse
15,000 businesses went bankrupt; including
The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company
Money Policies
Hard-money vs. cheap-money
Hard-money -- get battle-born currency out of circulation &
produce no new money
Cheap-money – supported the production of greenbacks, make
more money
Hard-money supporters won out
Resumption Act of 1875 – by 1879, no greenbacks & gold for all
paper money
Some supported money based on silver
Congress stopped production of silver dollars in 1873 (Crime of
’73)
Call for inflation
Politics in the Gilded Age
Close elections, indecisive politicians
Higher voter interest – 80% voter turnout
Party Loyalists enjoyed successful political
careers as a result of patronage & the Spoils
system
Fighting within the Republican
Party – 1870s & 1880s
“Stalwart” fraction
Roscoe Conkling – US Senator from NY
Believed in swapping civil-service jobs for voters
“Half-Breeds” fraction
James G. Blaine – Congressmen from Maine
Civil-service reform
Succeeded in stalemating each other & deadlocking the
party
The Hayes – Tilden Standoff
Grant was urged to run for reelection
Congress passed a resolution warning of the dictator
implications
Republicans selected Rutherford B. Hayes
“The Great Unknown”
Democrats selected Samuel J. Tilden
Tilden received 184 electoral votes –
he needed 185
Constitution & Votes
Specifies that the electoral returns shall be sent to
Congress & opened by president of the Senate
Who should count the votes? Constitution doesn’t say
Compromise of 1877
Created to solve the election deadlock
Electoral Count Act - passed by Congress
Set up electoral commission consisting of 15 men selected
from the Senate, the House, & the Supreme Court
Not successful in solving the problem
because there were 8 –R and 7-D
Democrats agreed to elect Hayes in
exchange for:
Removal of all federal troops in the South
Subsidizing of a southern transcontinental
railroad line – not kept
Results of the Compromise
Officially ended Reconstruction
Violence was averted by sacrificing
the black freedmen in the South
Republicans abandoned its commitment
to black equality
Civil Rights Act of 1875 – last try by Republicans
Supposedly guaranteed equal accommodations in
public places & prohibited racial discrimination in jury
selections
Supreme Court
Declared Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional
Declared that the 14th Amendment prohibited only
government violations of civil rights, not the
denial of civil rights by individuals
The Democratic South
Suppressed blacks
Blacks who tried to vote faced unemployment, eviction,
& physical harm
1890s – required literacy test, voter registration
laws, & poll taxes
Blacks became economically dependant
Sharecropping & tenant farming
Crop-lien system
Jim Crow Laws
1890s – state level legal codes
Validated by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Ruled that “separate by equal” facilities were
constitutional under the “equal protection” clause of the
14th Amendment
Southern blacks were treated harshly for
challenging the South’s racial code of conduct
Railroad Strike 1877
Presidents of the nation’s 4 largest railroad
companies cut employee’s salaries
Pres Hayes called in federal troops
to quell the unrest
Backfired on him, caused support from working-class
Workers stoppages spread
100 dead
Showed the weakness of the
labor movement
Chinese
Made up 9% of population by 1880 in CA
Mostly poor, uneducated, single males came
Came for gold & railroad work
Many returned when work disappeared
Worked menial jobs
Denis Kearney of San Francisco
Incited his followers (Kearneyites) to
violent abuse of Chinese
Resented the competition for labor
Stopping Chinese Immigration
1879 – bill passed severely restricting immigration
of Chinese
Vetoed by Hayes – violated treaty with China
1882 – Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act
Stopped Chinese immigration until 1943
The Garfield Interlude
Republicans nominated dark-horse
James A. Garfield
VP – Chester Arthur
Republican platform- protective tariff & reform of
civil service
Democrats – nominated Winfield S. Hancock
Democratic platform – civil service reform
& a “tariff for revenue only”
Election of 1880
Candidates – turned their backs on problems of
debt-burdened farmers & powerless laborers
Democrats harped on Garfield’s acceptance of
stock dividends in the Credit Mobilier scandal
Garfield won & rewarded James G. Blaine (HalfBreed) with Sec of State
Caused problems between Half-Breeds & Stalwarts
Garfield’s Assassination
Charles J. Guiteau
shot Pres Garfield in the back in a Washington railroad
station
Garfield died 11 weeks later – Sept. 19, 1881
Stalwarts would all get good jobs now under Arthur
Guiteau – found guilty & hanged
Chester Arthur
No qualifications for the presidency
Gave his former Conklingite supporters (Stalwart)
the cold shoulder
Supported civil service reform
Pendleton Act of 1883
Established a merit system based on
aptitude and not “pull”
Competitive exams were established
Pendleton Act partially divorced politics from patronage,
but it helped drive politicians into “marriages of
convenience” with big-business leaders
Election of 1884
Republican- James G. Blaine
“Mulligan letters” – connected Blaine to a corrupt deal
involving federal favors to a southern railroad
Mugwumps – reformers who joined the Democrats
Democrats – Grover Cleveland
Illegitimate son
Mudslinging campaign
Few fundamental differences
between candidates
Cleveland won election
“Old Grover” Takes Over
Grover Cleveland
1st Democratic President since Buchanan
Known for all of his vetoes
Laissez-faire
“Though the people support the gov’t, the gov’t should
not support the people.”
Named 2 Confederates to office
Believed in the merit system but eventually caved
Vetoed military pensions
Cleveland & the Tariff
Tariffs were raised during the war
Resulted in gov’t surplus
1887 - Cleveland appealed to Congress for lower
tariffs
For the first time in years,
there was a real issue that
divided the parties
Election of 1888
Democrat – Cleveland
Republican – Benjamin Harrison
Republicans were against lowering tariffs
Low-tariff policies was a vote for England
Republicans raised $3 million to fight
against a lower tariff
Cleveland – 1st sitting president voted
out of his chair since Van Buren in 1840
Benjamin Harrison
Elected in 1888
Selected James G. Blaine as Sec of State
Named Theodore Roosevelt –
head of the Civil Service Commission
Problems in the House
Republicans – only 3 votes more than the necessary
quorum of 163 members
Democrats – delaying motions – roll call
Republicans wanted to squandered money to safeguard
the high tariff that was producing a surplus
Thomas B. Reed
Republican Speaker of the House
Wanted to change House rules
Believed majority should legislate in
accordance with democratic policies
No filibustering
“Billion Dollar” Congress
Gave birth to a bumper crop of
expensive legislative babies
McKinley Tariff Bill of 1890
Boosted tariff rates to their highest peacetime level
Disposed of the troublesome surplus by giving a
bounty of 2 cents per pound to US sugar planters
Raised tariffs on agricultural products
Actually brought new woes to farmers as manufacturers
raised prices
Farmers hated it
Pension Act of 1890
Pensions for all Union CW veterans who had
served for 90 days & who were now unable to
do manual labor
Helped solve the problem for the Treasury
surplus
Secured Rep votes
GAR grateful to the GOP
Silver Problems
Bland-Allison Law1878
Ordered the purchase
and coining of $2-4
million worth of silver
a month
Provided little relief to
debtors or miners
Sherman Silver Purchase
Act of 1890
Required the purchase of
4.5 million ounces of
silver every month
Treasury had to issue new
notes to pay for it
Believed that the addition
of immense amount of
metallic money would
inflate the currency and
make for higher prices and
easier debt payment
Populist Party – 1892
The People’s Party
Rooted in the Farmer’s Alliance of frustrated
farmers in the West & the South
Platform:
Free & unlimited coinage of silver
Income tax
Gov’t ownership of telephone, telegraph, & railroads
Direct election of senators
1 term for president
Use of initiative & referendum to allow citizens to
propose & review legislation
Shorter workday & immigration restriction
Problems for Labor
Homestead Strike 1892 – Pittsburgh
Steel plant owned by Andrew Carnegie
Workers were angry over pay cuts
Strikers used rifles & dynamite
Troops were called in
Strike & union of steelworkers was broken
Coming Election of 1892
Discontent gave Democrats high hopes
Democrat – Grover Cleveland
Republican – Benjamin Harrison
Populist Party – James B. Weaver
One of the few 3rd parties in history to break into the
electoral column
Populist Party
Wanted to bring labor & farmers together
Colored Farmers’ National Alliance
1 million southern black farmers
Hoped that their economic goals would overcome their racial
differences
Populists appealed for interracial solidarity
Appealing to blacks didn’t work because blacks couldn’t
vote
Literacy test, poll tax, & grandfather clause
Populist leader Tom Watson abandoned his interracial
appeals
Old Grover Cleveland Again
2nd term 1893—only pres to serve 2
nonconsecutive terms
Depression of 1893
Lasted for about 4 years
Most devastating economic downturn of the century
Causes
Overbuilding and overspeculation
Labor disorder
Agricultural depression
European banks began to call in loans
Cleveland and Depression
Wanted to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act
Gold reserve in the Treasury dropped ($100 million)
Called Congress into extra session
William Jennings Bryan
Championed the cause of free silver in Congress
Cleveland broke the filibuster & Sherman Silver
Purchase Act repealed
Alienated the silverites
Disrupted the party
Gold & Job Shortages
Gold reserve sank even lower ($41 million)
Cleveland decided to sell gov’t bonds for gold &
deposit the proceeds in the Treasury
Cleveland turned to J.P. Morgan & other bankers
Bankers loaned the gov’t $65 million in gold
Charged commission $7 million
Helped restore confidence in nation’s finance
Deal angered many
Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894
Included a tax of 2% on incomes over $4000
In the Senate, 630 amendments were added
Benefits for sugar trust were added
Did not establish a low tariff / did reduce the rate
Income tax lasted only 1 year
Struck down by the Supreme Court
Result: Republicans won congressional elections in
1894 by a landslide / now a majority