The “Gilded Age” Begins: The Presidency of Ulysses Grant & the Compromise of 1877




Post-War Corruption
o “Black Friday”
 “Jubilee Jim” Fisk
 Jay Gould
 Gold Market
o “Boss Tweed”
 William M. Tweed
 New York Times
 Thomas Nast
 Cartoonist
 Samuel J. Tilden
 Attorney
o Corruption in the Federal government
 Favors
 Crédit Mobilier Scandal
 Union Pacific Railroad
 Crédit Mobilier Construction Company
 Congressional Bribes
Election of 1872
o Liberal Republican Party
 Horace Greely
 Editor New York Tribune
 Alliance with Democrats
o Republican Party
 Re-nominates Grant
Liberal Republican inspired Reforms
o Amnesty Act 1872
o Reduce Tariffs
o Civil Service Reform
Panic of 1873
o Overabundance of
 Railroads
 Mines
 Factories
 Fields
 Loans
o Fires in Boston & Chicago
o Franco-Prussian War
o Riots
o The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company
 Collapse




Currency Debate
o Greenbacks
 Paper Money
 “Soft Money”
 “Cheap Money”
 Debtors
o “Hard Money”
 Favored by
 Bankers
 Wealth y
 Backed by Gold
o Resumption Act 1875
o Silver
 Price in relation to Gold
o “Crime of ’73”
o Contraction
o Greenback Party
Scandal in Grant’s Second Term
o Whiskey Ring
 1874–1875
 Grant’s Secretary
o Secretary of War William Belknap
 1876
 Bribes
 Resignation
Party Parity in the Gilded Age
o Cultural and Ethnic Differences rather than Political
o Democrats
 Lutherans and Roman Catholics
 Toleration of Differences
 Disliked Government Regulation
 Focused on South and Northern Industrial Cities
o Republicans
 Descended from old Puritanism
 Strict Morality
 Government Regulation of both Economy & Morality
 Midwest and Rural Northeast
 Freedman
 GAR
Patronage
o Roscoe Conkling
 Stalwarts
o James G. Blaine



 Half-Breeds
Election of 1876
o Rutherford B. Hayes – Republican
o Samuel J. Tilden – Democrats
o Disputed States
 Louisiana
 South Carolina
 Florida
The Compromise of 1877
o Electoral Count Act
o Electoral Commission
o Threat of Filibuster
o Civil Rights Cases (1883)
 14th Amendment prohibited government violations of civil rights, not
individual
The Solid South
o Democratic Party
 “Redeemers”
o Sharecropping
o “Crop-lien” system