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 Fisk & 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

suppliers to the Indian

reservations

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

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 (Half-

Breed) 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 Law-1878

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