chapter 23 // BOLDED Flashcards
“waving the bloody shirt”
The use of Civil War imagery by political candidates and parties to draw votes to their side of the ticket.
Tweed Ring
A symbol of Gilded Age corruption, “Boss” Tweed and his deputies ran the New York City Democratic party in the 1860s and swindled $200 million from the city through bribery, graft, and vote-buying. Boss Tweed was eventually jailed for his crimes and died behind bars
Credit Mobilier scandal (1872)
A construction company was formed by owners of the Union Pacific Railroad for the purpose of receiving government contracts to build the railroad at highly inflated prices - and profits. In 1872 a scandal erupted when journalists discovered that the Credit Mobilier Company had bribed congressmen and even the vice president to allow the ruse to continue.
patronage
A system, prevalent during the Gilded Age, in which political parties granted jobs and favors to party regulars who delivered votes on election day. Patronage was both an essential wellspring of support for both parties and a source of conflict within the Republican party.
Gilded Age
A term given to the period 1865-1896 by Mark Twain, indicating both the fabulous wealth and the widespread corruption of the era.
Compromise of 1877
The agreement that finally resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction. In exchange for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, winning the presidency, Hayes agreed to withdraw the last of the federal troops from the former Confederate states. This deal effectively completed the southern return to white-only, Democratic-dominated electoral politics.
Civil Rights Act of 1875
The last piece of federal civil rights legislation until the 1950s, the law promised blacks equal access to public accommodations and banned racism in jury selection, but it provided no means of enforcement and was therefore ineffective. In 1883, the Supreme Court declared most of the act unconstitutional.
sharecropping
An agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a certain “share” of each year’s crop. Sharecropping was the dominant form of southern agriculture after the Civil War, and landowners manipulated this system to keep tenants in perpetual debt and unable to leave their plantations.
Jim Crow
System of racial segregation in the American South from the end of Reconstruction until the mid-twentieth century, Based on the concept of “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites, the Jim Crow system sought to prevent racial mixing in public, including restaurants, movie theaters, and public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
A Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of segregation laws, saying that as long as blacks were provided with “separate but equal” facilities, these laws did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision provided legal justification for the Jim Crow system until the 1950s.
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
Federal legislation that prohibited most further Chinese immigration to the U.S. This was the first major legal restriction on immigration in U.S. history.
Pendleton Act (1883)
Congressional legislation that established the Civil Service Commission, which granted federal government jobs on the basis of examinations instead of political patronage, thus reining in the spoils system.
Homestead Strike (1892)
A strike at a Carnegie steel plant in Homestead, PA, that ended in an armed battle between the strikers, three hundred armed Pinkerton detectives hired by Carnegie, and federal troops, which killed ten people and wounded more than sixty. The strike was part of a nationwide wave of labor unrest in the summer of 1892 that helped the Populists gain some support from industrial workers.
grandfather clause
A regulation established in many southern states in 1890s that exempted from voting requirements (such as literacy tests and poll taxes) anyone who could prove that his ancestors (“grandfathers”) had been able to vote in 1860. Because slaves could not vote before the Civil War, these clauses guaranteed the right to vote to many whites while denying it to blacks.
