Chapter 23 - Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age (1869-1896) Flashcards
Ulysses S. Grant
- Unexperienced in the political arena
- Had one presidential vote for the Democratic ticket in 1856
- Republicans enthusiastically nominated him for the presidency in 1868
Became the 18th U.S. president
- His popular quote “Let us have peace” became a leading campaign slogan
- Nation believed a good general would make a good president
- 500,000 former slaves gave vote to Grant
“Waving the Bloody Shirt”
Term for reviving gory memories of the Civil War, became a prominent feature of a presidential campaign
Used by Republicans to stir up enthusiasm
Jay Gould
- A millionaire who was partners with another, “Jubilee Jim” Fisk; provided the intelligence
- Concocted a plot in 1869 with his partner to corner the gold market (would only work if the federal Treasury stopped selling gold
Inflated price of gold, hoping they could profit from its heightened value; congressional probe concluded Grant did nothing but acted stupid
William Marcy Tweed/Tweed Ring
- “Boss” Tweed employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to farm the metropolis of as much as $200 million
- Tweed Ring was infamous in NYC as it displayed the ethics (or lack of ethics) typical of the age
Honest citizens were forced into silence and protestors found their tax assessments raised
Thomas Nast
A cartoonist who attacked Tweed
Refused a heavy bribe to stop
Samuel J. Tilden
- New York attorney who headed the prosecution of Tweed
- Gained fame that later paved the path to his presidential nomination
Crédit Mobilier Scandal
1872
- A news paper exposé and congressional investigation led to the censure of two congressmen and the revelation that the vice president accepted their payments
- formed by Union Pacific Railroad insiders who cleverly hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line
Tarred Grant
Whiskey Ring - Grant’s own private secretary was among the culprits; Grant volunteered a written statement to the jury to exonerate the thief
Horace Greeley
- Fearless editor for the New York Tribune
- Elected for the presidency by the Liberal Republicans’ Cincinnati nominating convenion
- Was dogmatic, emotional, petulant, and unsound in his political judgements; screwed up the Liberal Republicans’ chance
- Pleased the Democrats, North and South when he pleaded for clasping hands across “the bloody chasm”
A “bad bet” to win the election
- Democrats approved his candidacy and derided Grant as ignoramous, drunkard, swindler
- Reublicans denounced him as an atheist, communist, a free-lover, vegetarian, and a cosigner of Jefferson Davis’s bail bond
Panic of 1873
- Caused by uncontrolled capitalist expansion
- Businesses went bankrupt and black economic development worsened
- Overreaching promoters deluded themselves that war-fueled boom times would go on forever and laid more railroad track, sank more mines, erected more factories, and sowed more grainfields than peacetime markets could bear
- Bankers made too many careless loans to finance enterprises; profits failed to materialize and loans went unpaid, collapsing U.S. economy
Hard Money v. Soft Money
- Hard Money: advocates persuaded Grant to veto a bill to print more paper money and scored another victory in the Resumption Act of 1875
- Soft Money: afflicted agrarian and debtor groups (“cheap-money” supporters) clamored for a reissuance of the greenbacks, reasoning that more money meant inflation and easier-to-pay debts
Debtors looked for relief in precious metal, silver
Resumption Act of 1875 - pledged the government to the further withdrawal of greenbacks from circulation and the redemption of all paper currency in gold at face value
Policy of “Contraction”
- The policy of the accumulation of gold stocks against the appointed day for resumption of metallic-money payments along with the reduction of greenbacks
- Deflated the amount of money per capita in circulation between 1870 and 1880
- Worsened the impact of the depression but restored the government’s credit rating
Brought greenbacks up to their full face value
People no longer spent money, waiting for prices to drop
Gilded Age
- Mark Twain’s sarcastic name to the 30-year-long-post-Civil War era
- The political seesaw was mostly balanced
- The majority party in the House switched 6 times in the 11 sessions between 1869 and 1891; they controlled the House, Senate, and White House in only 3 sessions
- Economic expansion was promising on outside but was an ugly reality for most American laborers; nearly 80% of those eligible voted
Roscoe Conkling
- A U.S. senator from New York who was imperious and embraced the system of swapping civil-service jobs for votes
- Led a “Stalwart” faction in the Republican party; opposed by the Half-Breeds
James G. Blaine led Half-Breeds
Patronage
The act of disbursing jobs by the mass in return for votes, kickbacks, and party service
The “lifeblood” of both Democrats and Republicans
Boisterous infighting over patronage beset Republicans
Rutherford B. Hayes
- A Republican compromise candidate dubbed “The Great Unknown”
- Against the Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden
Foremost qualification was the fact that he came from Ohio
- Served three terms as governor in the electorally doubtful but potent state of Ohio
- Part of the forgotten presidents (Hayes, Arthur, Garfield, and B. Harrison)
Compromise of 1877
Prevented renewed election deadlock and brought peace by sacrificing the civil rights of southern blacks to avoid partisan violence
Election Count Act - broke deadlock and added 16 “neutral” members
Civil Rights Act of 1875
- Guaranteed equal accommodations in public places and prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection
- Pronounced mostly unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Cases (1833); the Court declared that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited only government violations of civil rights, not the denial of civil rights by individuals
Last feeble attempt of the congressional radical Republicans
The law was born weak and stayed weak for nearly a century
Sharecropping
- Many blacks and poor whites were forced into it as well as tenant farming
- Most of the former slaves’ landlords and creditors were there former masters
- Southern blacks condemned to threadbare living under conditions scarcely better than slavery
- “Crop-lien” system - storekeepers extended credit to small farmers for food and supplies and in return took a lien on their harvests; some merchants manipulated the system so that farmers remained constantly in debt to them
Jim Crow
Systematic state-level legal codes of segregation, informally separating blacks and whites
Didn’t end until 1964; record number of blacks lynched in 1890s
Southern states also enacted literacy requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll taxes; tolerated violent intimidation of black votes to ensure the full-scale disfranchisement of the South’s freedmen
Plessy v. Ferguson
1896
- Supreme Court validated the South’s segrationist social order
- Ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional under the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
In reality, the facilities were unequal such as schools and restrooms
Blacks who tried to assert rights faced unemployment, eviction, and physical harm
Great Strike of 1877
- Workers struck back nationwide when the presidents of the nation’s 4 largest railroads collectively decided to cut employees’ wages by 10 percent
- Railroad lines and telegraph wires facilitated networks of people and information, allowing work stoppages to spread quickly
Scenes of class struggle; racial and ethnic issues fractured labor unity
Quickly descended into bloody violence; President Hayes’ decision to call in federal troops to quell the unrest brought the striking laborers an outpouring working-class support
Chinese Exclusion Act
1882
- Passed by Congress against Chinese immigrant laborers
- Prohibited nearly all further immigration from China until 1945
Firsy major restriction act
Denis Kearney incited followers to violent abuse of hapless Chinese in San Francisco
U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark
- Expansionists tried to strip native-born Chinese Americans of their citizenship
- Supreme Court ruled in 1898 that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all persons born in U.S.
“Birthright citizenship” doctrine ensured citizenship protection for native-born
James A. Garfield
- A dark-horse candidate who was from the electorally powerful state of Ohio
- Sought by the Republicans as a new standard-bearer for 1880
Waved the bloody shirt and squeaked victory over Winfield Scott Hancock
Chester A. Arthur
- Vice-presidential running mate of Garfield
- Notorious Stalwart henchman of New York
Unlikely instrument of reform
Winfield Scott Hancock
Democratic candidate and Civil War hero
Lost the election marginally to Garfield
Charles J. Guiteau
- A disappointed and mentally deranged office seeker
- Shot President Garfield in the back in a Washington railroad station; found gulty of murder and hanged
Announced that Chestur Arthur was now president of the U.S.
Pendleton Act
1833
- Partially divorced politics from patronage but helped drive politicians into “marriages of convenience” with big-business leaders
- Made compulsory campaign contributions from federal employees illegal
- Established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of competitive exams
The so-called Magna Carta of civil-service reform
James Blaine
- A Maine politician who was the clear choice of the Republican convention in Chicago for the presidency
- Many reform-minded Republicans hated on his candidacy
- His enemies publicized the “Mulligan letters,” written by him to a Boston businessman, linking him to a corrupt deal involving federal favors to a southern railroad; ended with the warning “Burn this letter”
Grover Cleveland
- A reformer who was a lawyer; known as “Grover the Good” for his honesty in office
- Went from mayorship in Buffalo to governorship of New York to president in only 3 years
- Had an amorous affair with a Buffalo widow and had an illegitimate son with her for whom he made financial provisions for
First Democrat to take oath of presidency since Buchanan
- Fired almost 2/3 of 120,000 federal employees including 40,000 Republican officers
- New York Irish vote gave presidency to him
- As he studied the tariff, he favored the downward revision of tariff schedules which meant lowering prices for consumers, less protection for monopolies, and an end to Treasury surplus
- Republicans claimed lower tariffs would mean higher taxes, lower wages, and increased unemployment
Grand Army of the Republic
A politically powerful organization that routinely urged hundreds of private pension bills through Congress
Cleveland vetoed many
Benefits were also granted to deserters, bounty jumpers, men who never served, and former soldiers who incurred disabilities not related to war
Benjamin Harrison
- Nominated for the 1888 election by Republicans
- Won over Cleveland with 233 to 168 electoral votes but had less popular votes
His grandfather was former president William Henry “Tippecanoe” Harrison
Cleveland became first sitting president defeated since Martin Van Buren in 1840
Thomas B. Reed
- Became New Republican Speaker of the House
- A renowned master debater from Maine
- Czar” Reed dominated “Billion-Dollar Congress”—first to appropriate that sum of money
- Showered pensions on Civil War veterans, increased government purchases of silver, passed McKinley Tariff Act of 1890:
McKinley Tariff Act of 1890
- Boosted rates to their highest peacetime level ever at 48.4 percent on dutiable goods
- Debt-burdened farmers had no choice but to buy manufactured goods from high-priced protected industrialists
and compelled to sell their agricultural products in highly competitive, unprotected world markets
- Many rural voters were discontent and Republicans lost their precarious majority
- New Congress included 9 from Farmers’ Alliance—militant organization of southern and western farmers
William McKinley
- Sponsored his tariff act in the House
- Was a rising Republican star but went down to defeat after his tariff act was passed
