Unit 4: Forging an Industrial Society
1865-1909
• Chapter 23: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869-1896
• Chapter 24: Industry Comes of Age, 1865-1900
• Chapter 25: America Moves to the City, 1865-1900
• Exam: Chapters 23-25 – Thursday, January 12th
• Chapter 26: The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 18651896
• Chapter 27: Empire and Expansion, 1890-1909
• Exam: Chapters 26-27 – Friday, January 27th
• Unit Exam: TBD
Chapter 23
Political Paralysis in the Gilded
Age, 1869–1896
“Grant . . . Had no right to exist. He should have been extinct for ages. . . . That, two
thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be
called – and should actually and truly be – the highest product of the most advanced
evolution, made evolution ludicrous. . . . The Progress of evolution, from President
Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin. . . . Grant . . .
should have lived in a cave and worn skins.”
-Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907
p486
p487
I. The “Bloody Shirt” Elects Grant
• Election of 1868
• The Republicans nominated Grant in 1868 to
continue Reconstruction.
• “waving the bloody shirt”— reviving glory memories of the
Civil War to earn votes
• The Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour and
denounced military Reconstruction.
• Major dispute of the era: monetary policy.
• Gold or Silver Standard? Soft or Hard Money?
• Grant won 214-80.
Ulysses S. Grant
18th President of the United States
II. The Era of Good Stealings
• Postwar = Corruption: railroad, stock-market
manipulation, politicians for sale
• “Jubilee Jim” Fisk and Jay Gould
• They concocted a plot in 1869 to corner the gold market –
keep the price HIGH!
• Their plan would work only if the federal Treasury refrained
from selling gold – more gold means less value.
• On “Black Friday” (September 24, 1889) the bubble broke
when the Treasury released gold.
• The price of gold plunged and millions were lost.
• Tweed Ring used bribery, graft, and fraudulent
elections to steal $200 million from NYC.
• Protesters were coerced into cooperating.
• The New York Times published damning evidence (Thomas
Nast)
Top to Bottom: Fisk, Gould, Tweed
Can the Law Reach Him? 1872
Cartoonist Thomas Nast attacked “Boss” Tweed in a series of
cartoons like this one that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in
1872. Here Nast depicts the corrupt Tweed as a powerful giant,
towering over a puny law force.
III. A Carnival of Corruption
• Credit Mobilier Scandal (1872)
• Union Pacific Railroad insiders this construction company and
then hired themselves at inflated prices to build railroads.
• The company then distributed shares of its valuable stock to key
congressmen.
• There was a newspaper expose and congressional investigation
of the scandal which pointed to congressmen and the VP.
• Whiskey Ring (1874-75)
• Whiskey Ring robbed the Treasury of millions in excise-tax
revenue.
• Grant’s own private secretary was among the culprits.
• Secretary of War William Belknap (1876) was forced to
resign after taking bribes from suppliers to the Indian
reservations.
IV. The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872
• Republicans re-nominated Grant in 1872.
• Liberal Republican Party: urged purification
of the Grant administration and an end to
radical Reconstruction.
• Nominated erratic Horace Greeley for
president (1872)
• Democrats endorsed Greeley’s candidacy even
though he had blasted them as traitors, slave
shippers, saloon keepers, horse thieves, and
idiots.
• Election Results: Grant 286, Greeley 66
Disturbing. Just disturbing.
V. Depression, Deflation, and Inflation
• Panic of 1873: Grant’s woes deepened in the
paralyzing economy.
• Over-speculation: railroad, mining, factories,
agriculture
• Markets couldn’t handle what was being produced.
• Profits disappeared, along with the ability to pay back
loans.
• Agrarian and debtor groups—”cheap/soft money”
supporters– screamed for more greenbacks – inflation.
• The “hard-money” group won.
• Persuaded Grant to veto a bill to print more paper
money (1874).
• Debtors turned to silver.
• The demand for the coinage of more silver was just
another way to promote inflation.
Imagery from the Panic of 1873.
Notice the focus on wealthy (not just middle-class
or poor) subjects.
V. Depression, Deflation, and Inflation (cont.)
• Grant resisted Greenback supporters.
• Republican hard-money policy (Crime of ’73)
had a political backlash
• In 1878 it helped elect a Democratic House of
Representatives.
• 1878 it spawned the Greenback Labor Party,
polled over a million votes, elected 14 members
of Congress.
• The contest over monetary policy was far
from over.
VI. Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age
• Gilded Age: a sarcastic name given to the threedecade-long post-Civil era by Mark Twain in 1873
• Republicans: gov should be involved in
social/economic affairs
• Strengths: Midwest, rural and small-town Northeast, freed
slaves
• Democrats: against gov involvement in
social/economic affairs
• Strengths: South, northern industries
• The war still played a major role: Grand Army of the
Republic (GAR)
• Patronage was significant in both parties.
• Stalwarts: traded civil-service jobs for votes
• Half-Breeds: wanted some civil-service reform
VII. The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876
• Election of 1876
• Republicans turned to a compromise candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes,
who was from the swing state of Ohio.
• Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New York (had defeated
“Boss” Tweed).
• A Messy Election: 185 electoral votes needed
• Tilden won the popular vote by 247,448 votes, but only won 184
electoral votes – DISPUTED ELECTION.
• Disputed states(LA, SC, FL) all sent two sets of returns: one
Democratic and one Republican.
• Constitutional Crisis: Who should count the election returns in the case
of disputed returns?
• If counted by the president of the Senate ( a Republican), the Republican
returns would be selected.
• If counted by the Speaker of the House (a Democrat), the Democratic returns
would be chosen.
Top: Samuel Tilden (D)
Bottom: Rutherford B.
Hayes (R)
Map 23.1 Hayes-Tilden Disputed Election
of 1876 (with electoral vote by state)
Nineteen of the twenty disputed
votes composed the total electoral count of
Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. T he
twentieth was one of Oregon’s three votes,
cast by an elector who turned out to be
ineligible because he was a federal
officeholder (a postmaster), contrary
to the Constitution (see Art. II, Sec. I, para.
2).
VIII. The Compromise of 1877 and the End of
Reconstruction
• The election deadlock was to be broken by the Election
Count Act (1877)
• Set up an electoral commission to decide what to do with
disputed returns.
• Florida, the first of three southern states with two sets of
returns—
• Commission voted 8-7 to accept the Republican returns – Hayes
would be President.
• Other parts of the Compromise of 1877:
• The Democrats reluctantly agreed that Hayes might take office
in return for withdrawing federal troops from the two states in
which they remained, Louisiana and South Carolina.
• Republicans promised patronage to Democrats and subsidies
for Texas-Pacific Railroad.
Rutherford B. Hayes
President of the United States,
1877-1881
IX. The Birth of Jim Crow in the PostReconstruction South
• The “Redeemer” Democratic South solidified
and took control.
• African Americans were further forced to
accept subjugation and sharecropping.
• Redeemers created systematic state-level legal
codes of segregation known as Jim Crow laws.
• EX: literacy requirements, voter-registration laws, &
poll taxes
• The Supreme Court validated the South’s
segregationist social order in Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896) by ruling that “separate but equal”
facilities were constitutional under the “equal
protection” clause of the 14th Amendment.
Jim Crow Justice
In 1893 a black man named Henry Smith
was burned at the stake in Paris, Texas, for
supposedly molesting a four-year-old
white girl. Hundreds of gawkers poured
into the city from the surrounding county
to watch . . .
X. Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes
• Railroad: Workers vs. Owners (Hard Work vs. High Profit)
• Workers’ wages were cut.
• President Hayes called in federal troops to quell the unrest by
striking laborers – precedent set!
• Strike failure put unions in weak position.
• Racial and ethnic issues among workers fractured labor unity.
• EX: Chinese and Irish in California.
• U.S. even went so far as to close the door to Chinese
immigration: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943!)
• Supreme Court case U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) stated that
the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all
persons born in the United States – “birthright citizenship”
The First Blow at the Chinese
Question, 1877
XI. Garfield and Arthur
• Election of 1880: incumbent Hayes was dropped by the
Republican Party
• Republicans chose James A. Garfield (with Chester A. Arthur –
stalwart VP)
• Democrats chose Civil War hero, Winfield Scott Hancock.
• Outcome: Garfield won 214-55 (popular vote was much closer).
• The Assassination of President Garfield
• Charles J. Guiteau, disappointed office-seeker, shot President
Garfield in the back in a Washington railroad station (1881).
• The Pendleton Act (1883)
• It made compulsory campaign contributions from federal
employees illegal. This actually drove many politicians into the
pocket of corporations.
• It established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments
to federal jobs on the basis of competitive examinations rather
than patronage.
Top: James
Garfield
Bottom: Chester
A. Arthur
XII. The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of 1884
• Election of 1884
• Republicans chose James G. Blaine the “halfbreed”.
• Democrats chose Grover Cleveland the
reformer.
• Supported by Mugwumps – Republicans who
couldn’t support Blaine.
• Election focused on nothing but
mudslinging.
• Outcome: Cleveland won 219-182 with a
very narrow popular vote victory as well.
Top: James Blaine
Bottom: Grover from Cleveland
XIII. “Old Grover” Takes Over
• Cleveland in 1885 was the first Democrat to take
the oath of presidential office since Buchanan in
1856.
• Cleveland’s principles as a Democrat:
• Laissez-faire government
• North-South healing process: named two former
Confederates to his cabinet.
• Cleveland was torn between demands of
Democrats and Mugwumps.
• He eventually caved to the Democrat machine bosses.
• Military pensions gave Cleveland the most trouble:
• Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) lobbied for hundreds
of private pension bills.
• Benefits were granted to deserters, bounty jumpers,
men who never served.
Grover Cleveland
22nd and 24th President of the U.S.
XIV. Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff
• Higher tariff: by 1881 the Treasury had an
embarrassing annual surplus of $145 million
• The surplus could (should?) be reduced.
• Cleveland wanted to lower tariffs to lower surplus.
• It would mean lower prices for consumers and less
protection for monopolies & an end to Treasury
surplus.
• Tariff was center stage for upcoming 1888
presidential election:
• Democrats dejectedly re-nominated Cleveland.
• Republicans turned to Benjamin Harrison, who was
supported by nervous industrialists.
• Harrison won 233-168.
Top: Cleveland
Bottom: Benjamin
Harrison
XV. The Billion-Dollar Congress
• Congress was quite dysfunctional during the late 1880s.
• Speaker of the House: Thomas B. Reed (R-Maine)
brought order (legally?) to the House.
• He counted as present Democrats who had not answered the
roll and who, rule book in hand, furiously denied that they
were legally there
• Passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, which boosted rates to
their highest peacetime level.
• Results of the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890:
• Debt-burdened farmers continued their struggle:
• Paid high prices for manufactured goods while struggling to
compete in a global market.
• Farmers got some relief when the Republicans lost
control of Congress in 1890’s midterm elections.
Thomas B. Reed
Speaker of the House
XVI. The Drumbeat of Discontent
• People’s Party (“Populists”) was rooted in the Farmers’
Alliance.
• Farmers were always in debt, so they supported the “soft
money” policies of the era.
• Called for a gradual income tax.
• Government ownership of infrastructure
• Direct election of U.S. Senators; a one-term limit on the
presidency
• Shorter workday
• Immigration restrictions
• Jim Crow Laws drove a wedge between white and black
farmers.
• Homestead Strike (1892):
• At Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead steel plant, near Pittsburgh,
company officials called in armed men to crush a strike.
• This was an actual battle which the strikers won.
The Homestead Strike, 1892
In 1892, Grover
Cleveland became
the first and only
president to be
elected to two, nonconsecutive terms.
XVII. Cleveland and Depression
• Depression of 1893 hit and lasted for about
four years – worst of the 1800s.
• Caused by over-speculation, labor issues, gold/silver
question
• The federal government went from surplus to
deficit and did nothing (laissez-faire).
• The gold reserve in the Treasury dropped below
$100 million, so Cleveland engineered repeal of the
Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890.
• Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act:
• Partially stopped the drain of gold from Treasury
• February, 1894, the gold reserve sank to $41 million
• Early 1895 Cleveland turned in desperation to J.P.
Morgan for a loan.
• The Wall Street loan, at least temporarily, helped
restore confidence in the nation’s finance.
XVIII. Cleveland Breeds a Backlash
• The Cleveland-Morgan deal was seen as corrupt.
• Wilson-Gorman tariff passed in 1894 and included a small income tax
(which was later ruled unconstitutional).
• Democrats’ handling of the depression gave Republicans the upperhand heading into the 20th century (McKinley and TR).