CH 23: GILDED AGE

BLOODY SHIRT ELECTS GRANT

• Election of 1868, Republicans nominate Ulysses S Grant

• Great soldier, no political experience (which the people were tired of politics)

• Democrats at this time had only the anti Military Reconstruction platform and were unorganized

• Republicans would wave the ‘bloody shirt’ and also told veterans to “vote as you shot”. They wanted military reconstruction to continue.

• Westerners advocated for redemption of cheap currency to aid in debts

• Grant won with 214 electoral votes (Democrat Seymour got only 80) and won by 300,000 popular votes

• 500,000 former slaves voted for Grant

• The states of Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia were not even counted

THE ERA OF GOOD STEALINGS • Population was still exploding due to immigration (1869-1896) and politics

became very corrupt

• Railroad promoters and stock investors cheated gullible customers

• Politicians and judges were open for bribes

• “An honest politician is one who when bought stays bought”

• Notorious millionaires Jim Fisk and Jay Gould attempted to corner the gold market. Would only work if the US treasury did not sell gold

• They worked on Grant personally and even bribed his brother in law with $25,000

• Black Friday (Sept 24, 1869) Fisk and Gould bid on and drove the price of gold sky high

• Bubble burst when Grant finally released some of the gold in the treasury

• Congressional investigation concluded that Grant did nothing wrong but did act stupidly and indiscreetly

• The Tweed Ring in New York City controlled NYC politics through bribery and graft

• “Boss” Tweed also employed election fraud and threats to drain the city of close to $200 million

• If people wanted a job or kickback, you had to play Tweed’s game

• Protestors usually found themselves without a job and their taxes through the roof

• In 1871, the New York Times finally published evidence to get Tweed thrown in jail (even though they were offered $5 million to keep the story hush)

A CARNIVAL OF CORRUPTION • Grant was a great general but lousy politician

• He failed to see the corruption going on even in his own cabinet, his in-laws, his friends, his close family, etc

• The Credit Mobilier Scandal

• Railroad construction company that paid itself huge sums of money for railroad construction severely hurt Grant

• Insiders at Union Pacific Railroad created the company Credit Mobilier to construct the railroads and put themselves in charge

• To keep this quiet, they paid off members of Congress and even the VP

• The scandal was uncovered by a NY newspaper

• Grant also was tarred by the Whiskey Ring scandal of 1874-1875 which robbed the treasury of millions, and

• Grant’s Secretary of War William Belknap resigned after taking bribes from suppliers of Indian Reservations in 1876

DAY 1 WRITE THE QUESTION IN THE SPACE PROVIDED

• A: Why did political machines, such as Tweeds, gain so much power in the larger cities?

• B: With Grant having been a popular and successful General in the Civil War, why do you think he made such poor decisions as a President?

• C: Why did politicians wave a ‘bloody shirt’ for political purposes? How is this still done today in politics?

• D: Why is this era known as the ‘Era of Good Stealings’ and also the ‘Gilded Age’? What do these names have to do with one another?

LIBERAL REPUBLICAN REVOLT OF 1872 • By 1872 there was general disgust at Grant’s administration (even though

most scandals hadn’t arrived yet)

• Reformers organized the Liberal Republican Party and nominated Horace Greeley for President

• Democrats also liked Greeley and he had been supportive of ending Reconstruction

• The campaign was filled with mudslinging (Greeley was called an atheist, vegetarian, free-lover; Grant was called a drunkard, ignoramus, swindler)

• Grant ended up crushing Greeley in both EV and PV (286-66)

• Because the party was divided, Republicans passed in 1872 a general amnesty removing penalties to all but 500 former Confederate leaders

• They also reduced high tariffs left over from the Civil War and also attempted to institute civil service reform

DEPRESSION, DEFLATION, INFLATION • Panic of 1873

• Created because of too many railroads and factories being created than the existing market could keep afloat.

• Banks had over extended loans to create these new companies as well.

• Cheap money supporters wanted greenbacks that had been printed during the Civil War

• Supporters of hard money (gold/silver) got Grant to veto a bill that would have printed more money

• Resumption Act of 1875 began the recall of greenbacks again and also the redemption of paper money at face value starting in 1879

• Greenbacks began to have more value and few were actually turned back in for gold

• 1878 Bland-Allison Act had the government buy and coin between $2 million and $4 million in silver bullion each month

GILDED AGE & HAYES-TILDEN • Gilded Age is a term coined by Mark Twain

• Era was filled with corruption and close presidential elections

• In reality they agreed economics, but support was different

• South: Democrats

• West and North: Republicans

• In 1876, Grant almost ran for a third term until the House of Representatives passed a gentle reminder of the two term tradition (233-18)

• Republicans nominate Rutherford B Hayes and Democrats nominate Samuel Tilden

• Race was close, Tilden got 184 out of 185 EV needed

• 4 states were disputed: Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and part of Oregon

• Each of these 4 states had sent in two sets of returns, one Democrat and one Republican

• Should the votes be counted by President of the Senate (a Republican) or should they be counted by the Speaker of the House (a Democrat)?

COMPROMISE OF 1877 • Electoral Count Act of 1877 set up a commission of 15 men from the Senate, House,

and Supreme Court which would count votes

• Hayes became President if he would pull troops out of the remaining two states still under Reconstruction

• This abandoned blacks in the South by withdrawing the troops

• A civil rights act that had been passed in 1875 was to be declared mostly unconstitutional

• As the troops pulled out, whites again began to discriminate against blacks, low wage labor and restrictions on rights

• Share cropping and tenant farming (for poor whites and blacks)

• Crop-lien system for store keepers kept most in debt through generations

• Court declared that 14th Amendment protected only with government discrimination but not by individuals

• Legal segregation, Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, Plessy v Ferguson

• Lynching became commonplace as well through 1880s on

CLASS CONFLICTS AND ETHNIC CLASHES • Reconstruction and regional conflict was put away in 1877

• What opened up was class warfare

• 1877, presidents of nation’s four largest railroads cut wages by 10%

• Workers strike back, stopping work, and Hayes sends in troops to stop it

• Violence, more than 100 die in several weeks of chaos

• This exposes weaknesses in the labor movement, specifically racial between Irish and Chinese who worked primarily on rail

• By 1880, Chinese immigrants accounted for 9% of California population

• Irish-born Denis Kearney tried to incite violence in San Francisco against the Chinese immigrants, arguing cheap labor

• Kearney-ites took to the streets, some cutting off the pigtails and others murdering

• Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 prohibiting immigration from China (until 1943)

• SC Case: US v Wong Kim Ark, 1898, said that those born in US were citizens due to 14th Amendment

DAY 2 WRITE THE QUESTION IN THE SPACE PROVIDED

• A: With an 80% voter turnout rate, why do you think that politics in the Gilded Age was so often corrupt?

• B: What caused the Compromise of 1877?

• C: What were the results of the Compromise of 1877 in terms of race relations?

• D: What is the plight of the Chinese immigrant during this period? What job prospects and aspects of racism are they facing?

GARFIELD & ARTHUR

• Hayes is seen as a fraud, and had proclaimed he would only seek one term.

• In 1880, Republicans nominate James A Garfield, Ohio. His running mate is Chester A Arthur

• Democrats choose Winfield S Hancock

• Garfield wins 214-55. He is seen as a good person but one who hates to say ‘no’.

• Garfield was assassinated on Sept 19, 1881. Shot in the back by Charles J Guiteau, it took him 11 weeks to die.

• Guiteau was a supporter of Arthur’s faction of the Republican party and believed if he was president he could get a job

• Guiteau tried to use the insanity defense, but was hung anyway

ARTHUR

• Arthur didn’t seem fit to lead, but surprised many by his shunning his earlier supporters

• He called for reform, and in 1883 got the Pendleton Act passed

• Established a ‘merit’ system for the civil service and began to put an end to the ‘spoils’ system

• Because Arthur did not play the patronage game, he did not get the nomination in 1886

BLAINE-CLEVELAND MUDSLINGERS OF 1884 • James G Blaine is nominated as Republican candidate, but some

Republicans couldn’t stand it and switched to be Democrats (Mugwumps)

• Blaine’s dirt was a corrupt deal involving a railroad

• Tried to cover it up by writing on the letters to “burn this letter”

• Dem’s choose Grover Cleveland as candidate

• Bachelor who loved chewing tobacco, was known as “Grover the Good”

• Soon came out that he may have fathered an illegitimate child, and Cleveland had been sending money to the woman and son.

• He insisted on telling the truth even after Democrats told him to lie

• “Burn, Burn this Letter” & “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” were heard on both sides

• Cleveland won 219-182 (4,879,507 to 4,850,930)

CLEVELAND BATTLES OF LOWER TARIFF • During Civil War, tariffs were jacked up to raise revenues for military

• Main beneficiaries are the American businesses

• High taxes continued after war though, with an annual surplus of $145 million

• Congress can reduce surplus in two ways

• 1-spend it on pork barrel projects and veterans pensions

• 2-lower the tariff

• Cleveland sees lower tariffs would lower prices, better for consumers and would get rid of some monopolies

• Sent a bill to Congress and it divided the two parties, plus election of 1888

• Democrats nominate Cleveland, Republicans Benjamin Harrison, the tariff is the main issue

• Harrison barely beats Cleveland 233-168 (Cleveland won PV)

BILLION DOLLAR CONGRESS • Republicans in Congress under Harrison were excited, but the Democrats

planned on refusing to do daily business

• They intended to delay all of Harrison’s and Republicans’ bills

• The budget for the first time reaches $1 billion

CLEVELAND AND DEPRESSION • Republicans are discredited during Harrison’s term

• Cleveland took office again in 1893, only president reelected after defeat

• Cleveland had just taken office when Depression of 1893 hit, worst of 1800s

• Lasted four years

• Causes were huge increase in overbuilding and speculation, labor disputes, and ongoing agricultural depression

• European banks finally started to call in US loans and made it worse

• In 6 months, 8,000 businesses collapsed

• Soup kitchens were opened up to feed unemployed

• Hobos wandered the nation

• Cleveland and government were bound to laissez-faire economics

• Cleveland tried to allow the government to keep all the gold and silver it could

• Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed

• In 1895, with the gold reserve down to only $41 million, Cleveland turned to JP Morgan for a loan in gold. The US government was loaned $65 million in gold

DAY 3 WRITE THE QUESTION IN THE SPACE PROVIDED

• A: What led to Garfield’s assassination?

• B: Describe the mudslinging that took place during the election of 1884.

• C: Explain Cleveland’s ideology behind tariffs and laissez-faire.

• D: What caused the Depression of 1893?