Chapter 23 American novelist Mark Twain coined the term "Gilded Age" in an effort to illustrate the outwardly showy, but inwardly corrupt nature of American society during the industrial revolution of the late 1800's. General Ulysses Grant received a unanimous vote on the first ballot at the Republican convention. Grant's Democratic opponent was Horatio Seymour of New York. The Republicans, who nominated General Ulysses S. Grant, ran the first campaign at which they "waved the bloody shirt", accusing Seymour and the Democrats of treason. Continued Reconstruction of the SouthUlysses S. Grant bloody shirt Denounced Military Reconstruction Advocated a policy of conservative, limited government Seymour ran fairly close to Grant in the popular vote, but was decisively defeated in the electoral vote, 214 to 80 During this time, politics became very corrupt Railroad promoters cheated gullible customers. Sto ck-market investors were a cinder in the public eye. Too many judges and legislators put their power up for hire. Two notorious millionaires were Jim Fisk and Jay Gould. In 1869, the pair concocted a plot to corner the gold market that would only work if the treasury stopped selling gold, so they worked on President Grant directly and through his brother-in-law, but their plan failed when the treasury sold gold. The infamous Tweed ring of NYC, headed by Boss Tweed, employed bribery, graft, and fake elections to cheat the city Tweed was finally caught when The New York Times secured evidence of his misdeeds, and Tweed, despite being defended by future presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden, was convicted and imprisoned. Grant, apparently failed to see the corruption going on. This despite the fact that many of his friends wanted offices and his cabinet was totally corrupt (except for Secretary of State Hamilton Fish) Note: His in-laws, the Dent family, were especially terrible. A Carnival of Corruption The Credit Mobilier, a railroad construction company that paid itself huge sums of money for small railroad construction In 1875, the public learned that the Whiskey Ring had robbed the Treasury of millions of dollars, and when Grants own private secretary was shown to be one of the criminals, Grant retracted his earlier statement of Let no guilty man escape. In 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap was shown to have pocketed some $24,000 in bribes from suppliers selling junk to Indians By 1872, a wave of disgust at Grants administration was building,and reformers organized the Liberal Republican Party and nominated the dogmatic Horace Greeley. The badly fractured Democrats decided to extend their nomination to Greeley. This was a strange marriage. Greeley's newspaper had regularly blasted the Southern Democrats and his support for the tariff. In November, Grant won an overwhelming victory. Greeley died after the election, but before the electoral votes were counted.* Only three electors remained loyal to the deceased candidate hard-money policies of the Grant administration result in "contraction" from hard-money policies probably worsened the Depression gave the Democratic Party an issue to run on in retake the House of Representatives formation of the Greenback Labor Party in million votes, 14 MOC's Democrats and Republicans saw nearly eye to eye on all issues Every election was a close one Two parties were ferociously competitive Highest voter turn out in history Well-Defined Voting Blocs Well-Defined Voting Blocs Democratic Bloc Republican Bloc White southerners Immigrants in Northern Industrial cities: well oiled political machines Catholics Urban working poor (pro-labor) Most farmers Northern whites (pro-business) African Americans Northern Protestants Midwest Rural and small town Northeast GAR Grand Army of the Republic Grant almost ran for a third term before the House derailed that proposal, so the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, dubbed the Great Unknown because no one knew much about him, while the Democrats ran Samuel Tilden. . The election was very close, with Tilden getting 184 votes out of a needed 185 in the Electoral College. A disputed election led to The Electoral Count Act, passed in This act established an electoral commission which would count the votes END OF MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION GOP agrees to withdraw troops from SC and LA and to support a bill giving federal aid to the construction of the Texas and Pacific RR's construction of a southern transcontinental line in return for a Hayes presidency. HAYES BECOMES PRESIDENT The Compromise of 1877 abandoned the Blacks in the South by withdrawing troops, and their last attempt at protection of Black rights was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was mostly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1883 case Civil Rights Cases. As Reconstruction ended, Whites once again discriminated against Blacks, forcing them into low-wage labor and restricting their rights. A systematic state- level legal codes of segregation Literacy requirements Voter registration laws Poll taxes Tolerated voter registration laws In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, that separate but equal facilities were constitutional Turbulent years in office The Election of 1876 hangs over his head Rutherfraud, Old 8-7, His Fraudulency Labor disturbances: Railroad strikes across the nation in 1877 troops suppress strikers Anti-Chinese uproar on the West Coast 75,000 Chinese laborers in California by 1880 Dennis Kearney in San Fransisco 1879 Chinese Exclusion Act -- vetoed by Hayes (finally passed in 1882) Causes Friction between races, especially between the Irish and the Chinese. ( conflict between ethnic groups for unskilled jobs Reduction in wages by railroad owners and other industrial employers Years of depression and deflation that undermined workers living standards 1880 Presidential Election: Republicans Half BreedsStalwarts Sen. James G. Blaine Sen. Roscoe Conkling (Maine) (New York) James A. Garfield Chester A. Arthur (VP) compromise The Garfield Interlude 1880 Presidential Election: Democrats The Democrats chose Winfield S. Hancock, a Civil War general who appealed to the South due to his fair treatment of it during Reconstruction and a veteran who had been wounded at Gettysburg, and thus appealed to veterans. The campaign once again avoided touchy issues, and Garfield squeaked by in the popular vote (the Electoral count was better: 214 to 155). Garfield was a good person, but he hated to hurt peoples feelings and say no. Charles J. Guiteau -- a deranged office seeker shoots Garfield in a Washington railroad station in 1881. The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 establishes a merit system for classified federal jobs created the Civil Service Commission to administer tests prohibited "assessments" of how much a federal employee contributed to a political party Chester A. Arthur: The Fox in the Chicken Coop? The Pendleton Act partially divided politics from patronage, but it drove politicians into marriages of convenience with business leaders. 1884 Presidential Election Grover Cleveland James Blaine * (DEM) (REP) BLAINES OPPONENTS SWITCH PARTY James G. Blaine became the Republican candidate, but some Republican reformers, unable to stomach this, switched to the Democratic Party and were called Mugwumps. LITTLE LOST MUGWUMP The Democrats chose Grover Cleveland as their candidate but received a shock when it was revealed that he might have been the father of an illegitimate child. The campaign of 1884 was filled with perhaps the lowest mudslinging in history Ma, Mawheres my pa? Hes going to the White House, ha ha ha! The contest depended on how New York chose, but unfortunately, one Republican insulted the race, faith, and patriotism of New Yorks heavy Irish population, and as a result, New York voted for Cleveland; that was the difference Presidential Election Portly Grover Cleveland was the first Democratic president since James Buchanan, and as a supporter of laissez-faire, he delighted business owners and bankers. 39 These cartoons show Cleveland taking on the spoils system and the railroad Clevelan d takes on Military Pension s Cleveland showed that he was ready to take on the corrupt distributors of military pensions when he vetoed a bill that would add several hundred thousand new people on the pension list. 1. By 1881, the Treasury had a surplus of $145 million, most of it having come from the high tariff, and there was lots of clamor for lowering the tariff, though big industrialists opposed it. 2. Cleveland became inclined towards lowering the tariff, so in late 1887, Cleveland openly tossed the appeal for lower tariffs into the lap of Congress. 1888 Presidential Election Grover Cleveland Benjamin Harrison (DEM) * (REP) With no other choice, the Democrats renominated Cleveland, and Republicans chose Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of William H. Harrison, as their candidate.