Chapter 23: The Gilded Age

"waving the bloody shirt"

Republicans whipped up enthusiasm for Grant by energetically "waving the bloody shirt"- that is, reviving gory memories of the Civil War- which became for the first time a prominent feature of a presidential campaign. "Vote as You Shot" was a powerful republican slogan aimed at Union army veterans.

Tweed Ring

The infamous Tweed Ring in New York City vividly displayed the ethics (or lack of ethics) typical of the age. Burly "Boss" Tweed-240 pounds of rascality- employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to milk the metropolis of as much as $200 million. Honest citizens were cowed into silence. Protesters found their tax assessments raised.

Crédit Mobilier scandal

The easygoing Grant was first tarred by the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which erupted in 1872. Union Pacific Railroad insiders had formed the Crédit Mobilier construction company and then cleverly hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line, earning dividends as high as 348 percent.

Panic of 1873

A world-wide depression that began in the United States when one of the nations largest banks abruptly declared bankruptcy, leading to the collapse of thousands of banks and businesses. The crisis intensified debtors' calls for inflationary measures such as the printing of more paper money and the unlimited coinage of silver. Conflicts over monetary policy greatly influenced politics in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Gilded Age

The political seesaw was delicately balanced throughout mot of the Gilded Age (a sarcastic name given to the three-decade-long post-Civil War era by Mark Twain in 1873).

Compromise of 1877

In Compromise of 1873, the Democrats reluctantly agreed that Hayes might take office in return for hisWithdrawing intrusive federal troops from the two states in which they remained, Louisiana and South Carolina.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was in a sense the last feeble gasp of congressional radical Republicans. The last piece of federal civil rights legislation until until the 1950s, the law promised blacks equal access to accommodations and banned racism in jury selection, but the Act 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 plantations owner in exchange for giving him a certain "share" of each year's crop. Sharecropping was the dominant form of the 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-twentith 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, public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation.

Plessy V. Ferguson

An 1896 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 is the decision provided legal justification for the Jim Crow system until the 1950s.

Chinese Exclusion Act

Congress slammed the door on Chinese immigrant explorers when it passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, prohibiting nearly all further immigration from China. The door stayed shut until 1943.

Pendleton Act

The medicine finally applied to the long-suffering federal government was the Pendleton Act of 1833- the so-called Magna Carta of the civil-service reform. It made compulsory campaign contributions from federal employees illegal, and it established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of competitive examinations rather than "pull."

Interstate Commerce Act

Congress passed the epochal Interstate Commerce Act in 1877. It prohibited rebates and pools and required the railroads to publish their rates openly. It also forbade unfair discrimination against shippers and outlawed charging more for a short haul than for a long one over the same line. Most important, it set up the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to administer and enforce the new legislation.