APUSH Period 6 Chapter 23

"waving the bloody shirt”

The use of Civil War imagery by political candidates and parties to draw votes to their side of the ticket.

Tweed Ring

A symbol of Gilded Age corruption, “Boss” Tweed and his deputies ran the New York City Democratic party in the 1860s and swindled $200 million from the city through bribery, graft, and vote-buying. Boss Tweed was eventually jailed for his crimes and died behind bars.

Crédit Mobilier scandal

A construction company was formed by owners of the Union Pacific Railroad for the purpose of receiving government contracts to build the railroad at highly inflated prices—and profits. In 1872, a scandal erupted when journalists discovered that the Crédit Mobilier Company had bribed congressman and even the vice president to allow the ruse to continue.

panic of 1873

A worldwide depression that began in the United States when one of the nation’s 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

A term given to the period 1865-1896 by Mark Twain, indicating both the fabulous wealth and the widespread corruption of the era.

patronage

A system, prevalent during the Gilded Age, in which political parties granted jobs and favors to party regulars who delivered votes on election day. Patronage was both an essential wellspring of support for both parties and a source of conflict within the Republican party.

Compromise of 1877

The agreement that finally resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction. In exchange for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, winning the presidency, Hayes agreed to withdraw the last of the federal troops from the former Confederate states. This deal effectively completed the southern return to white-only, Democratic-dominated electoral parties.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

The last piece of federal civil rights legislation until the 1950s, the law promised blacks equal access to public accommodations and banned racism in jury selection, but it 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 lang and residences from a planation owner in exchange for giving him a certain “share” of each year’s crop. Sharecropping was the dominant form of southern agriculture after the Civil War and landowners manipulated this system to keep tenants in perpetual debt and unable to leave their plantations.