Major Political Events in 1868-1900s

Election of 1868:

• People believed a good general would make a good president
• Republicans nominated Grant in 1868
• Platform wanted continued reconstruction of the south
• Grant said let us have peace which became leading campaign
• Democrats denounced military construction but couldn’t agree on anything else
• Wealthy eastern delegates wanted federal  war bonds to be redeemed in gold even though many pounds were purchased with paper greenbacks
• Poor Midwestern delegates wanted the Ohio idea which was the redemption of greenbacks
• Debt burdened Democrats hope to keep more money in circulation in interest rates lower
• Midwestern delegates got the platform but not a candidate
• Horatio Seymour refused to accept the Ohio idea
• Republicans waved the bloody shirt, reviving gory memories of the Civil War for their platform
• Grant won
• Most white voters supported Seymour
• Ballots of Mississippi, Texas and Virginia weren’t counted
• Former slaves gave Grant his victory

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Fisk and Gould:

• corruption and unethical stock market manipulators were still here
• Too many judges and legislators put their power up for hire
• Cynics to find an honest politician as someone who went and bought would stay bought
• Jumbilee Jim Fisk (brass) and John Gould (brains) conducted a plot in 1869 to corner the gold market
• Their plan would only work in the federal treasury and refrain from selling gold
• Fisk and Gould bid the price of gold high so they could later a profit off its heighten value
• On Black Friday the treasury was compelled to release gold
• Price of gold went down and scores of honest businessman went down
• Tweed ring vividly displayed ethics or lack of ethics typical of age
• Boss tweed employed rivalry, graft in obtained elections to milk the metropolis of $2 million
• Protesters found their tax assessments raised
• New York Times secured evidence in 1871 and published it despite The $5 million offer not to
• Thomas Nast attack tweed after rejecting a bride
• Samuel J Tilden prosecuted and tweed died behind bars

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Credit Mobilier and Whiskey Ring:

• That was corruption in the federal government
• Grand cabinet had bribers and incompetents
• Credit Mobilier scandal in 1872, the union pacific railroad insiders from the credit Mobilier construction company highered themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line to earn more money
• Out of here that Congress will catch them the company distributed shares of a stock to congressmen
• A newspaper investigation led to the disapproval to congressman and revealed that the vice president accept payments
• Whiskey ring robbed the treasury of millions in excise tax revenue
• Grant said that no guilty man escape but when is own private security turned out to be involved he wrote a statement to the jury which helped release the thief
• In 1876 grant administration forced secretary of war William Belknap to resign after pocketing bribes from suppliers in Indian reservations

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Election of 1872:

• reform minded citizens formed the liberal republican party
• They wanted purification of Washington administration and an end to military construction
• Muffled the chance when they’re Cincinnati nominating convention nominated Horance Greeley
• Democrats supported Greeley Even though he saw them as traders, slave shippers , salon keepers, Horse thieves and idiots
• Republicans nominated grant
• Republicans denounce Greeley as an atheist, communist, free lover, a vegetarian and a cosigner of Jefferson Davis's bail bond
• Democrats called Grant an ignoramus, drunkard, and swindler
• Grant won
• Liberal Republicans scared normal Republicans
• Republican Congress in 1872 passed an amnesty act removing the political disabilities from all but about 500 former confederate leaders
• Congress used high Civil War tariffs and purify the grant administration with civil service reform

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Panic of 1873:

• Panic of 1873 was caused by promoters diluting themselves that post war time would go on forever
• They laid more railroad track, built more factories in sowed more Greenfields than markets could handle
• Bankers made too many quick loans to finance those enterprises
• When profit failed to materialize loans went and paid and everything crash nationwide
• American businesses went bankrupt
• The freedmen’s savings and trust company had made unsecured loans to many companies that failed
• Black depositors who invested in banks Lost their savings and black economic development and confidence went down
• Worst for farmers/Debtors
• Inflation brought the greenback issue back
• In 1868 the treasury withdrew $100 million of money made during the Civil War from circulation
• Now debtor groups wanted a new supply of green backs
• They promoted more money which meant cheaper money so rising prices and easier to pay debts
• Creditors promoted the opposite they didn’t want to see the money they loaned repayed in dollars
• They wanted to deflation not inflation
• In 1864 hard money advocates pursued Grant to veto a bill to print more paper money
• Resumption act of 1875 pledge the government to further withdrawal greenbacks from circulation into the redemption of all paper currency in gold at face value starting in 1879
• In the early 1870s the treasury claimed more than 1 ounce of silver was worth 1/16 the worth of 1 ounce of gold even though market prices for silver or higher than gold
• Silver minor stopped offering silver for sale to the federal government
• With no silver Congress drops the coinage of silver dollars and 1873
• In the 1870s new silver discoveries shot production up and silver prices went down
• Westerners from silver mining states joined debtors in attacking the crime of 73 demanding return to greenbacks
• Demand for greenbacks in coinage was just schemes to promote inflation
• Treasury accumulated gold stock against the day for reassumption of metallic money payments
• This plus The reduction of greenbacks was called contraction
• Deflationary affect the amount of money per capita decreased
• Contraction words in the impact of the depression
• New policy restore the government credit rating and brought greenbacks up to face value
• 1879 redemption Day some green back holders exchange the bills for gold
• Republicans Hardmoney policy helped elect a democratic house of representative in 1874 and spa in the green back labor party in 1878 which elected 14 members of Congress

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Stalwarts and Half Breeds:

• Gilded age named by mark twain in 1873
• Majority party in House of Representatives switch six times
• Democrats and Republican nearly eye to eye for tariffs, civil service performance even the currency debate
• They were very competitive
• Voting was very high
• Republicans believed in peoples whose faith trace to puritanism
• they stressed strict code of personal morality and believe that the government should play a role in regulating both the economic and moral affairs of society
• Democrats who included immigrant Lutherans in Roman Catholics believe in a faith that has a less stern view of human weakness
• The religions declared toleration of differences in an imperfect world and they rejected government efforts impose a single moral standard on the entire society
• Democrats had a solid electoral basin the south in the northern industrial cities teaming with immigrants and controlled by well oiled political machines
• Republican strength was from the Midwest and roll/small towns in the northeast
• Grateful Freedmen in the south voted Republican
• Grand Army a republic, a politically powerful organization of union veterans of the Civil War voted Republicans
• Patronage is the power to control appointments to office of the right two privileges
• Both parties paid out jobs in return for boats, kickbacks, and party service
• A stalwart faction led by Roscoe Conkling swap civil service jobs for votes
• Halfbreed supported civil service
• James G Blaine represented half breeds

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Election of 1876:

• Some people want a grant to run for a third term
• House of representatives voted which shut down the idea
• It passed a resolution to remind the country of the second term precedent
• Grant was out of the running and Conklingites and Blaineites were neutralizing each other
• Republicans chose Rutherford B Hayes
• Democrats choose Samuel J Tilden, the person who bagged boss tweed
• Tilden one popular and needed one more electoral vote
• Both party sent visiting statement to Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida
• All three states submitted two sets of returns one democratic and one Republican
• The constitution says that the electoral returns from the States Shopping Center, Congress in front of the house and senate opened by the president of the senate
• But you can’t buy the president of the senate who is the republican and the Republican returns would be selected if counted by the speaker of the house he’s a Democratic returns would be chosen
• Supreme court had Republican majority so Hayes won

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Labor Strikes and Immigration Issues:

• 1877 mark the end of the reconstruction era but opened the division between classes
• Byproduct of years of great depression and deflation after the panic of 1873
• Where roadworkers faced hard times in group bitter after watching railroad owners gain profits
• Presence of the four largest railroads decided in 1877 to cut employees wages by 10%
• Worker struck back causing the great strike of 1877
• Soon turn to violence
• Where reliance and telegraph wires facilitated networks of people and information that allowed to work stop ages to spread
• President has decision to call federal troops to stop the strike pulled in working class support
• The failure of the great railroad strike expose the weakness of the labor movement in the face of government intervention on the side of the railroads
• Federal courts coming US Army, state militias and local police helped keep the businesses going
• Racial ethnic workers hurt labor unity
• Divisions particularly between Irish and Chinese
• Asian newcomers in China we’re growing
• They had originally come to the US to dig for gold and work to sledgehammer the tracks on the transcontinental railroad
• When gold stopped appearing and the tracks were done many went home
• The ones he stayed worked menial jobs as cooks, laundryman, and domestic servants
• Without women or families they were deprived of the children who in other immigration communities is their parents assimilation through exposure to English culture in school
• In San Francisco Dennis Kearney, an Irish born encourages farmers to abuse the Chinese
• Kearnyites resented the competition for cheap labor and the Chinese regarded as a menace
• Gangs of them terrorize Chinese by Sharing pigtails or murder
• Congress passed the Chinese exclusion act in 1882 which prohibited all future immigration from China until 1843
• Some tried to strip nativeborn of their citizenship but Supreme Court in US v Wong Kim ark in 1898 said that the 14th amendment granted citizenship to all nativeborn
• The right of soil outweighed the right of blood tie which gave the Chinese and other immigrants protection

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Election of 1880:

• election of 1880, Hayes was without a party
• republicans chose James a Garfield and Chester Arthur for Vice President
• Democrats chose Winfield Scott Hancock
• Garfield barely won
• His secretary Blaine still had issues with Conkling
• Charles J Guiteau shot Garfield
• Arthur is now president
• Conclusion was that Conklingites would get good jobs because Arthur was a Conklingites
• guiteaus attorneys argue that he was insane and couldn’t distinguish right from wrong
• Positive outcome was that it shocked politicians to change the spoil system
• Arthur was underestimated at first but surprise critics by prosecuting several fraud cases and giving his former stalwart pals the cold shoulder
• Republican party was disgusted by Garfield‘s murder so they decided to go for reform
• Pendleton act of 1883 may campaign contributions from federal employees illegal and establish the civil service commission to make appointments to field jobs on the basis of competitive examinations
• At first it was successful-ish in covering 10% of people
• Because politicians to look for big corporations for money and a new breed of bosses emerge that were worst mobilizing small armies of immigrants and voters on election day is better at milking money from manufacturers and lobbyists
• The act particularly divorced politics from patronage but helped dry politicians into agreements with big business leaders
• Arthur’s integrity offended too many powerful Republicans
• He died in 1886

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Cleveland:

• Cleveland in 1885 was the first Democratic president since Buchanan
• Could the party of disunion be trusted to govern?
• Cleveland supported laissez-faire
• In 1887 he vetoed a bill to provide seeds for drought ravaged Texas farmers
• The people support the government the government and support the people he said
• He was stuck between demands of democratics for jobs and demands of mugwumps for reform who helped him get elected
• At first he favor performers but eventually gave into democratic bosses and fire 2/3 of federal employees to make room for democratic workers
• The grand Army of Republic influenced hundreds of military pension bills through Congress
• Benefits were given to deserters, bounty jumpers, men who had never served and former soldiers with disabilities
• Cleveland was in an awkward situation when fighting pension grabbers as a non-veteran democratic but read every bill carefully and vetoed many

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Tariffs:

• Civil War tariffs were high to raise revenues for military machine
• American industry predominantly controlled by Republicans had profited from the production and didn’t want to see the benefits reduced during peacetime
• High duties piled up revenue and by 1881 the treasury had more supply over demand
• Most government incomes came from the tariffs
• Congress could either get rid of it through pension and bills does improving favor veterans and self-seeking groups or lower the terrace which big industrialists hated
• Cleveland didn’t care about tariffs at first but then we came interested
• Lower barriers would mean lower prices for consumers and less protection for monopolies
• It would also mean enter the treasury surplus
• Cleveland appealed for lower tariffs in 1887
• Democrats were annoyed in Republicans just laughed
• The tariffs meant higher taxes, lower wages, and higher unemployment
• First issue to really divide party since slavery
• Election of 1888, Democrats chose Cleveland because there was no other choice
• Republicans chose Benjamin Harrison
• Republicans used post Pendleton act politic with alliances with big businesses to raise a war chest $3 million by using nervous industrialists
• Money was used to line up repeater/floaters who would rig elections
• Cleveland won popular but Harrison won
• after a four year famine Republicans were waiting for the bounty of federal offices
• They wanted the Democrats to be punished for money/surplus is the high tariffs produced
• Democrats were preparing to obstruct all house business by refusing to answer all calls demanding that rule calls determine the presence of a quorum which is the minimum number of members of an assembly and employing other delaying tactics
• Thomas be read intimidated the house of representatives to his will
• He counted present democratics who didn’t answer the role and who denied they were there
• Congress showered pensions on Civil War veterans and increase government purchases of silver
• To keep revenue flowing in and to protect republican industrialists from foreign competition congress pass the McKinley act of 1890 which boost rates to the highest peacetime level ever
• New tariff act by fresh distressed farmers
• Deptford and farmers had no choice but to buy manufactured goods from high-priced American industrialist and were forced to sell their own outer culture products into highly competitive markets
• Discontent Against the tariffs caused voters to be mad
• In the congressional elections in 1890 Republican won majority and McKinley went down
• New Congress included nine members of farmers alliance a military organization of southerners/western farmers

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Cities:

• The growth of American metropolises was amazing
• Skyscrapers allowed more people and workplaces to be packed onto one parcel of land
• It’s supported by its skeleton of steel and was able to work thanks to the electric elevator
• Louis Sullivan said form follows function
• Americans were commuting between home and work on mass transit lines that went from city centers to outside neighborhoods
• Electric trolleys propelled city limits outward
• Nations first Subway
• Compact and communal city gave way to immense megalopolis and separated into districts for business, industry and neighborhoods which was segregated by a race, ethnicity and social class
• Industrial jobs Drew people Are farms in into factory centers
• Urban lifestyle Drew people in
• Electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones and bridges drew people in
• Department stores attracted middle class shoppers and providing union working class jobs for women
• Era of consumerism and widening class division
• Moving to the city introduced Americans to new ways of living
• City life trumped country life in terms of stores, services in tech but criminals florist and sanitary facilities couldn’t keep up with the population so cities were very disgusting
• Cities had everyone from rich to poor living close together
• Slam population grew after dumbbell tenements were created
• It was 7-8 stories high, minimal ventilation and all the family share the toilet
• In 1871 2/3 of Chicago burn down because the wind structures fed the fire leaving 90% people homeless
• The wealthy began to leave the cities for the suburbs

Cities:

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New Immigrants:

• Destruptions of the industrial revolution plus the poll of American urban seem to cause an endless dream of immigrants
• Until then most immigrants came from Germany Ireland and China
• They began to adjust well to American life by building organizations and unions
• many still worked and lived among their own were largely accepted
• In the 1880s a wave of new immigrants came from southern/Eastern Europe
• They came from countries with little history of Democratic government and opportunities for advancement were few
• Immigrants or Italian, jews, Croats, Slovaks, Greeks and poles
• They clung together in cities like New York or Chicago
• They left because Europe was growing in population and industrialization so there was no room and no jobs
• American fever made it sound more appealing with the promise of a new land in freedom from military conscription
• Industrialist wanted low age labor, railroads wanted buyers for their land grants and dates wanted more population and steamships wanted more human cargo
• Russians turn finally against Jews which caused them to escape to America
• They brought their skills of tailoring and shopkeeping
• Many immigrants never intended to become Americans
• Most were single men who worked in the US and would return home with their money
• Somewhere birds of passage you eventually went back to their country
• The ones he stayed struggle to preserve their culture
• Catholics created school systems, Jews created Hebrew schools, Greek restaurants and Italian social clubs were made to help preserve their culture
• They tried to keep their old ways alive but the children who grew up speaking English wanted nothing to do with their other culture and wanted to live the American life

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Machine Politics:

• Government wasn’t suited for cities
• The federal government did nothing to easy assimilation of immigrants into American society
• Political machines exemplified by Tammany hall
• Trading jobs and services for voters, machines claim loyalty
• In return for their support at the polls machine jobs on city payrolls, Found housing, gifts of food and clothing, patent up minor scrapes with the law and help get schools parks in hospitals built an immigrant neighborhoods
• Reformers disagreed/disliked
• Machine served as agencies providing assistance to struggling people with no other choice of help
• Nation social conscious woke up
• Protestant clergyman who sought to apply the lessons of Christianity to the slums and factories appeared
• Jane Adams dedicated herself to uplifting urban masses and establish the hull house, an American settlement house
• Her work got her expelled from the daughters of the American Revolution
• Whole house offered instructions in English, counseling to help newcomers cope with the big city life, child care services for working mothers and cultural activities for neighborhood residents
• Settlement houses became centers of women’s activism and social reform
• The women of whole house successfully lobbyed for an anti-sweatshop law that protected women workers and prohibited child labor

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Nativism:

• nativism is the policy of protecting the native born
• New immigrants had come to escape the poverty Europe to seek new opportunities in America
• Nativists worried that America was becoming a dumping ground
• Viewed eastern and southern Europeans as culturally exotic hordes and usually gave them rude reception
• Newcomers high birth rate, common among people with low standards of living in enough youth and strength to pull up stakes race worries that the original Anglo-Saxon stock would be out bread and outvoted
• Native born Americans blamed immigrants in political machines they created for the wearing down of urban government
• Some trade unionist attacked aliens for their willingness to work for starvation wages which seem to newcomers like large sums in for importing there intellectual baggage like socialism, communism and anarchism
• Many business leaders who had welcome to cheat manual labor began to feel that they created a monster
• American protective association in 1887 urged voting against Roman Catholic candidates for office in sponsored publication of fantasies about runaway nuns
• Ways depressing immigrants were hard to unionize because language and culture barriers divided them
• Labor leaders argue that if American industry was entitled to protection from foreign goods American worker should be entitled to protection for foreign laborers
• Congress passed the first restrictive law in 1882 which close the gate to poppers, criminals, and convicts who all had returned at the expense of the greedy or careless shipper
• Later the same year banded a whole ethnic group, the Chinese
• Congress in 1885 prohibited the importation of foreign workers under contract usually for substandard wages
• Other federal laws included polygamists, the insane, prostitutes, alcoholics, anarchist and people carrying contagious diseases
• A literacy test favored by nativists because it favored old immigrants over new met opposition
• It wasn’t enacted until 1917, after three presidents vetoed it
• In 1886 of Statue of Liberty was a gift from France

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Religion:

• Protestant denominations in particular suffered heavily from the shift to the city were many of their traditional doctrines and Pastor approach it seemed irrelevant
• Larger houses of worship or tending to become sacred diversion/amusements
• Old line churches were slow to raise their voices against social and economic vices
• Rockefeller was a pillar of the Baptist church
• Morgan was one of the episcopal church
• Some religious leaders began to worry that in the fight between God and the devil the devil was winning
• Money was the accepted measure of achievement and the new gospel of wealth procured that God caused the righteous to prosper
• Liberal protestants appeared adapted religious ideas to modern culture, attempting to reconcile Christianity with new scientific and economic Doctrines
• They rejected biblical literalism and urged Christians to view biblical stones as models for Christian behavior
• Stressed ethical teachings of the Bible and Ally themselves a social gospel movement in urban revivalists
• They’re optimistic trusting community fellowship and focus on earthly salvation and personal growth attracted many followers
• Helped protestant Americans reconcile their religious faith with modern ways of thinking
• Roman Catholic and Jewish fates were gaining strength from new immigration
• Karen James given an urban Catholic leaders devoted to American unity and was very popular with Roman Catholics and protestants
• He employed liberal sympathy to help the American labor of movement
• By 1890 Americans can choose from 150 religions
• Salvation Army who soldiers without sores invaded America from England in 1879 and established a beach head on the country street corners
• Church of Christ scientist preach the truth practice of Christianity heals sickness
• Young men’s and women’s Christian associations, YMCA combined physical and other kinds of education with religious instruction

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Timeline:

Election of 1868

Fisk and Gould (1869)

Election of 1872

Credit Mobilier (1872)

Panic of 1873

Reassumption Act of 1875

Election of 1876

Great Strike of 1877

Election of 1880

Knights of Labor (1881)

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Pendleton Act of 1883

Election of 1884

Haymarket (1886)

American Federation of Labor (1886)

Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

Election of 1888

Sherman Anti Trust Act (1890)

Panic of 1893

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