Politics in the Gilded Age

Politics in the Gilded Age

Setting the Stage

• Lectures are setting the stage for modern America, covering westward expansion, immigration, and politics.
• The groundwork for major 20th-century events (world wars, the Depression, the Civil Rights Movement) was laid during this period.
• History is a timeline where prior events influence subsequent ones.

Politics After the Civil War

• Pre-Civil War politics were highly contentious due to slavery, sometimes leading to violence in Congress.
• The period after the Civil War saw a relative calm in politics.
• Presidents from 1876 to 1896 are largely forgotten, not due to incompetence, but due to reduced national political activity.
• Politics were more centered at the state and local levels.
• Neither Republicans nor Democrats were especially dominant.
• Few charismatic leaders and a lack of major national issues defined this era.
• Issues at the national level centered around tariffs and economics.
• Republicans dominated the White House from 1877 to 1893.
• Control of Congress shifted between Republicans and Democrats.
• Politics was more about movements and issues than individual personalities.

The Republican Party

• Republicans were largely native-born and predominantly Protestant.
• They supported government intervention to promote economic activity and legislate morality.
• Republicans employed "waving the bloody shirt," reminding voters of the Civil War and blaming the Democrats.
• Congressman Thomas Reed was a prominent Republican figure during this time.

The Democratic Party

• Democrats attracted foreign-born voters (immigrants) and were predominantly Catholic.
• The South was the stronghold of the Democratic Party.
• Democrats promoted individual liberties and a small government message.
• They advocated for states' rights and limited federal government.
• Democrats became defenders of the "Lost Cause," a Southern defense of the Civil War.

Voter Turnout and Political Engagement

• Despite the perceived blandness, Americans actively participated in politics.
• Voter turnout in presidential elections was high, between 70-90%.
• Political events were popular social gatherings, resembling county fairs with contests, dancing, and speeches.

Urban Corruption

• Cities became very corrupt, with political machines controlling large cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago.
• Bribery and corruption increased significantly.
• Private companies built urban infrastructure (roads, streetlights, sewage systems) in exchange for political favors.
• Cities later chose to build infrastructure themselves to end corruption.
• Partnerships between government and business continue today (e.g., sports stadiums).

The 1880 Presidential Election

• Both parties nominated former Civil War generals: Republican James Garfield and Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock.
• The election was not about personalities but centered on the monetary system and tariffs.
• Nearly 80% of eligible voters participated.
• Garfield campaigned on fighting corruption.
• Garfield won the election, which was one of the closest in US history.
• Red on the map represents Republicans, and blue represents Democrats.
• The numbers inside each state represent electoral votes.
• Texas, California, and Florida had a small number of electoral votes at this time.
• Hancock won the South, and Garfield won in New England and the Northeast.

The "Zero Factor" and Garfield's Assassination

• There was a historical phenomenon known as the "zero factor," or Tecumseh's curse, where presidents elected in years ending in zero died in office from 1840 to 1980.
• In July 1881, Garfield was shot by a mentally deranged man named Charles Guiteau, who was upset that Garfield had not given him a job.
• Doctors tried to locate the bullets in Garfield using a new metal detector, but it failed due to metal springs in the bed frame.
• Garfield died eleven weeks later from infections caused by the bullets.
• Guiteau was found guilty of murder and hanged.
• Part of Charles Guiteau's brain is on display at the Muture Medical Museum in Philadelphia.
• Garfield's Vice President, Chester Arthur, became president and cracked down on corruption.
• Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 1884 Presidential Election

• Democrats nominated Grover Cleveland, and Republicans nominated James Blaine.
• The campaign focused on corruption.
• Cleveland was known as Grover the Good, but Republicans accused him of fathering an illegitimate child.
• Cleveland admitted to paying child support but claimed the child was his law partner's.
• Blaine was racist and anti-Catholic, hurting him in New England states.
• Cleveland won the election. 78% voter turnout.
• Cleveland won due to the Catholic vote shifting because Blaine was anti-Catholic.
• Cleveland was the only Democrat elected president between the Civil War and World War I.
• Cleveland was the only president to take office as a bachelor but married Frances Folsom, who became the youngest first lady.
• Cleveland was defeated for reelection but won the presidency back four years later.

Women's Suffrage Movement

• The women's rights movement began decades before the Civil War but gained momentum around 1870
• Suffrage means the right to vote.
• Women fought for the national right to vote.
• Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870) allowed women to vote early on.
• Women argued the words of the 14th amendment guaranteed them the right to vote.
• The 14th amendment states that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens and are guaranteed equal protection under the law. text: All persons who are born or naturalized in The United States are citizens of The United States and the state where they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge, means take away, the privileges or immunities of these citizens, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or process without due process of the law. In other words, your day in court. Nor shall it deny any person the equal protection of the laws.
• Multiple court cases challenging whether women had a right to vote under the 14th amendment were all lost.
• A US district court in Washington DC said that women having the right to vote would be destructive of civilization itself.
• In 1875, the Supreme Court said the Constitution does not give the right to vote to anyone, even though the 14th amendment specifically mentions voting.
• Key question: Should women work by themselves or partner with African Americans in the civil rights movement?
• Feminism: relatively new word (coined 1837 in France; US 1910).
• At this time period the word simply equaled: Freedom for personal development, freedom from double standards of sexual morality, and is pro-suffrage.
• Feminism was not associated with any one political party, movement, or ideology.
• In 1890, various groups came together to form the National American Women Suffrage Association.
• This was the largest women's rights group in America. They published pamphlets, made speeches, did marches, and lobbied politicians.
• At rallies, women would wear pants, ride bicycles, and do certain types of work without men, to look (performatively) equal.

Opposition to Women's Suffrage

• Producers of alcohol feared women would outlaw alcohol due to their higher morals.
• Mill and factory owners feared women would end child labor.
• Political machines feared women were less corruptible.
• Catholic churches and Southern Baptists opposed women's suffrage based on biblical doctrine.
• Women themselves opposed women's suffrage, arguing it was too dirty or they were not smart enough.
• The National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage had over 350,000 members.
• Racists in the South, fearing rights for African Americans, opposed women's suffrage.
• Jane Adams cautioned not to assume women would do everything better, saying they hadn't had the chance to be corrupt yet.

19th Amendment

• In 1920, the 19th amendment guaranteed the right to vote to all citizens of the United States, but state and city laws restricted these rights to African Americans.

Key Figures in the Women's Suffrage Movement

Susan B. Anthony

• Born in 1820 in Massachusetts, she was a Quaker and former abolitionist.
• She aggressively pushed for national women's suffrage.
• Was a tireless activist who made over 100 speeches a year.
• She wrote a six-volume history of women's suffrage.
• She never married or had any serious romantic relationships.
• She tried to create a combined national movement by reaching out to African American rights groups, but had very little success.
• At the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, she gave speeches to crowds over 100,000 big.
• Anthony tried to create a combined national movement by reaching out to native or, excuse me, to African American rights groups; has very little success with this.
• She grew to be more conservative in her later years.
• She died in 1906 at the age of 86, fourteen years too early to see the passage of the amendment.
• In 1979, became the woman to be depicted on US currency on the Susan b Anthony Dollar, which never took off.

Alice Paul

• She was born in 1885 in New Jersey; she was a Quaker and a self-avowed feminist.
• Very well-educated: Bachelor's degree in biology, master's degree, and doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, and a law degree from Washington College; very rare at this time.
• Learned from the suffrage movement in Great Britain.
• She will emphasize the practice of civil disobedience and peacefully refuse to obey unjust laws.
• Paul was arrested multiple times and carried out a hunger strike while in jail (1917), leading to force-feeding.
• She would argue for women's rights based on history, the law, legal theory, and sociological concepts.
• In 1913, she led a women's rights movement in Washington DC with over 10,000 people marching.
• In 1916, she broke away and formed the National Women's Party; group lasted until 2021.
• Alice Paul died in 1977 at the age of 92.
• She also never married.

Populist Movement

Origins and Goals

• The movement began in Lampasas County, Texas, in 1875 with the National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union (Southern Alliance).
• The goal was to show strength and numbers and to push back against the railroads, rich investors, and East Coast markets.
• The argument was saying that the little man (aka the farmer) cannot be profitable and cannot survive.
• They believed the key point was to form cooperatives.
• Cooperatives: get all of the farmers in an area to agree on same prices; a way to try to get prices up.
• This was a cultural resistance to the rising commercial order in America, but not political at first.

Initial Success and Setbacks

• The movement spread throughout the Great Plains and the Deep South, so people winning elections in the legislature and government.
• In 1890, candidates backed by the alliance started winning elections.
• They won control of state legislatures in Nebraska and Kansas and seats in the federal congress.
• Falling cotton prices nearly collapsed the entire group (1891), and farmers started breaking away, thus coming this turning political.

Subtreasury Plan and Free Silver

• By 1891, the populace created their own political party: the Populist Party.
• Political movements are going to promote a plan: the Subtreasury Plan.
• Subtreasury Plan: the populace were going to convince the federal government to build warehouses in agricultural counties where farmers could store crops.
• Under this plan, farmers would also be allowed to borrow money against those crops at low interest rates from the government.
• With this idea, it was trying to use the power and economic clout of the government to help the producing classes, the workers.
• The Subtreasury Plan was rejected by both major political parties in 1890: Democrats and Republicans.
• Free silver plan: At this time, the government only printed enough paper money equal to the amount of gold or silver they have in reserve.
• Stop making gold coins, and only print silver. Silver should be the official currency and should be minted in mass quantities. This lead to mass inflation.
• Inflation: when prices go up; if this is done, the prices of crops/ products will rise, and this benefits farmers.
• The Republicans saw this as a disaster.
• The Populist Party wanted to attract factory and mill workers to their movement, but free silver would harm them.

The 1892 Presidential Election

• The populist ran their own presidential candidate named James Weaver, and he won four states.
• What can we take away from this? Revolution: a party has won multiple states!
• The populist did well in the farming states that are in the center part of the country (Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas), but they didn't really do well in the South.
• In 1893, there was a mini depression, with the economy dipping, and the Democrat was blamed.
• In 1894, the democrats lost big, and were scared of fading out of existence. They needed to make a change!
• The Democrats adopted the free silver and the idea that the government should help the little man, so they stole the populist ideas!

The 1896 Presidential Election

• The Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan (a populist) for president; if the populace nominate someone new: they support the Democrats; what do they do?
• The populace also nominate William Jennings Bryan for president, so they split!
• The Republicans want nothing to do with this. They will nominate for president the governor of Ohio, William McKinley.
• There are now 3 different parties who have nominated the same man.
• If Democrats support their candidate, have they abandoned their principles? William Jennings Bryan, brilliant speaker will campaign tires tirelessly with over 500 speeches.
• McKinley would sit out his front porch and do nothing. He said: "my ideas, my policies will speak for themselves."
• McKinley would win easily since the Democrat and Populace views were clashing.
• McKinley won even though there was more blue on the map. Look for the numbers!
• This was end of the Populist Party since the Democrat Party stole all their ideas.

Legacy of the Populist Movement

• This was the last time a third party was a legitimate threat to win a national election, with both Democrats and Republicans working together to make it nearly impossible for a third party to be a threat again.
• The Populists influenced the Democrats to become the party that supports government intervention in economics on behalf of the workers and the poor.
• The Republicans and Democrats made it difficult for a third party to be a legitimate threat - questions on if the country really has a fully democratic system if the outsiders can't run for office.
• Many Democrats question whether or not they even believe in the system; they continued to nominate William Jennings Bryan two more times.
• Because when William Jennings Bryan runs as the democrat can democrat candidate for president in 1896; His running mate for vice president was the president of a railroad company.
• So the railroad president is not who you would want to have to get behind as a Populace supporter. :The Democrats learn from the populists for support, but it seems more for survival.
• The Populist's belief that the government should set up a Federal Reserve System is what actually happened.
• Be very careful today when the people identify themselves as a populist; Both Democrats and Republicans have called themselves it even when they're not a populist.