The "Bloody Shirt" Elects Grant

• Republicans nominated Grant for the presidency in 1868 with the Republican party supporting the continued Reconstruction of the South, while Grant stood on the platform of “just having peace”

• Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour

• Grant won the election of 1868

The Era of Good Stealings

• Jim Fisk and Jay Gould came up with a plot to drastically raise the price of the gold market in 1869 with them buying and hoarding a large amount of gold, driving up the price

• Treasury was forced to sell gold from its reserve to lower the high price of gold on “Black Friday,” September 24, 1869

• “Boss” Tweed employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to milk New York of about $200 million with Tweed eventually being put in prison

A Carnival of Corruption

• Members of the federal government also participated in illicit or unethical activity

• Credit Mobilier scandal came to be in 1872 when Union Pacific Railroad insiders formed the Credit Mobilier construction company and then hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad with it earning a lot of money

  • The Credit Mobilier construction company paid off members of Congress and the Vice President

The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872

• Liberal Republican Party was formed in 1872 in response to political corruption in Washington and dissatisfaction with military Reconstruction

  • The Liberal Republican Party met in Cincinnati and chose Greeley as their presidential candidate for the election of 1872

• The Democratic Party also nominated Greeley with the Republican Party continuing to support President Grant

• Grant won the election of 1872

• Liberal Republicans caused the Republican Congress to pass a general amnesty act in 1872 which removed political restrictions from most of the former Confederate leaders

• Congress also reduced high Civil War tariffs and gave mild civil-service reform to the Grant administration

Depression, Deflation, and Inflation

• Overspeculation was the primary cause of the panic of 1873

  • Banks gave too many imprudent loans to support overexpansion and when profits failed to materialize, people were unable to pay back their loans

• Mistrust of the government led to high inflation of the greenback

• The Resumption Act of 1875 required the government to continue to withdraw greenbacks from circulation and to redeem all paper currency in gold at face value, starting in 1879

• Coinage of silver dollars was stopped in 1873 by Congress, when silver miners started to stop selling their silver to the federal mints

  • Republican hard-money policy had negative political ramifications with it helping to elect a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874

Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age

• Throughout most of the Gilded Age, the political parties in government had balanced out and there were few significant economic issues that separated the Democrats and Republicans

• Republican voters tended to stress strict codes of personal morality and believed that the government should be involved in regulating the economic and moral affairs of society with this being located in the Midwest and Northeast

• Democrats were immigrant Lutherans and Roman Catholics who believed in toleration of differences in an imperfect world

  • They opposed the government imposing a single moral standard on the entire society

• Democrats were found in the South and in the northern industrial cities

• Both the Republican and Democratic parties supported patronage which was the principle of giving jobs to one’s political supporters

The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876

• Congress passed a resolution that limited the precedence to 2 terms after Grant considered running for a third term

• Republicans chose Rutherford B. Hayes as the presidential candidate for the election of 1876

• Democrats chose Samuel J. Tilden

  • Tilden won the popular vote in the election, with him being one vote shy of winning in the Electoral College (184-185)

• There was a dispute of 20 electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida with each state sending two ballot counts to Congress

• One of the ballot counts that was sent said that Republicans had won while the other said that the Democrats had won

  • There was a lot of controversy over which candidate should be awarded the disputed electoral votes

The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction

• Compromise of 1877 was passed by Congress with it containing the Electoral Count Act which set up an electoral commission that consisted of 15 men from the Senate, House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court

  • The commission ultimately gave the election to Hayes

• Democrats were outraged but agreed that Hayes could take office if he withdrew the federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina

• Republican Party abandoned its commitment to racial equality due to the Hayes-Tilden Deal

• Civl Rights Act of 1875 was supposed to gurantee equal accommodations in public places and prohibitied racial discrimination in jury selection

• Supreme Court ultimately ruled most of the Act to be unconstitutional with it stating that the 14th Amendment only prohibited government violations of civil rights, not the denial of civil rights by individuals

The Birth of Jim Crow in the Post-Reconstruction South

• White Democrats resumed political power in the South and began to enact laws discriminating against blacks after Reconstruction ended in South

  • Blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming

• Small farmers who rented land from plantation owners were kept in debt and forced to continue to work for the owners

• Eventually, state-level legal codes of segregation (Jim Crow Laws) were enacted

  • Southern states also enacted literacy requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll taxes to ensure that Southern blacks couldn’t vote

• The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the South’s segregation in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) which declared that “separate but equal” facilities for blacks were legal under the 14th Amendment

Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes

• Railroad workers went on strike after their wages were cut by President Hayes, following the panic of 1873

• The railroad workers’ strike failed and exposed the weakness of the labor movement

• Many immigrants came to the U.S. in hopes of finding riches, with many being dismayed when they found none which led to the immigrants either returning home or remaining in America and ending up facing extraordinary hardships

  • People on the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic troubles to the hated Chinese workers

  • Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which stopped Chinese immigration into America, to appease them

Garfield and Arthur

• James A. Garfield was chosen as the presidential candidate for the election of 1880 because Hayes was despised by his own Republican party

• Democrats chose the hero, Winfield Scott as their nominee

• Garfield won the election of 1880, but was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau at a Washington railroad station

• The expected implication of assassination was that after Aruthur took over as president, he would replace the Half-Breed Republican employees with Stalwarts

• Death of Garfield shocked politicians into reforming the spoils system

  • Reform was supported by President Arthur

• Pendleton Act of 1883 made mandatory campaign contributions from federal employees illegal and established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of merit

• Civil-service reform forced politicians to gain support and funds from big business leaders

The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of 1884

• Republicans chose James G. Blaine as their presidential candidate for the election of 1884

• Democrats chose Grover Cleveland as their nominee

• Cleveland won the election

"Old Grover" Takes Over

• Cleveland was the first Democrat to take over the presidency in 28 years

  • Cleveland replaced thousands of federal employees with Democrats

  • Believed that while people support the government, the government shouldn’t support the people

Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff

• Treasury was running a budget surplus due to revenue that was generated by the high tariff that was enacted during the Civil War

• Congress was convinced that lowering the tariff in 1887 would reduce the surplus while Republicans opposed lowering the tariff because they thought it would hurt businesses

• Republicans choose Benjamin Harrison as their presidential candidate for the 1888 election

  • Republicans made tariffs an issue for the election of 1888

• Cleveland won the popular vote but Harrison won the election

The Billion-Dollar Congress

• Republican Speaker of the  House, Thomas B. Reed, took control of the House and used intimidation to get Congress to pass several debated bills

• Billion-Dollar Congress gave pensions to Civil War veterans, increased government purchases on silver, and passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890

  • The McKinley Tariff Act caused the Republican Party to lose public support their majority in Congress in the congressional elections of 1890

The Drumbeat of Discontent

• People’s Party (“Populists”) was formed from frustrated farmers in the agricultural belts of the West and South

• The Populists called for a graduated income tax (government ownership of the railroads, telegraph, and telephone), direct election of U.S. senators, a one-term limit on the presidency, the adoption of the initiative and referendum to allow citizens to shape legislation directly, a shorter workday, and immigration restriction

• Populists nominated General James B. Weaver for the presidential election of 1892

• A series of violent worker strikes swept through the nation, including the Homestead Strike in 1892

• Populist Party didn’t win the election and one of the main reasons they didn’t win was that the party supported the black community

Cleveland and Depression

• Cleveland ran for president in the election of 1892 and won, beating the Populist and Republican Party

• Panic of 1893 was the U.S.’s worst economic depression in the 1800s with it being caused by overbuilding, overspeculation, and the agricultural depression

• Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 was created by Benjamin Harrison with it forcing the government to purchase a certain amount of silver every month

  • Indebted farmers pushed for the Sherman Silver Purchase Act because they wanted to cause inflation to pay off their debts with cheaper money

  • An increase in silver production led to a significant drain on the Treasury’s gold reserves, which decreased confidence the country’s finances with this causing Cleveland to repeal the Sherman Silver Act Purchase in 1893

• J.P. Morgan lent government $65 million in gold to increase Treasury's reserve

Cleveland Breeds a Backlash

• Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894 lowered tariffs and added a 2% tax on incomes over $4,000

  • Supreme Court ruled income taxes unconstitutional in 1895

• Embarrassment over the Wilson-Gorman Tariff caused the Democrats to lose seats in Congress, giving Republicans a majority in Congress

• Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Cleveland were known as the “forgettable presidents”