Gilded Age Politics
- President Grant
- Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant wins the Presidency for the Republican party in 1868
- Temporary social and political revolution
- Black voters vote for Republican candidates
- Corruption during the Grant administration
- Crédit Mobilier affair
- VP and members of Congress involved in railroad stock scandal
- Whiskey Ring
- 1875
- Private secretary of Grant helped steal 3 million from the federal government in a tax corruption scheme
- Grantism
- Term used to describe corruption in politics
- The Ultimate Symbol of Gilded Age Political Corruption: Boss Tweed
- Local political corruption
- Tammany Hall
- Democratic party political machine
- Boss Tweed used bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to steal over $200 million from NY taxpayers
- Thomas Nast would expose this corruption to the masses
- Panic of 1873
- Severe economic collapse further distracts the nation from enforcing Reconstruction
- Causes
- Overproduction in industries such as factories, railroad, and mining
- Over speculation by bankers
- Too much money loaned out
- Hard times inflicted the worst effects of debtors
- Debtors advocate for relaxation of tight money policies
- Debate between “hard currency” vs. “greenbacks”
- Agrarian and debtor groups want “cheap money”
- Election of 1876
- Republican Rutherford Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden
- Political controversy as results in 3 southern states were contested
- Compromise of 1877
- South/democratic would recognize Hayes as President
- Hayes would pull federal troops out of the South and end Reconstruction
- Hayes to provide south political positions and federal aid for a transcontinental railroad for the South
- The Court Undermines Reconstruction
- Civil Rights Act of 1875: Protected Rights
- Made it a crime for any individual to deny full and equal use of public places
- Prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection
- Civil Rights Acts of 1883: Court Striking Down
- Supreme Court said 14th amendment only protected against government violation of civil rights
- Individuals can discriminate all the want
- Overturns the Civil Rights Act of 1875
- Jim Crow Laws spread throughout the South
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
- Racial segregation was constitution if equal facilities were made available to each race
- Idea of “New South” promoted
- South would rebuild
- Industrialize
- Develop their economy
- Agrarian sharecropping and tenant farming continued to dominate the region
- Life for African Americans in the Post Reconstruction South continued to be filled with many challenges
- Literacy Test
- Poll Taxes
- Property Requirements
- Grandfather Clause
- Exempted from electoral requirements to anyone who had voted in 1860
- Chinese Immigration
- Large increase in Asian immigration
- Especially from China
- Important during various mining booms and building of railroad
- Spike in nativism toward Asian immigrants in the west
- Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
- Prohibited further immigration of Chinese laborers
- First time immigration restrictions on basis of race and nationality
- Key Issues: Currency, Civil Service Reform, and Tariffs
- Patronage was used by both political parties
- Civil service jobs given to supporters
- Call for civil service reform
- Half-Breeds
- Advocated civil service reform
- Stalwarts
- Supporters of patronage
- By the 1800s the U.S. Treasury had a huge surplus from tariffs
- Gilded Age Presidential Politics
- 1876-1880: Rutherford B. Hayes
- Becomes President following Compromise of 1877
- Sends federal troops to break up Great Railroad strike
- 1880-1884: James Garfield
- Garfield is assassinated
- Chester A. Arthur throws support behind the Pendleton Act
- 1884-1888: Grover Cleveland
- Strong advocate of laissez-faire
- Signed into law Interstate Commerce Act
- 1888-1892: Benjamin Harrison
- Advocated for keeping the tariff high
- Billion-dollar Congress
- McKinley Tariff
- Civil War pensions
- 1892-1896: Grover Cleveland