Political Realignment

The monopolists influenced the senators

  • the people had no voice, very corrupt

    • same claim was made by Grover Cleveland

joseph kepler was a political cartoon artist

Nabobs

  • are rich, but were also poor immigrants at one point

    • didn’t want new immigrants, even though they had been in that position at that point

gilded age

  • the coating of the glamor of the age didn’t go very deep

  • how the other half lives

US military shrank during this time, soldiers disorganized

  • only 25k officers in the west

  • navy almost nonexistent

American Expansionism

  • becoming more international

    • led to military being built back up again

1890s

  • american politics very slow during this time

  • got rid of spoils system

    • any citizen can do any job, no specialised knowledge

      • can fire people and clean the house to hire your own people

      • gave them leverage by saying vote for me if you want this job, or I only hire people I’m close with who I monetarily benefit from, or give family members of yourself or friends jobs

      • didn’t wokr anymore bc the government got much much bigger and needed people who were specialized bc needs and issues were much more complex and gov more sophisticated

      • institutional memory

    • pendleton act of 1883

      • jobs classified, needed specialized people couldn’t be fired for political reasons

  • reciprocal tarrifs

  • conservation

rutherford B Hayes

  • bought votes

  • Samuel Tilden was opponent

  • won bc he said he would remove troops from the South

    • however supported civil rights and advocated for the Native Americans

  • currency reform (and control)

    • free coinage of silver

cleveland (D)

  • noninterventionist policies

two parties in stalemate

democrat

  • gov small in function and responsibility (jefferson)

  • in south and urban North

  • states rights, limited gov, free trade

  • urban poor and immigrants, white southerners

republican

  • education

  • help people become stable citizens

  • north and west

  • federal activism: spur economic growth, tariffs, divil rights

  • most old stock protestants and black people

both:

  • supported business and condemned radicalism

  • neither friendly to workers or farmers

Political rallies were a form of entertainment

  • womans sufferage was mostly white

disenfranchisement of AA after 1876

ways to get around 15th amendment:

  • poll tax

  • literacy tests

  • understanding tests

  • grandfather clause

  • coercion

  • white primary

    • only certain race in a party can vote

  • gerrymandering

    • Eldridge Gerry

      • redo district to help him win

    • just disenfranchises diffferent groups of people

Congress

  • congressional committees gained more and more power

  • each sector has a committee

    • need at least one to support it to get passed (needs more than that, but this is the power they have)

  • majority party has the most committee people

The rise of discontent

  • prices determined by market forces

    • products were al the same so there was no use in changing the prices, up or down, such as farmers and their wheat during this time, harvested at the same time, etc.

    • farmers were discontent due to this

      • heavy debt to survive growing season

    • high tarriffs

      • goods farmers needed were high enough to make profits bad

    • senators were elected unfairly, didn’t support them

    • loss of status: treated like dumb people

      • “country bumpkins”, made them upset

the gold standard