The "Bloody Shirt" Elects Grant

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The "Bloody Shirt" Elects Grant

• The Republicans nominated General Grant for the
  presidency in 1868.  The Republican Party
  supported the continuation of the Reconstruction
  of the South, while Grant stood on the platform
  of "just having peace."
• The Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour.
• Grant won the election of 1868.

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The Era of Good Stealings

• Jim Fisk and Jay Gould devised a plot to
  drastically raise the price of the gold market in
  1869.  On "Black Friday," September 24, 1869, the
  two bought a large amount of gold, planning to
  sell it for a profit.  In order to lower the high
  price of gold, the Treasury was forced to sell
  gold from its reserves.

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Era of Good Stealings

• "Boss" Tweed employed bribery, graft, and
  fraudulent elections to milk New York of as much
  as 200 million.  (Tweed Ring)  Tweed was
  eventually put into prison.

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A Carnival of Corruption

• In addition to members of the general public
  being corrupt, members of the federal government
  also participated in unethical actions.

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A Carnival of Corruption

• The Credit Mobilier scandal erupted in 1872 when
  Union Pacific Railroad insiders formed the Credit
  Mobilier construction company and then hired
  themselves at inflated prices to build the
  railroad line, earning high dividends.  When it
  was found out that government officials were paid
  stay quiet about the illicit business, some
  officials were censured.

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The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872

• In response to disgust of the political
  corruption in Washington and of military
  Reconstruction, the Liberal Republican Party was
  formed in 1872.
• The Liberal Republican Party met in Cincinnati
  and chose Horace Greeley as their presidential
  candidate for the election of 1872.

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The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872

• The Democratic Party also chose Greeley as their
  candidate.  The Republican Party continued to put
  its support behind President Grant.  Grant won
  the election of 1872.

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The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872

• The Liberal Republicans caused the Republican
  Congress to pass a general amnesty act in 1872
  removing political disabilities from most of the
  former Confederate leaders.  Congress also
  reduced high Civil War tariffs and gave mild
  civil-service reform to the Grant administration.

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Depression, Deflation, and Inflation

• Over-speculating was the primary cause to the
  panic of 1873 too much expansion had taken
  place.  Too many people had taken out loans of
  which they were unable to pay back due to lack of
  profit from where they had invested their money.

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• Due to popular mistrust of illegitimate dealings
  in the government, inflation soon depreciated the
  value of the greenback. Supported by advocates of
  hard money (coin money), 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
  beginning in 1879.

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• The coinage of silver dollars was stopped by
  Congress in 1873 when silver miners began to stop
  selling their silver to the federal mints -
  miners could receive more money for the silver
  elsewhere.

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• The Treasury began to accumulate gold stocks
  against the appointed day for the continuation of
  metallic money payments.  This policy, along with
  the reduction of greenbacks, was known as
  "contraction." 

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• When the Redemption Day came in 1879 for holders
  of greenbacks to redeem the greenbacks for gold,
  few did the greenback's value had actually
  increased due to its reduction in circulation.

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• The Republican hard-money policy had a political
  backlash and helped to elect a Democratic House
  of Representatives in 1874.

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Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age

• Throughout most of the Gilded Age (a name given
  to the 30 years after the Civil War era by Mark
  Twain) the political parties in government had
  balanced out.
• Few significant economic issues separated the
  Democrats and the Republicans. 

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• Republican voters tended to stress strict codes
  of personal morality and believed that the
  government should play a role in regulating the
  economic and the moral affairs of society. 

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• They were found in the Midwest and Northeast. 
  Many Republican votes came from the Grand Army of
  the Republic, a politically active fraternal
  organization of many Union veterans of the Civil
  War.

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• Democrats were immigrant Lutherans and Roman
  Catholics who believed in toleration of
  differences in an imperfect world.  They also
  opposed the government imposing a single moral
  standard on the entire society.  Democrats were
  found in the South and in the northern industrial
  cities.

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• A "Stalwart" faction led by Roscoe Conkling
  supported the system of swapping civil-servant
  jobs for votes.  (Giving someone a job if they
  vote for a specific party/cause.  "Spoils
  system")

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• Opposed to the Stalwarts were the Half-Breeds,
  led by James G. Blaine.  The main disagreement
  between the two groups was over who would give
  the jobs to the people who voted in their favor.

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The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876

• Congress passed a resolution that reminded the
  country, and Grant, of the two-term tradition for
  presidency after Grant was speculating about
  running for a 3rd term.

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• The Republicans chose Rutherford B. Hayes as
  their presidential candidate for the election of
  1876. 
• The Democrats chose Samuel J. Tilden.
• In the election, Tilden won the popular vote, but
  was 1 vote shy from winning in the Electoral
  College. 

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• The determining electoral votes would come from
  three states, Louisiana, South Carolina, and
  Florida who had each sent two sets of ballots to
  Congress, one with the Democrats victorious and
  the other with the Republicans victorious there
  was no winner in these states.

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• It was necessary to find the true political party
  winner of the states, although it was unknown who
  would judge the winner of the states because the
  president of the Senate was a Republican and the
  Speaker of the House was a Democrat.

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The Compromise of 1877 and the End of
Reconstruction

• The Electoral Count Act (Compromise of 1877),
  passed by Congress in 1877, set up an electoral
  commission consisting of 15 men selected from the
  Senate, the House of Representatives, and the
  Supreme Court.  It was made to determine which
  party would win the election

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• The committee finally determined, without opening
  the ballots from the 3 disputed states, that the
  Republicans had been victorious in the disputed
  ballots from the three states, giving the
  Republicans the presidency.

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• The Democrats were outraged at the outcome, but
  agreed that Republican Hayes could take office if
  he withdrew the federal troops from Louisiana and
  South Carolina.
• With the Hayes-Tilden deal, the Republican Party
  abandoned its commitment to racial equality.

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• The Civil Rights Act of 1875 supposedly
  guaranteed equal accommodations in public places
  and prohibited racial discrimination in jury
  selection.  The Supreme Court ended up ruling
  most of the Act unconstitutional, declaring that
  the 14th Amendment only prohibited government
  violations of civil rights, not the denial of
  civil rights by individuals.

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The Birth of Jim Crow in the Post-Reconstruction
South

• As Reconstruction had ended in the South, white
  Democrats resumed their political power in the
  South and began to exercise their discrimination
  upon blacks.
• Blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant
  farming.  Through the "crop-lien" system, small
  farmers who rented out land from the plantation
  owners were kept in perpetual debt and forced to
  continue to work for the owners

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• Eventually, state-level legal codes of
  segregation known as Jim Crow laws were enacted. 
  The Southern states also enacted literacy
  requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll
  taxes to ensure the denial of voting for the
  South's black population.
• The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the South's
  segregation in the case of Plessy vs.  Ferguson
  (1896), declaring that separate but equal
  facilities for blacks were legal under the 14th
  Amendment.

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Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes

• Following the panic of 1873 and the resulting
  depression, railroad workers went on strike after
  their wages were cut by President Hayes.  The
  strike failed, exposing the weakness of the labor
  movement.
• Masses of immigrants came to United States in
  hopes of finding riches, but many were dismayed
  when they found none.  They either returned home
  or remained in America and faced extraordinary
  hardships.
• People of the West Coast attributed declining
  wages and economic troubles to the hated Chinese
  workers.  To appease them, Congress passed the
  Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, halting Chinese
  immigration into America.

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Garfield and Arthur

• Because President Hayes was despised by his own
  Republican Party, James A. Garfield was chosen as
  the presidential candidate for the election of
  1880.  His vice-president was Chester A. Arthur,
  a former Stalwart.  The Democrats chose Civil War
  hero, Winfield Scott. 

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• Garfield won the election of 1880, but was
  assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau at a
  Washington railroad station.  Guiteau, claiming
  to be a Stalwart, shot the president claiming
  that the Conklingites would now get all the good
  jobs now that Chester Arthur was President.

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• The death of Garfield shocked politicians into
  reforming the spoils system.  The reform was
  supported by President Arthur, shocking his
  critics.  The Pendleton Act of 1883 made campaign
  contributions from federal employees illegal, and
  it established the Civil Service Commission to
  make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of
  competitive examination.  It was basically made
  to stop political corruption.  The civil-service
  reform forced politicians to gain support and
  funds from big-business leaders.

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The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of 1884

• The Republicans chose James G. Blaine as their
  presidential candidate for the election of 1884. 
  The Democrats chose Grover Cleveland.  Grover
  Cleveland was a very honest and admirable man. 
  Cleveland won the election of 1884.
•  

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"Old Grover" Takes Over

• Questions were raised about whether Cleveland and
  the Democratic Party, "the party of disunion,"
  could be trusted to govern the Union.
• Cleveland replaced thousands of federal employees
  with Democrats.
• Cleveland summed up his political philosophy when
  he vetoed a bill in 1887 to provide seeds for
  drought-ravaged Texas farmers, stating that the
  government should not support the people.
• The Grand Army of the Republic lobbied hundreds
  of unreasonable military pension bills through
  Congress, but Cleveland vetoed many of the bills.

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Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff

• The growing surplus of money in the Treasury
  coming from the high tariff, which was made to
  raise revenues for the military during the Civil
  War, caused President Cleveland to propose
  lowering of the tariff in order to bring lower
  prices to consumers. 
• The lower tariff, introduced to Congress in 1887
  and supported by Cleveland, tremendously hurt the
  nation's factories and the overall economy. 
  Cleveland lost support because of the tariff.

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• The Republicans chose Benjamin Harrison as their
  presidential candidate for the 1888 election. 
  During the election, the first major issue
  between the two parties had arisen  tariffs. 
  Cleveland won the popular vote, but Harrison
  still won the election.

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The Billion-Dollar Congress

• The Billion-Dollar Congress, named for its lavish
  spendings, gave pensions to Civil War veterans,
  increased government purchases on silver, and
  passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890. 

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• The McKinley Tariff Act raised tariffs yet again
  and brought more troubles to farmers.  Farmers
  were forced to buy expensive products from
  American manufacturers while selling their own
  products into the highly competitive world
  markets.

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• The Tariff Act caused the Republican Party to
  lose public support and become discredited.  In
  the congressional elections of 1890, the
  Republicans lost their majority in Congress.

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The Drumbeat of Discontent

• The People's Party, or "Populists," formed from
  frustrated farmers in the agricultural belts of
  the West and South. 

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• The Populists demanded inflation through free and
  unlimited coinage of silver.  They also called
  for a graduated income tax government ownership
  of the railroads, telegraph, and telephone the
  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 more directly a shorter
  workday and immigration restriction.

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• The Populists nominated General James B. Weaver
• fell far short of winning the election
• Populist Party counted on many blacks votes from
  the South.  Unfortunately, many Southern blacks
  were denied the right to vote due to literacy
  tests.  The Southern whites voted against the
  party due the party's equal rights views toward
  blacks.

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Cleveland and Depression

• Grover Cleveland again ran for the presidency in
  the election of 1892 and won, beating out the
  divided Populist Party and the discredited
  Republican Party.

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• panic of 1893 -caused by overbuilding and
  over-speculation, labor disorders, and the
  ongoing agricultural depression.
• The Treasury was required to issue legal tender
  notes for the silver bullion that it had
  purchased.  Owners of the paper currency would
  then present it for gold, and by law the notes
  had to be reissued.  This process depleted the
  gold reserve in the Treasury to less than 100
  million. 

The Treasury w
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• Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890- increase the
  amount of silver in circulation
• The drastic rise in silver caused the American
  people to believe that the less expensive silver
  was going to replace gold as the main form of
  currency. 
• people therefore began to withdraw their assets
  in gold, depleting the Treasury's gold supply. 
  Cleveland was forced to repeal the Sherman Silver
  Act Purchase in 1893.

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Cleveland Breeds a Backlash

• The Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894 lowered tariffs
  and contained a 2 tax on incomes over 4,000. 
  The Supreme Court ruled income taxes
  unconstitutional in 1895.
• The Wilson-Gorman Tariff caused the Democrats to
  lose positions in Congress, giving the
  Republicans an advantage.
• Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and
  Cleveland were known as the "forgettable
  presidents."