APUSH Lecture 5E

(covers Ch. 19)

Ms. KraySome slides taken from Susan Pojer

• Weak federal government• Main jobs: postal service, maintain

military, foreign policy, and collect taxes & tariffs

• Very laissez-faire except for subsidies & pensions

• Extremely high voter turnout

• Well-defined voting blocks• Regional differences, religion, and

ethnicity shaped party loyalty much more than economic issues

• Strong party loyalty

DemocraticBloc

RepublicanBloc

White southerners (preservation of white supremacy)

Catholics

Recent immigrants (esp. Jews)

Urban working poor (pro-labor)

Most farmers

Northern whites (pro-business)

African Americans

Northern Protestants

Old WASPs (support for anti-immigrant laws)

Most of the middle class

• Primary job of the president was to dole out government jobs• 1865 35,000 jobs• 1890 160,000 jobs

• Party bosses ruled• Republican party split into two

factions: Half-Breeds and Stalwarts

• Hayes tried to restore honest government after Grant• Most significant act:

• Compromise of 1877• Temperance reformer

Half Breeds Stalwarts

Sen. James G. Blaine Sen. Roscoe Conkling (Maine) (New York)

James A. Garfield Chester A. Arthur (VP)

compromise

• Garfield wins but . . .

• He is assassinated by Charles Guiteau!• “I am a

Stalwart. . . Arthur is now President!”

Better president than people expected

Pendleton Act • Civil Service

Commission• Examinations

Questioned the high protective tariff

His reward . . .

Grover Cleveland (D) James G. Blaine (R)

Ma, Ma…where’s my pa?

He’s going to the White House, ha… ha… ha…!

• Mugwumps Bolt the Republican Party• When Blaine won the nomination, Liberal

Republicans nicknamed mugwumps, who favored civil service reform fled the party

• “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion!”• Protestant Minister Samuel Burchard made

this comment about the Democrat party while supporting Blaine in NYC

• Blaine was slow to repudiate this remark, it cost him the state of NY

• 1st Democrat elected president since 1856!• Former governor of NY

• Believed in laissez-faire• Opposed bills to assist

the poor and the rich• Even vetoed pension

bills!

• Tried to reduce tariff“A Public Office is a

Public Trust”

Business wanted to keep Farmers did not

• Raised price of consumer goods

• Other nations responded with tariffs of their own

• Business was growing rich at the expense of rural Am.

1885 tariffs earned the US $100 mil. in surplus!

Major issue in election of 1888!

Grover Cleveland Benjamin Harrison (DEM) * (REP)

• One of the closest elections in U.S. history

• First election since Civil War in which Republican and Democrats differed significantly on economic issues

• The Republican Harrison wins!!!

• Generally a passive president but was forced to deal with some of the new issues arising in the public arena

• Sherman Antitrust Act, 1890• Pushed by Southern and Western states that wanted

regulation of RR monopolies• Forbid “combinations in restraint of trade”• Poorly enforced at first used only against labor unions

• McKinley Tariff of 1890• Highest peacetime tariff in history• Public disliked it Republicans suffered heavy losses in

Election of 1892

• Cleveland defeated Harrison in Election of 1892.

• Cleveland took on few major initiatives, focused on tariff reform• Wilson-Gorman Tariff, 1894

• Despite limited nature of the federal government, public support was increasing for more substantial reforms