Chap 20 Politics and Government

Ch 20 Politics & Government 1877-1900 1

Chapter 20Politics and Government

1877-1900

Vernon Maddux 29 July 2, 1881 Charles J. Guiteau shoots Pres. James A. Garfield in Washington D.C


Partisan Politics1868–1912. The Republicans win the presidency every year except 1884 and 1892 (Grover Cleveland). The vote was always very close. Twice (1876-Tilden –1888 Cleveland) the defeated Democratic candidate won a majority of the popular vote. The House and Senate become equally divided. Both parties suffer unexpected defeats. Each side develops the fear of making a political error that would send the country hard over to the other side. Ironically, this period of timidity and political gridlock is the most intense period of political participation by the average voter in American history.

Samuel J. Tilden 1814-1886


Specie (coins) What is the Money Policy?Should money be tied to precious metals?Should money be tied to precious metals?This question plagued American politics for 30 years (1865-1895) as 1500 private banks printed their own paper money leading to chaos and corruption. If pegged to precious metals, how can the county develop its money supply to keeps it adequate for a growing and diverse economy? Should money be paper like Greenbacks? … or strictly Silver or Gold coins? In 1876 the Greenback political party was formed and ran a candidate for president.People feared paper money because of worthless private bank printings plus the well-known disaster of Confederate money (most assumed Confederate money failed from overprinting – not true however).


Rutherford Birchard Hayes 19th President 1877-1881

1877. Elected in hotly disputed election resulting in compromise.1862-65. Hayes led the 24th

Ohio regiment at Antietam future president Sgt. Wm McKinley in same regiment. He and his wife banished alcohol from all state White House dinners.His college-educated wife supported WCTU and was called “Lemonade Lucy” by the press.

R.B. Hayes 1822-1893


Do-Nothing Congress takes ControlThe presidents after Lincoln until Theodore Roosevelt seem weak and indecisive and Congress dominated government as never before or since.

Johnson”s impeachment; Grant’s scandals; Hayes’ disputed 1876 election weakened the executive office further. Garfield was killed in his first year. Cleveland was lazy and distracted.

Congress squabbled constantly internally.As a result, very little important legislation was passed between 1877-1900.


The American “golden age”gleamed like gold but falsely.

The Gilded Age CongressBetween 1877-1900 Congress’s undisciplined domination of government caused it to ignore national concerns and focus on regional issues. Senators, like Roscoe C. Conkling continually fought to gain more power.Small businessmen and farmers became universally disgusted by the scandal of national politics.Big business, however, loved it. This is the peak of trueLaissez Faire Capitalism.

Senator Conkling spoon feeding his “boy,” Vice-

President Chester A. Arthur


James A. Garfield 20th President 1881

1881. After holding office for only five months, Garfield was assassinated by an office seeker he had turned down for a job. In the aftermath, most observers were horrified that New York Senator R.C. Conkling’s man, Vice-President Chester A. Arthur actually become the new president.

1831-1881


The Problem with the Spoils System A failed job request was motivation for Garfield’s murder but

the system also led to corruption and waste.

Andrew Jackson was first to openly reward his followers with jobs in Washington DC and elsewhere: cabinet posts; Indian agents; customs officials; ambassadors; post office employees; federal marshals, surveyors, not to mention thousands of secretaries, clerks and functionaries in government. After Jackson, all newly-elected presidents were expected to personally fill each job with a loyal party member who had supported him. This ordeal usually took six full months out of the presidents’ term of office.

The line of office seekers often stretched around the block from

the White House


Meanwhile Specie: Silver or Gold coins or both?

Bank issued-private paper money often created inflation or bank failure. The majority of 19th century citizens hated paper money and demanded money be based on something-either gold or silver. President Cleveland was obsessed with a gold standard. This created an equally obsessed position among the Republicans for silver. Silver and gold mine owners poured funds into the debate and the real issues were buried under a mountain of absurd charges and countercharges.


21st President 1881-1885

Chester A. ArthurArthur was the son of a Baptist preacher from upstate New York. He won advancement as the henchman of congressman Roscoe C. Conkling, the corrupt boss of New York politics.Once in office, however, Arthur spurned Conkling and proved surprisingly honest and efficient, but to no avail.

1830-1886


Arthur’s Unfortunate LegacyFlawed Candidates lead to Third Party Politics

In 1884 Republicans ignored Arthur and nominated an equally hollow and dishonest lawyer, James G. Blaine.

Blaine’s greatest assets were long speeches and a knack for remembering names and faces. American farmers turned away from Washington’s politics in disgust.

Almost unnoticed in the national capitol, rural people from Texas to Nebraska formed a Third National Political party called the Populists.

James G. Blaine

1830-1893


Democrat Grover Cleveland events

1884. elected 22nd President.1892. elected 24th President.1893. Terrible economic depression begins for which he is blamed.1894. Coxey’s “Army” becomse the first protest march on Washington D.C.1894. The Pullman strike turns bloody.

1895. Supreme Court rules on Pollock vs. Farmers (a federal income tax is ruled unconstitutional).

1837-1908


“Mugwumps”Magazine editor E.L. Godkin led Republican reformers who backed Democrat Cleveland instead of the Republican Blaine.Traditional Republicans called Godkina “Mugwump” which is Algonquian for renegade chief.1884. Reporters discovered that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child. At Cleveland rallies, Blaine’s supporters chanted. ““Ma Ma, whereMa Ma, where’’s s my Pa?my Pa?””Eventually Democrats answered ““HeHe’’s s in the White House, HA, HA, HA.in the White House, HA, HA, HA.””

E.L. Godkin

1831-1902


Capitalism & ClevelandCorpulent and lazy, Cleveland adapted a do-nothing role in the executive office and strongly backed laissez faire economics, the rallying cry of business elites.Cleveland was totally indifferent to the plight of average citizens, believing that the federal government should never interfere in a state's business.

1887. Cleveland vetoed a bill to give free planting seeds to drought-stricken, devastated, Texas farmers.

Grover Cleveland 1837-1908


Mark Twain on the Gilded AgeThe writer of Huckleberry Finn exposed a

need for Federal Regulations on interstate business.1880. Twain described the era of industrialization as a “Gilded Age,” a false image of gleaming gold with a dirty underside.1887. Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Food and Drug Administration. 1901. Twain’s ally Frank Norris wrote The Octopus, calling railroads “a gigantic parasite fattening upon the lifeblood of an entire commonwealth”

Samuel Clements 1835-1910


William Jennings Bryan1896. Cross of GoldSpeech. 1896, 1900, 1908, he was the Democratic presidential nominee three times.1912. He was Secretary of State for Woodrow Wilson.1925. He prosecuted in the “Monkey” Trial.1860-1925


Election of 1888Big Business & GOP unite to defeat Cleveland

Cleveland won a 2nd consecutive Democratic nomination, but ran into a grimly determined Republican opposition viewing him as a traitor to the Union and a public menace.

Benjamin Harrison 23rd President, corporate lawyer and former senator, was cold-natured but unblemished. His handlers developed a plan to keep him away from the public. After he spoke, Harrison was whisked away before any one could talk to him. Harrison promised only to have the mint make more silver coins.Harrison 1833-1901 and

his vice president, Levi Morton


(Turmoil in Rural America) Farmers Organize1880. New methods and machines introduced during the industrial age required heavy initial investment. For the first time a growing majority of farmers were going into debt to banks, the title of their farm now at risk.

Farmers found they were not alone in hating the federal government’s actions.1870-1900. Southern crop lien system trapped thousands, keeping farmers heavily in debt.

1880-1900. Nearly 15% of the South’s farmers lost their farms and/or were forced into sharecropping.

1890 Steam power arrives on the farm


“In God We Trusted, in Kansas we busted”1886-1890. Kansas lost 50% of its western citizens to drought and economic depression. 1890. The Farmer’s Alliance, angered by the lack of concern by the “Billion Dollar Congress,”took political control of the Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota and Kansas legislatures.

Demanding government help the Alliance elected 3 senators and 53 legislators to Washington D.C.

1892 Aug. Alliance leaders urged all farmers, black or white, to join The People’s Party of the United States. The press called them

Populists.

Settlers on the Kansas and Oklahoma Frontiers

c 1900


African-American Politics after Reconstruction

1880-1900. Southern white “redeemers”took power away from black voters.

Disfranchisement was ruthlessly pursued and black voters were either kept away from polls or forced to vote Democratic.

1890. Mississippi amended its state constitution to exclude African-Americans from voting.

When no national outcry occurred, all other southern states instituted literacy tests, poll taxes and property taxes. A “grandfather clause” exempted all white voters from these liabilities if their grandfathers voted in 1860.

Black politicians numbers dwindled in national politics until 1898 when North Carolina elected the last African American to the House until one from Chicago in 1920.

1920 Mississippi. Segregated

Drinking facilities


Civil Rights 1883-18961873. Supreme Court ruled in Slaughterhouse that the 14th

Amendment protected citizens only from federal, not state discrimination.

Slaughterhouse gave private citizens and state governments free license to discriminate as they chose.

1883. Supreme Court voids the Civil Rights Act of 1875, arguing the act unduly protected African-Americans compared to other citizens.1896. Plessy vs. Ferguson established segregation as the law of the land, with the only caveat that separate but equal facilities be established, not overturned until 1954 Brown v. Board of

Education.


Black Flight

1898. The Supreme court upheld Mississippi's constitution which contained blatant discrimination.Large groups of Southern African-Americans gave up their homes and headed north. Travel was practically the only freedom left to them.

1879-1898. 10,000 people left Mississippi-Alabama for Chicago and thousands more moved to NYC, or Kansas and Indian Territory to claim homesteads (Lincoln Co.).

In big cities like Chicago African-Americans found the same prejudice as in the South. They crowded together in low-rent districts for protection on the Southside.

Studies show they suffered practically the same stages of evolution that the Irish experienced at Five Points in New York City (dire poverty, lower class struggles, middle class power).

Members of the Chicago

ViceLords, 1980s


Depression of 1893-97Factory unemployment rose to 25 %. Laid-off workers traveled from city to city seeking work.Unusually harsh winters in 1893 and 1894 magnified the disaster. 1896. Poor families in NYC inner-city slums starved/ froze to death.

1896. As if on cue to flaunt the poor, Bradley Martin threw a lavish costume ball in NYC and encouraged his guests to dress extravagantly. Some of the women’s costumes cost more than $10,000.


April 25 1894 Coxey’s ArmyJacob S. Coxey was a Populist who demanded the government institute a public works program funded with unsecured paper money (foreshadowing

FDR’s CCC).

He led thousands of unemployed workers, “Coxey’s Army,” in the first national protest march on Washington D.C.

Coxey and his son, "Legal Coxey and his son, "Legal Tender" from magazine Tender" from magazine Cause and CureCause and Cure, Dec 1897., Dec 1897.


1894 Pullman StrikeNear Chicago, Pullman built a

model town for his workers and provided “all comforts.”

When the company lost money, Pullman lowered wages and raised rents.

Debs led a union walkout that shut down nearly all American railroads.

A riot followed and Federal marshals killed two strikers and arrested and jailed Debs, a leading socialist.

Eugene V. Debs

1855-1926


William McKinley 25th President 1897-1901

Elected in a landslide over Cleveland, McKinley ended the bank panic and led the nation to victory in the Spanish–American War.Elected again in 1900, he was assassinated by an European-born anarchist in first months of his second term.

William McKinley 1841-1901


“Remember the Maine”1898, Feb. 15. USS Maine blows up in Havana HarborApril 20. President McKinley signs war resolution. May 1. Battle of Manila BayJuly 1. Battle of San Juan Hill, TR, Rough Riders in the attack - 1500 casualties.July 3. Spanish Fleet is destroyed fleeing Santiago harbor. War ends with the occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Battleship USS Maine lies at the bottom of

Havana Harbor


Spanish-American WarMay-July 1898US Navy takes the Philippines and Guam The Army takes Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Although the U.S. had no forces ready, nor had ever planned a sea invasion, fighting lasted only three months. The army feared a long campaign in hot, disease- filled Cuba; Puerto Rico gave up without a fight.

American Volunteers quickly defeated the demoralized regular Spanish forces holding the port of Santiago de Cuba (Battle of San Juan Hill).

The Navy destroyed both of Spain’s warfleets(Battle of Manila Bay & Santiago Breakout).

Suddenly the U.S. had a world-wide empire.


Sept 2, 1901

Newspaper Article on

McKinley’s Assassination

Chap 20 Politics and Government

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Transcript of Chap 20 Politics and Government