Forging an Industrial Society (1865-1909) PDF

Part Four Forging an Industrial Society 1865–1909 A nation of farmers fought the Civil War in the 1860s. By the time the...

Part Four Forging an Industrial Society 1865–1909 A nation of farmers fought the Civil War in the 1860s. By the time the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, America was an industrial nation. For These sweeping changes challenged the spirit of individualism that Americans had celebrated since the seventeenth century. Even on the west- generations Americans had plunged into the wil- ern frontier, that historic bastion of rugged loners, derness and plowed their fields. Now they settled the hand of government was increasingly felt, as in cities and toiled large armies were dis- in factories. Between patched to subdue the Civil War and the the Plains Indians century’s end, eco- and federal authority nomic and techno- was invoked to regu- logical change came late the use of natural so swiftly and mas- resources. The rise of sively that it seemed to powerful monopolies many Americans that called into question a whole new civiliza- the government’s tra- tion had emerged. ditional hands-off pol- In some ways it icy toward business, had. The sheer scale and a growing band of of the new industrial reformers increasingly society was dazzling. Transcontinental railroads knit clamored for government regulation of private enter- the country together from sea to sea. New indus- prise. The mushrooming cities, with their need for tries like oil and steel grew to staggering size—and transport systems, schools, hospitals, sanitation, and made megamillionaires out of entrepreneurs like fire and police protection, required bigger govern- oilman John D. Rockefeller and steel maker Andrew ments and budgets than an earlier generation could Carnegie. have imagined. As never before, Americans struggled Drawn by the allure of industrial employment, to adapt old ideals of private autonomy to the new Americans moved to the city, much like their coun- realities of industrial civilization. terparts in industrializing Europe, Russia, and Japan. With economic change came social and political In 1860 only about 20 percent of the population turmoil. Labor violence brought bloodshed to places were city dwellers. By 1900 that proportion doubled, such as Chicago and Homestead, Pennsylvania. as rural Americans and European immigrants alike Small farmers, squeezed by debt and foreign com- flocked to mill town and metropolis in search of petition, rallied behind the People’s, or “Populist,” steady jobs. party, a radical movement of the 1880s and 1890s Factory Workers, with Railroad Spikes, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1898 Immigrant and native-born workers alike bent their backs to build industrial America. William B. Becker Collection/American Museum of Photography 486 Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  that attacked the power of Wall Street, big business, post-emancipation era inflicted new forms of racial and the banks. Anti-immigrant sentiment swelled. injustice on African Americans, the vast majority Bitter disputes over tariffs and monetary policy of whom continued to live in the Old South. State deeply divided the country, setting debtors against legislatures systematically deprived black Americans lenders, farmers against manufacturers, the West of their political rights, including the right to vote. and South against the Northeast. And in this unfa- Segregation of schools, housing, and all kinds of miliar era of big money and expanding government, public facilities made a mockery of African Ameri- corruption flourished, from town hall to Congress, cans’ Reconstruction-era hopes for equality before fueling loud cries for political reform. the law. The bloodiest conflict of all pitted Plains Indians The new wealth and power of industrial Amer- against the relentless push of westward expansion. ica nurtured a growing sense of national self- As railroads drove their iron arrows through the confidence. Literature flowered, and a golden age of heart of the West, the Indians lost their land and life- philanthropy dawned. The reform spirit spread. So sustaining buffalo herds. By the 1890s, after three did a restless appetite for overseas expansion. In a decades of fierce fighting with the U.S. Army, the brief war against Spain in 1898, the United States, Indians who had once roamed across the vast rolling born in a revolutionary war of independence and prairies were struggling to preserve their shattered long the champion of national self-determination, cultures within the confinement of reservations. seized control of the Philippines and itself became The South remained the one region largely an imperial power. Uncle Sam’s venture into empire untouched by the Industrial Revolution sweeping touched off a bitter national debate about America’s the rest of America. A few sleepy southern hamlets role in the world and ushered in a long period of did become boomtowns, but for the most part, the argument over the responsibilities, at home as well South’s rural way of life remained unperturbed. The as abroad, of a modern industrial state. Curt Teich Postcard Archives, Lake County Museum Dearborn Street, Chicago Loop, Around 1900 ”America is energetic, but Chicago is in a fever,” marveled a visiting Englishman about turn-of-the-century Chicago. Street scenes like this were common in America’s booming new cities, especially in the “Lord of the Midwest.” Forging an Industrial Society 487 Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age r 1869–1896 Grant... had no right to exist. He should have been extinct for ages.... That, two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called—and should actually and truly be—the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous.... The progress of evolution, from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.... Grant... should have lived in a cave and worn skins. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907 T he population of the post–Civil War Repub- lic continued to vault upward by vigorous leaps, despite the awful bloodletting in both Union and Con- federate ranks. Census takers reported over 39 million president. Stubbly-bearded General Grant was by far the most popular northern hero to emerge from the war. Grateful citizens of Philadelphia, Washington, and his hometown of Galena, Illinois, passed the hat and people in 1870, a gain of 26.6 percent over the preced- in each place presented him with a house. New York- ing decade, as the immigrant tide surged again. The ers tendered him a check for $105,000. The general, United States was now the third-largest nation in the silently puffing on his cigar, unapologetically accepted Western world, ranking behind Russia and France. these gifts as his just deserts for having rescued the But the civic health of the United States did not Union. keep pace with its physical growth. The Civil War and Grant was a hapless greenhorn in the political its aftermath spawned waste, extravagance, specula- arena. His one presidential vote had been cast for the tion, and graft. Disillusionment ran deep among ide- Democratic ticket in 1856. A better judge of horse- alistic Americans in the postwar era. They had spilled flesh than of humans, his cultural background was their blood for the Union, emancipation, and Abraham breathtakingly narrow. He once reportedly remarked Lincoln, who had promised “a new birth of freedom.” that Venice (Italy) would be a fine city if only it were Instead they got a bitter dose of corruption and politi- drained. cal stalemate—beginning with Ulysses S. Grant, a great The Republicans, freed from the Union party coali- soldier but an utterly inept politician. tion of war days, enthusiastically nominated Grant for the presidency in 1868. The party’s platform sounded a clarion call for continued Reconstruction of the South The “Bloody Shirt” Elects Grant under the glinting steel of federal bayonets. Yet Grant, always a man of few words, struck a highly popular Wrangling between Congress and President Andrew note in his letter of acceptance when he said, “Let us Johnson had soured the people on professional politi- have peace.” This noble sentiment became a leading cians in the Reconstruction era, and the notion still campaign slogan and was later engraved on his tomb prevailed that a good general would make a good beside the Hudson River. 488 Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  The Stain of Corruption 489 Expectant Democrats, meeting in their own nomi- their power up for hire. Cynics defined an honest poli- nating convention, denounced military Reconstruction tician as one who, when bought, would stay bought. but could agree on little else. Wealthy eastern delegates Notorious in the financial world were two million- demanded a plank promising that federal war bonds aire partners, “Jubilee Jim” Fisk and Jay Gould. The be redeemed in gold—even though many of the bonds corpulent and unscrupulous Fisk provided the “brass,” had been purchased with badly depreciated paper while the undersized and cunning Gould provided the greenbacks. Poorer midwestern delegates answered brains. The crafty pair concocted a plot in 1869 to cor- with the “Ohio Idea,” which called for redemption in ner the gold market. Their slippery game would work greenbacks. Debt-burdened agrarian Democrats thus only if the federal Treasury refrained from selling gold. hoped to keep more money in circulation and keep The conspirators worked on President Grant directly interest rates lower. This dispute introduced a bitter and also through his brother-in-law, who received contest over monetary policy that continued to con- $25,000 for his complicity. For weeks Fisk and Gould vulse the Republic until the century’s end. Midwestern delegates got the platform but not the candidate. The nominee, former New York governor In a famous series of newspaper interviews in 1905, Horatio Seymour, scuttled the Democrats’ faint hope George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924), a political for success by repudiating the Ohio Idea. Republicans “boss” in the same Tammany Hall Democratic political whipped up enthusiasm for Grant by energetically “machine” that had spawned William Marcy (“Boss”) “waving the bloody shirt”—that is, reviving gory Tweed, candidly described his ethical and political memories of the Civil War—which became for the first principles: time a prominent feature of a presidential campaign.* “Vote as You Shot” was a powerful Republican slogan aimed at Union army veterans. “ Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tam- many men growin’ rich on graft, but nobody Grant won, with 214 electoral votes to 80 for Sey- thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest mour. But the former general scored a majority of only graft and dishonest graft. There’s all the differ- 300,000 in the popular vote (3,013,421 to 2,706,829). ence in the world between the two. Yes, many of Most white voters apparently supported Seymour, our men have grown rich in politics. I have and the ballots of three still-unreconstructed south- myself. I’ve made a big fortune out of the game, ern states (Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia) were not and I’m gettin’ richer every day, but I’ve not gone counted at all. An estimated 500,000 former slaves gave Grant his margin of victory. To remain in power, the in for dishonest graft—blackmailin’ gamblers, Republican party somehow had to continue to control saloonkeepers, disorderly people, etc.—and nei- the South—and to keep the ballot in the hands of the ther has any of the men who have made big for- grateful freedmen. Republicans could not take future tunes in politics. victories “for Granted.” “There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: ‘I seen my opportunities and I took The Era of Good Stealings ’em.’ “Just let me explain by examples. My party’s A few skunks can pollute a large area. Although the in power in the city, and it’s goin’ to undertake a great majority of businesspeople and government offi- lot of public improvements. Well, I’m tipped off, cials continued to conduct their affairs with decency say, that they’re going to lay out a new park at a and honor, the whole postwar atmosphere stunk of corruption. The Man in the Moon, it was said, had to certain place. hold his nose when passing over America. Freewheeling “I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that railroad promoters sometimes left gullible bond buy- place and I buy up all the land I can in the ers with only “two streaks of rust and a right of way.” neighborhood. Then the board of this or that Unethical stock-market manipulators were a cinder in makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get the public eye. Too many judges and legislators put my land, which nobody cared particular for before. “Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and fore- ” *The expression is said to have derived from a speech by Representa- tive Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, who allegedly waved before sight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft. the House the bloodstained nightshirt of a Klan-flogged carpetbagger. Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 490 Chapter 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age , 1869–1896 Tweed’s luck finally ran out. The New York Times secured damning evidence in 1871 and courageously published it, though offered $5 million not to do so. Gifted cartoonist Thomas Nast pilloried Tweed merci- lessly, after spurning a heavy bribe to desist. The portly thief reportedly complained that his illiterate followers could not help seeing “them damn pictures.” New York attorney Samuel J. Tilden headed the prosecution, gain- ing fame that later paved the path to his presidential nomination. Unbailed and unwept, Tweed died behind bars. A Carnival of Corruption More serious than Boss Tweed’s peccadilloes were the misdeeds of the federal government. President Grant’s cabinet was a rodent’s nest of grafters and incompe- tents. Favor seekers haunted the White House, plying Grant himself with cigars, wines, and horses. His elec- tion was a godsend to his in-laws of the Dent family, several dozen of whom attached themselves to the pub- lic payroll. The easygoing Grant was first tarred by the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which erupted in 1872. Union Pacific Railroad insiders had formed the Crédit Mobil- ier construction company and then cleverly hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line, earning dividends as high as 348 percent. Fearing that Congress might blow the whistle, the company fur- tively distributed shares of its valuable stock to key Can the Law Reach Him? 1872 Cartoonist Thomas Nast congressmen. A newspaper exposé and congressional attacked “Boss” Tweed in a series of cartoons like this one investigation of the scandal led to the formal censure that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1872. Here Nast depicts of two congressmen and the revelation that the vice the corrupt Tweed as a powerful giant, towering over a president of the United States had accepted payments puny law force. © Bettmann/Corbis from Crédit Mobilier. The breath of scandal in Washington also reeked of alcohol. In 1874–1875 the sprawling Whiskey Ring robbed the Treasury of millions in excise-tax revenues. madly bid the price of gold skyward, so they could “Let no guilty man escape,” declared President Grant. later profit from its heightened value. But on “Black Fri- But when his own private secretary turned up among day” (September 24, 1869), the bubble broke when the the culprits, he volunteered a written statement to the Treasury, contrary to Grant’s supposed assurances, was jury that helped exonerate the thief. Further rottenness compelled to release gold. The price of gold plunged, in the Grant administration came to light in 1876, forc- and scores of honest businesspeople were driven to the ing Secretary of War William Belknap to resign after wall. A congressional probe concluded that Grant had pocketing bribes from suppliers to the Indian reserva- done nothing crooked, though he had acted stupidly tions. Grant, ever loyal to his crooked cronies, accepted and indiscreetly. Belknap’s resignation “with great regret.” The infamous Tweed Ring in New York City viv- idly displayed the ethics (or lack of ethics) typical of the age. Burly “Boss” Tweed—240 pounds of rascality— employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to TRevolt he Liberal Republican of 1872 milk the metropolis of as much as $200 million. Hon- est citizens were cowed into silence. Protesters found By 1872 a powerful wave of disgust with Grantism was their tax assessments raised. beginning to build up throughout the nation, even Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  The Stirrings of Reform 491 before some of the worst scandals had been exposed. who were both eminently unqualified, by temperament Reform-minded citizens banded together to form the and lifelong training, for high political office. Liberal Republican party. Voicing the slogan “Turn In the mud-spattered campaign that followed, the Rascals Out,” they urged purification of the Wash- regular Republicans denounced Greeley as an atheist, ington administration as well as an end to military a communist, a free-lover, a vegetarian, a brown-bread Reconstruction. eater, and a cosigner of Jefferson Davis’s bail bond. The Liberal Republicans muffed their chance when Democrats derided Grant as an ignoramus, a drunkard, their Cincinnati nominating convention astounded the and a swindler. But the regular Republicans, chanting country by nominating the brilliant but erratic Horace “Grant us another term,” pulled the president through. Greeley for the presidency. Although Greeley was the The count in the electoral column was 286 to 66, in the fearless editor of the New York Tribune, he was dogmatic, popular column 3,596,745 to 2,843,446. emotional, petulant, and notoriously unsound in his Liberal Republican agitation frightened the regular political judgments. Republicans into cleaning their own house before they More astonishing still was the action of the office- were thrown out of it. The Republican Congress in 1872 hungry Democrats, who foolishly proceeded to endorse passed a general amnesty act, removing political dis- Greeley’s candidacy. In swallowing Greeley the Demo- abilities from all but some five hundred former Confed- crats “ate crow” in large gulps, for the eccentric editor erate leaders. Congress also moved to reduce high Civil had long blasted them as traitors, slave shippers, saloon War tariffs and to fumigate the Grant administration keepers, horse thieves, and idiots. Yet Greeley pleased with mild civil-service reform. Like many American the Democrats, North and South, when he pleaded for third parties, the Liberal Republicans left some endur- clasping hands across “the bloody chasm.” The Republi- ing footprints, even in defeat. cans dutifully renominated Grant. The voters were thus presented with a choice between two candidates who had made their careers in fields other than politics and Depression, Deflation, and Inflation Grant’s woes deepened in the paralyzing economic panic of 1873. Bursting with startling rapidity, the crash was one of those periodic plummets that roller- coastered the economy in this age of unbridled capi- talist expansion. Overreaching promoters had laid more railroad track, sunk more mines, erected more factories, and sowed more grainfields than existing markets could bear. Bankers, in turn, had made too many imprudent loans to finance those enterprises. When profits failed to materialize, loans went unpaid, and the whole credit-based house of cards fluttered down. The United States did not suffer alone. Nations worldwide underwent a similar economic collapse in 1873. Boom times became gloom times as more than fifteen thousand American businesses went bank- rupt. In New York City, an army of unemployed riot- ously battled police. Black Americans were hard hit. Granger Collection The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company had made unsecured loans to several companies that went under. Black depositors who had entrusted over $7 million to the bank lost their savings, and black economic devel- Can Greeley and the Democrats “Swallow” Each Other? opment and black confidence in savings institutions 1872 This cartoon by Thomas Nast is a Republican gibe went down with it. at the forced alliance between these former foes. General Hard times inflicted the worst punishment on William Tecumseh Sherman wrote from Paris to his brother, debtors, who intensified their clamor for inflation- “I feel amazed to see the turn things have taken. Grant who ary policies. Proponents of inflation breathed new never was a Republican is your candidate; and Greeley who life into the issue of greenbacks. During the war $450 never was a Democrat, but quite the reverse, is the million of the “folding money” had been issued, but Democratic candidate.” it had depreciated under a cloud of popular mistrust Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 492 Chapter 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age , 1869–1896 and dubious legality.* By 1868 the Treasury had already withdrawn $100 million of the “battle-born currency” David A. Wells (1828–1898), a leading economist of from circulation, and “hard-money” people every- the era, described the global dimensions of the where looked forward to its complete disappearance. depression that struck the United States in 1873: But now afflicted agrarian and debtor groups—“cheap- money” supporters—clamored for a reissuance of the greenbacks. With a crude but essentially accurate grasp “ Its most noteworthy peculiarity has been its universality; affecting nations that have been involved in war as well as those which have of monetary theory, they reasoned that more money maintained peace; those which have a stable meant cheaper money and, hence, rising prices and easier-to-pay debts. Creditors, of course, reasoning currency, based on gold, and those which have from the same premises, advocated precisely the oppo- an unstable currency, based on promises site policy. They had no desire to see the money they which have not been kept; those which live had loaned repaid in depreciated dollars. They wanted under systems of free exchange of commodi- deflation, not inflation. ties, and those whose exchanges are more or The “hard-money” advocates carried the day. In less restricted. It has been grievous in old com- 1874 they persuaded a confused Grant to veto a bill to munities like England and Germany, and print more paper money. They scored another victory equally so in Australia, South Africa, and Cali- in the Resumption Act of 1875, which pledged the gov- fornia, which represent the new; it has been a ernment to the further withdrawal of greenbacks from calamity exceeding[ly] heavy to be borne, circulation and to the redemption of all paper currency alike by the inhabitants of sterile Newfound- in gold at face value, beginning in 1879. land and Labrador, and of the sunny, fruitful ” Down but not out, debtors now looked for relief to another precious metal, silver. The “sacred white sugar-islands of the East and West Indies. metal,” they claimed, had received a raw deal. In the early 1870s, the Treasury stubbornly and unrealistically maintained that an ounce of silver was worth only one- worsened the impact of the depression. But the new sixteenth as much as an ounce of gold, though open- policy did restore the government’s credit rating, and it market prices for silver were higher. Silver miners thus brought the embattled greenbacks up to their full face stopped offering their shiny product for sale to the value. When Redemption Day came in 1879, few green- federal mints. With no silver flowing into the federal back holders bothered to exchange the lighter and more coffers, Congress formally dropped the coinage of sil- convenient bills for gold. ver dollars in 1873. Fate then played a sly joke when Republican hard-money policy had a political new silver discoveries later in the 1870s shot produc- backlash. It helped elect a Democratic House of Repre- tion up and forced silver prices down. Westerners from sentatives in 1874, and in 1878 it spawned the Green- silver-mining states joined with debtors in assailing the back Labor party, which polled over a million votes “Crime of ‘73,” demanding a return to the “Dollar of and elected fourteen members of Congress. The contest Our Daddies.” Like the demand for more greenbacks, over monetary policy was far from over. the demand for the coinage of more silver was noth- ing more nor less than another scheme to promote inflation. Hard-money Republicans resisted this scheme and Pallid Politics in the Gilded Age counted on Grant to hold the line against it. He did not The political seesaw was delicately balanced throughout disappoint them. The Treasury began to accumulate most of the Gilded Age (a sarcastic name given to the gold stocks against the appointed day for resumption of three-decade-long post–Civil War era by Mark Twain in metallic-money payments. Coupled with the reduction 1873). Even a slight nudge could tip the teeter-totter to of greenbacks, this policy was called “contraction.” It had the advantage of the opposition party. Every presiden- a noticeable deflationary effect—the amount of money tial election was a squeaker, and the majority party in per capita in circulation actually decreased between 1870 the House of Representatives switched six times in the and 1880, from $19.42 to $19.37. Contraction probably eleven sessions between 1869 and 1891. In only three sessions did the same party control the House, the Sen- ate, and the White House. Wobbling in such shaky *The Supreme Court in 1870 declared the Civil War Legal Tender Act equilibrium, politicians tiptoed timidly, producing a unconstitutional. With the concurrence of the Senate, Grant there- political record that was often trivial and petty. upon added to the bench two justices who could be counted on to help reverse that decision, which happened in 1871. This is how the Few significant economic issues separated the major Court grew to its current size of nine justices. parties. Democrats and Republicans saw very nearly Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Partisan Competition 493 eye-to-eye on questions like the tariff and civil-service the moral affairs of society. Democrats, among whom reform, and majorities in both parties substantially immigrant Lutherans and Roman Catholics figured agreed even on the much-debated currency question. heavily, were more likely to adhere to faiths that took a Yet despite their rough agreement on these national less stern view of human weakness. Their religions pro- matters, the two parties were ferociously competitive fessed toleration of differences in an imperfect world, with each other. They were tightly and efficiently orga- and they spurned government efforts to impose a single nized, and they commanded fierce loyalty from their moral standard on the entire society. These differences members. Voter turnouts reached heights unmatched in temperament and religious values often produced before or since. Nearly 80 percent of eligible voters raucous political contests at the local level, where issues cast their ballots in presidential elections in the three like prohibition and education loomed large. decades after the Civil War. On election days droves of Democrats had a solid electoral base in the South the party faithful tramped behind marching bands to and in the northern industrial cities, teeming with the polling places, and “ticket splitting,” or failing to immigrants and controlled by well-oiled political vote the straight party line, was as rare as a silver dollar. machines. Republican strength lay largely in the Mid- How can this apparent paradox of political con- west and the rural and small-town Northeast. Grateful sensus and partisan fervor be explained? The answer freedmen in the South continued to vote Republican in lies in the sharp ethnic and cultural differences in the significant numbers. Another important bloc of Repub- membership of the two parties—in distinctions of style lican ballots came from the members of the Grand and tone, and especially of religious sentiment. Repub- Army of the Republic (GAR)—a politically potent fra- lican voters tended to adhere to those creeds that traced ternal organization of several hundred thousand Union their lineage to Puritanism. They stressed strict codes veterans of the Civil War. of personal morality and believed that government The lifeblood of both parties was patronage— should play a role in regulating both the economic and disbursing jobs by the bucketful in return for votes, The Granger Collection/(inset photo) Collection of Janice L. and David J. Frent The Political Legacy of the Civil War Union veterans of the Civil War supported Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the Union veterans’ organization, voted heavily for the G.O.P. (Grand Old Party) in the post-civil war years. Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 494 Chapter 23 Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age , 1869–1896 kickbacks, and party service. Boisterous infighting over 1876 WASH. patronage beset the Republican party in the 1870s and TERR. VT NH ME MONTANA 5 5 7 1880s. A “Stalwart” faction, led by the handsome and OR TERR. DAKOTA MN MA R-2/C-1 5 NY 13 imperious Roscoe (“Lord Roscoe”) Conkling, U.S. sena- IDAHO TERR. WYOMING TERR. WI 10 MI 35 RI tor from New York, unblushingly embraced the time- TERR. IA 11 PA 29 NJ CT 4 NE 11 OH 9 6 honored system of swapping civil-service jobs for votes. NV 3 UTAH 3 IL IN 15 22 WV VA DE CA TERR. CO 21 3 Opposed to the Conklingites were the so-called Half- 6 3 KS 5 MO 15 KY 5 11 MD 12 NC 8 Breeds, who flirted coyly with civil-service reform, but INDIAN TN 12 10 ARIZONA NEW SC AR whose real quarrel with the Stalwarts was over who TERR. MEXICO TERR. TERR. 6 7 MS AL GA should grasp the ladle that dished out the spoils. The LA 8 10 11 TX champion of the Half-Breeds was James G. Blaine of 8 8 FL Maine, a radiantly personable congressman with an 4 elastic conscience. But despite the color of their person- alities, Conkling and Blaine succeeded only in stale- Uncontested Candidate (Party) Electoral Electoral Vote Popular Vote mating each other and deadlocking their party. Vote Hayes (Republican) 165 185 50% 4,034,311 48.0% Tilden (Democrat) 184 184 50% 4,288,546 51.0%  The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876 Contested Territories Hangers-on around Grant, like fleas urging their ail- Map 23.1 Hayes-Tilden Disputed Election of 1876 (with ing dog to live, begged the “Old Man” to try for a third electoral vote by state) Nineteen of the twenty disputed term in 1876. The general, blind to his own ineptitudes, votes composed the total electoral count of Louisiana, South showed a disquieting willingness. But the House, by a Carolina, and Florida. The twentieth was one of Oregon’s HMCo No bleeds lopsided bipartisan vote of 233 to 18, derailed the third- three votes, Election 1876 cast by an elector who turned out to be ineligible term bandwagon. It passed a resolution that sternly because he was a federal officeholder (a postmaster), contrary kennedy_23_01_Ms00384 20p6 to thex Constitution 19p2 (see Art. II, Sec. I, para. 2). © Cengage Learning reminded the country—and Grant—of the antidictator Final proof 9/9/08 implications of the two-term tradition. With Grant out of the running and with the Con- klingites and Blaineites neutralizing each other, the two sets of returns, one Democratic and one Republi- Republicans turned to a compromise candidate, Ruth- can. As the weeks drifted by, the paralysis tightened, erford B. Hayes, who was obscure enough to be dubbed generating a dramatic constitutional crisis. The Consti- “The Great Unknown.” His foremost qualification was tution merely specifies that the electoral returns from the fact that he hailed from the electorally doubtful but the states shall be sent to Congress, and in the presence potent state of Ohio, where he had served three terms of the House and Senate, they shall be opened by the as governor. So crucial were the “swing” votes of Ohio president of the Senate (see the Twelfth Amendment in in the cliffhanging presidential contests of the day that the Appendix). But who should count them? On this the state produced more than its share of presidential point the Constitution was silent. If counted by the candidates. A political saying of the 1870s paraphrased president of the Senate (a Republican), the Republican Shakespeare: returns would be selected. If counted by the Speaker of the House (a Democrat), the Democratic returns would Some are born great, be chosen. How could the impasse be resolved? Some achieve greatness, And some are born in Ohio. Pitted against the humdrum Hayes was the Demo- cratic nominee, Samuel J. Tilden, who had risen to fame Tandhe the Compromise of 1877 End of Reconstruction as the man who bagged Boss Tweed in New York. Cam- paigning against Republican scandal, Tilden racked up Clash or compromise was the stark choice. The dan- 184 electoral votes of the needed 185, with 20 votes ger loomed that there would be no president on Inau- in four states—three of them in the South—doubtful guration Day, March 4, 1877. “Tilden or Blood!” cried because of irregular returns (see Map 23.1). Surely Til- Democratic hotheads, and some of their “Minute Men” den could pick up at least one of these, especially in began to drill with arms. But behind the scenes, fran- view of the fact that he had polled 247,448 more popu- tically laboring statesmen gradually hammered out an lar votes than Hayes, 4,284,020 to 4,036,572. agreement in the Henry Clay tradition—the Compro- Both parties scurried to send “visiting statesmen” to mise of 1877. the contested southern states of Louisiana, South Caro- The election deadlock itself was to be broken by lina, and Florida. All three disputed states submitted the Electoral Count Act, which Congress passed early Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  The Compromise of 1877 495 withdrawing intrusive federal troops from the two states Table 23.1 C  omposition of the Electoral in which they remained, Louisiana and South Carolina. Commission, 1877 Among various concessions, the Republicans assured Members Republicans Democrats the Democrats a place at the presidential patronage Senate (Republican 3 2 trough and support for a bill subsidizing the Texas and majority) Pacific Railroad’s construction of a southern transconti- nental line. Not all of these promises were kept in later House (Democratic 2 3 majority) years, including the Texas and Pacific subsidy. But the deal held together long enough to break the dangerous Supreme Court 3 2 electoral standoff. The Democrats permitted Hayes to total 8 7 receive the remainder of the disputed returns—all by the partisan vote of 8 to 7. So close was the margin of safety that the explosive issue was settled only three in 1877. It set up an electoral commission consisting of days before the new president was officially sworn into fifteen men selected from the Senate, the House, and office. The nation breathed a collective sigh of relief. the Supreme Court (see Table 23.1). The compromise bought peace at a price. Parti- In February 1877, about a month before Inaugu- san violence was averted by sacrificing the civil rights ration Day, the Senate and House met together in an of southern blacks. With the Hayes-Tilden deal, the electric atmosphere to settle the dispute. The roll of Republican party quietly abandoned its commitment to the states was tolled off alphabetically. When Florida racial equality. That commitment had been weakening was reached—the first of the three southern states with in any case. Many Republicans had begun to question two sets of returns—the disputed documents were the worthiness of Reconstruction and were less willing referred to the electoral commission, which sat in a to send dollars and enlisted sons to bolster southern nearby chamber. After prolonged discussion the mem- state governments. bers agreed, by the partisan vote of eight Republicans The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was in a sense the to seven Democrats, to accept the Republican returns. last feeble gasp of the congressional radical Republi- Outraged Democrats in Congress, smelling defeat, cans. The act supposedly guaranteed equal accom- undertook to launch a filibuster “until hell froze over.” modations in public places and prohibited racial Renewed deadlock was avoided by the rest of the discrimination in jury selection, but the law was born complex Compromise of 1877, already partially con- toothless and stayed that way for nearly a century. The cluded behind closed doors. The Democrats reluctantly Supreme Court pronounced much of the act uncon- agreed that Hayes might take office in return for his stitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883). The Court The End of Reconstruction, 1877 President Hayes’s “Let ‘em Alone” policy replaces the carpetbags and bayonets of the Grant administration, signifying the end of federal efforts to promote racial equality in the South—until the “second Reconstruction” of the civil rights era nearly a century later. Library of Congress Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicat