Gilded Age Politics

Gilded Age Politics

Voter Turnout

Republican Party
     -nationalism
     -prosperity
     -moralism
     -ethnocentricity

Democratic Party
     -Jeffersonian small government
     -laissez faire economic policies
     -states' rights
     -personal liberties
     -racism

Campaigns

Civil War and Reconstruction
     -"Waving the Bloody Shirt of Rebellion"
     -"Party of Negro Domination"
          -Federal Elections Bill of 1890
               -Lodge Force Bill

Spoils System
     -Merit Civil Service Appointments
          -Liberal Republicans (1872)
          -Mugwumps (1884)

James A. Garfield
-Pendleton Act (1883)

Protective Tariff
     -James G. Blaine
          -Roscoe Conkling
     -Grover Cleveland

Reverend Samuel Burchard
-"Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"

Ethno-Cultural Cleavages
-Pietist
-Liturgicals (Ritualists)

Urban Political Machines
-Tammany Hall (NYC)

Women’s Issues
     -Women's Suffrage
     -Frances Willard
          -Woman's Christian Temperance Union

Laborers’ Issues
-Artisan to Laborer

Knights of Labor
-Union Labor Party (1886-1888)

American Federation of Labor

Monopoly Issue (RRs)
     -Long Haul-Short Haul Differential
     -Granger Laws
          -Munn v. Illinois (1877)
          -Wabash v. Illinois (1886)
     -Interstate Commerce Commission (1887)

Money Issue
     -Free & Unlimited Coinage of Silver & Gold
           -at a ratio of 16 to 1 (1834-1873)
                 -Free Silver
     -Greenbacks (1862-1879)
     -Gold Standard (1873-1933)

Billion Dollar Congress (1890)
     -McKinley Tariff
     -Dependent Pension Act
     -U.S. Navy
     -Sherman Silver Purchase Act
     -Sherman Antitrust Act

People’s or Populist Party
-Panic of 1893
-John McBride (AFL)

Election of 1896
     -Republican Party
          -William McKinley & Garrett Hobart
     -Democratic Party
          -William Jennings Bryan & Arthur M. Sewall
     -People’s or Populist Party
          -William Jennings Bryan & Thomas E. Watson

Voter Turnout,
1824-1992