CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age,1877–1900 uly 2, 1881, was a muggy summer day in Washington, D.C., and President JJames A. Garfield was leaving town for a visit to western Massachusetts. At 9:30 A.M., as he strolled through the railroad station, shots rang out. Garfield fell, a bullet in his back. The shooter, Charles Guiteau, immediately surren- dered. At first, doctors thought the president would recover. But Garfield, a vet- eran who had seen the long-term effects of gunshot wounds, knew better. “I am a dead man,” he told them. His doctors tried everything. But as the doc- tors probed the wound with bare hands and unsterilized instruments, blood poisoning set in. On September 19, Garfield died. The nation mourned. An Ohio farm boy, Will Boyer, was shocked to hear the news from another farmer as he walked along a country road. Garfield embodied the American dream of the self-made man. Born in a log cabin in CHAPTER OUTLINE Ohio (he was the last log-cabin president), he had worked his way through Williams College, preached in the Disciples of Christ Church, taught at Party Politics in an Era of Social and Economic Upheaval, 1877–1884 Hiram College, practiced law, and won election to the Ohio senate. He fought in the Civil War, went to Congress in 1863, and was elected president in Politics of Privilege, Politics of 1880—thereby sealing his death warrant. As for Guiteau, the jury rejected his Exclusion, 1884–1892 insanity plea, and in June 1882 he was hanged. The 1890s: Politics in a Depression Decade The Watershed Election of 1896 Expansionist Stirrings and War with Spain, 1878–1901 609 610 CHAPTER 20 Politics and Expansion in an Industrializing Age, 1877–1900 A decent, well-meaning man, Garfield also embod- party was able to control the political process. But in ied a political generation that seemed more preoccupied 1896, the election of President William F. McKinley, who with the spoils of office than with the problems of ordi- would also die from an assassin’s bullet, brought the bit- nary people. In Congress Garfield had been tainted by ter battle over economic standards to an end and ush- the 1873 Crédit Mobilier scandal and other corruption ered in a generation of Republican domination of charges. His presidential nomination in 1880 had result- national politics. Having been elected in a campaign ed from a split in the Republican party between two rival focused on the restoration of prosperity, McKinley stum- factions, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds, that vied bled into war with Spain, substantially increased U.S. with each other over the distribution of patronage jobs. territorial holdings, and established new outposts from The obscure Guiteau, a Stalwart who had supported which American corporations could gain access to over- Garfield, expected to be rewarded with a high diplomat- seas markets. Why it took twenty years to resolve the ic post. When this failed to materialize, his delusionary debate over economic policy and achieve a realignment mental state worsened. Viewing Garfield’s death as “a in national politics, how the Republicans triumphed political necessity,” he believed that the Stalwarts would over the protests of farmers and laborers, and what hail him as a hero. (Indeed, he had selected as his gun a effect the Republican vision had on territorial expansion .44-caliber “British Bulldog” pistol because it would look are the subjects of this chapter. good in a museum.) While contemporary critics like Henry Adams This chapter focuses on four major questions: viewed Garfield’s assassination as an example of the absurdity of late-nineteenth century politics—a time, ■ How did the Democratic and Republican parties Adams sneered, of “little but damaged reputations”— build coalitions of loyal followers out of their diverse historians today see it as a sign of how closely contested ethnic and regional constituencies? and highly emotional political battles were. The phe- ■ How did environmental factors influence the rise of nomenal expansion of large corporations, the settle- the Grange and the Farmers’ Alliance movements? ment of the trans-Mississippi West, and the surge in urban growth put intense pressure on the political ■ Why was the election of 1896 a watershed event? process. At stake was not only the government’s proper Why did William Jennings Bryan fail to win the role in the stimulation and regulation of America’s presidency? explosive industrial growth, but also the thorny issues of ■ Why did the United States go to war with Spain and how to assimilate the new immigrants, control chaotic become an imperial power? urban life, gain access to new markets, and encourage territorial expansion. These intense debates over economic and social PARTY POLITICS IN AN ERA policy involved nothing less than contending visions of OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC how industrial growth should or should not be regulated UPHEAVAL, 1877–1884 and who should benefit financially. The struggle to con- trol economic expansion reached its peak in the 1890s Between 1877 and 1894 four presidents squeezed into when a new third party, the Populists, joined with the office by the narrowest of margins; control of the House Democrats to challenge corporate control of the econo- of Representatives changed hands five times; and seven my. The Populist campaign for “free silver,” a monetary new western states were admitted into the Union. policy that would back currency with silver reserves Competition between political parties was intense. No instead of gold, implied strong support for reforms that one party could muster a working majority. would have relieved the exploitation of labor and the To meet these challenges, Republicans, Democrats, abysmal working conditions that accompanied the surg- and third-party leaders sought desperately to reshape ing industrialization of this period. Representing the their political organizations to win over and cement the opposite position, the Republican party’s support for loyalty of their followers. While the Democrats rebuilt high tariffs and the gold standard represented a commit- their strength in the South and mounted new chal- ment to encouraging the growth of large corporations, to lenges, Republicans struggled to maintain the loyalties freeing industry to expand without regulation, and to of the working class, to strengthen their support from developing new markets. business, and to fight off the threat of new third parties. From the mid-1870s to the mid-1890s, power see- Not until 1896, in the aftermath of a massive depression sawed back and forth between the political parties. No that hit when the Democrats and a new third party, the Party Politics in an Era of Social and Economic Upheaval, 1877–1884 611 Populists, were in office, did the Republicans consoli- instrument to protect family life. Hostility to slavery was date their power and build a coalition that would control based in part on the assumption that slaveholding cor- Congress and the presidency for the next fifteen years. roded family values. The Democrats, in contrast, had Between 1876 and 1896, the intense competition viewed emancipation as a threat to patriarchal order between parties produced an incredible turnout of vot- and racial control. ers. Although most women did not yet have the vote and After the Civil War, these positions hardened into blacks were increasingly being disenfranchised, more political ideologies. Republicans justified their support than 80 percent of eligible white males often voted, and for the tariff and defended their commitment to Union in particularly hard-fought state and local elections, the widow’s pensions as a protection for the family home percentage could rise to 95 percent. Voter participation a and female wage earners. Men, in particular, associated century later would equal scarcely half that level. loyalty to party with a sense of masculinity. Democrats Higher voter turnout resulted in part from the countered, using metaphors of the seduction and rape attempts of the major parties to navigate the stormy of white women by external forces and labeling economy created by postwar industrial and geographic Republican programs as classic examples of the perils of expansion, the influx of millions of immigrants, and the using excessive government force. High tariffs imperiled pell-mell growth of cities (see Chapters 18 and 19). At the the family and threatened economic disaster. same time that voter turnout shot up, however, political Despite their differences over the tariff and mone- parties sidestepped many of the issues created by indus- tary policy, neither Republicans nor Democrats believed trialization such as taxation of corporations, support for that the national government had any right to regulate those injured in factory accidents, and poverty relief. corporations or to protect the social welfare of workers. Nor was the American labor movement, unlike its coun- Many members of the dominant parties, particularly terparts in Europe, able to organize itself effectively as a among the middle and upper classes, embraced the political force (see Chapter 18). Except for the Inter- doctrine of laissez-faire—the belief that unregulated state Commerce Act of 1887 and the largely symbolic competition represented the best path to progress. Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, Washington generally According to this view, the federal government should ignored the social consequences of industrialization and promote economic development but not regulate the focused instead on encouraging economic growth. industries that it subsidized. How can we explain this refusal and, at the same Rather than looking to Washington, people turned time, account for the enormous popular support for to local or state authorities. On the Great Plains, angry parties? The answer lies in the political ideology of the farmers demanded that their state legislatures regulate period and the two major symbolic and economic issues railroad rates.