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Did you vote for an American ? On May 20, 2009, twenty-three-year-old guitar-strumming vote was close; probably he received no more than captivated the audience of 55 million. Six months earlier, presidential candidates with his rendition of ’s “” and and John McCain received more votes ’s “Ain’t No Sunshine.” By receiving a than Allen, with 69 million and 60 million respectively. majority of the nearly 100 million “votes”—by tele- The comparison, of course, is unsound. American phone and text message—Allen became the American Idol fans often cast multiple votes for their favorite; Idol for 2009. some spent hundreds of dollars in phone and texting Although pundits had for years grumbled that fees. A better comparison is of voter turnout for presi- Americans cared more about pop stars on American Idol dential elections nowadays and during the late nine- than about their president, this may not have been true teenth century. Since 1946, fewer than half of the in 2009. The producers of the show did not release the eligible voters have on the average voted in presiden- exact number of votes for Allen, but they did say the tial elections. By contrast, over three-fourths of eligible

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FromFrom Smoke-FilledSmoke-Filled RoomsRooms toto PrairiePrairie Wildfire:Wildfire: 1877–18961877–1896 20 CONTENTS ■ Congress Ascendant ■ The Populist Movement ■ Recurrent Issues ■ Showdown on Silver ■ Party Politics: Sidestepping ■ The Depression of 1893 the Issues ■ The Election of 1896 ■ Lackluster Presidents: From ■ The Meaning of the Election Hayes to Harrison ■ Debating the Past: ■ in the Populism—Crusade of Cranks South After Reconstruction or Potent Grass- ■ Booker T. Washington: A Protest? “Reasonable” Champion for ■ Mapping the Past: African Americans Agrarian Discontent and the ■ City Bosses Populist Challenge ■ Crops and Complaints

Hear the Audio Chapter 20 at www.myhistorylab.com

■ A parade for in in 1892, by John Klir. Music, mirth, real drama—a presidential election was perhaps even better entertainment than American Idol.

voters did so in presidential campaigns from 1876 to Public health, municipal services, and corruption all dom- 1896—the highest rates in the nation’s history. inated the headlines. Then, during the , a nation- This puzzles scholars, because the issues of that wide industrial depression crushed many local time seem inconsequential: Civil War soldiers’ pen- manufacturing firms, just as an agricultural crisis was sions, the tariff, paper money vs. gold and silver coins, sweeping through the midsection of the nation. and civil service reform. Perhaps the most volatile Because the nation had become more tightly inte- issue—the plight of former slaves—never attracted grated, these economic upheavals jolted nearly every much notice because most politicians looked the other community. National policy and local issues converged, way. The other key issue—the minimal role of the fed- culminating in the extraordinary election of 1896, which eral government in the nation’s industrial ascent— brought over 80 percent of the electorate to the polls. went without saying and, being unsaid, generated In , , , Michigan, and (important little controversy. farm states) over 95 percent of those eligible to vote did Why, then, did so many people vote? Local issues so. In these years, politics had become the greatest seem to have loomed large in most people’s thinking. show around. ■

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Congress Ascendant The House of Representatives, on the other hand, was one of the mostdisorderly and inefficient legislative A succession of weak presidents occupied the White bodies in the world. “As I make my notes,” a reporter House during the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- wrote in 1882 while sitting in the House gallery, tury. Although the impeachment proceedings against had failed, Congress dominated the I see a dozen men reading newspapers with their government. Within Congress, the Senate generally feet on their desks. . . . “Pig Iron” Kelley of overshadowed the House of Representatives. In his Pennsylvania has dropped his newspaper and is novel Democracy (1880), the cynical Henry Adams paring his fingernails. . . . The vile odor of . . . wrote that the had a “government of tobacco . . . rises from the two-for-five-cents cigars the people, by the people, for the benefit of in the mouths of the so-called gentlemen below. . . . Senators.” Critics called the Senate a “rich man’s They chew, too! Every desk has a spittoon of pink club,” and it did contain many millionaires, among and gold china beside it to catch the filth from the them Leland Stanford, founder of the Central Pacific statesman’s mouth. Railroad; the mining tycoon James G. “” Fair of ; Philetus Sawyer, a self-made An infernal din rose from the crowded chamber. lumberman; and Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Desks slammed; members held private conversations, Island, whose wealth derived from banking and a hailed pages, shuffled from place to place, clamored host of corporate connections. However, the true for the attention of the Speaker—and all the while sources of the Senate’s influence lay in the long some poor orator tried to discuss the question of the tenure of many of its members (which enabled them moment. Speaking in the House, one writer said, was to master the craft of politics), in the fact that it was like trying to address the crowd on a passing small enough to encourage real debate, and in its bus from the curb in front of the Astor long-established reputation for wisdom, intelligence, House in . On one occasion in 1878 the and statesmanship. adjournment of the House was held up for more than

An 1887 cartoon indicting the Senate for closely attending to the Big (read, fat) Trusts rather than to the needs of the public (whose “entrance” to the Senate is “closed”). Drawn by Joseph Keppler, a caricaturist who was born and trained in Germany, this type of grotesque satire greatly influenced late-nineteenth-century American comic arts. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 531

Recurrent Issues 531

twelve hours because most of the members of an accomplished at such sacrifice during the war. “Every important committee were too drunk to prepare a man that endeavored to tear down the old flag,” a vital appropriations bill for final passage. Republican orator proclaimed in 1876, “was a The great political parties professed undying Democrat. Every man that tried to destroy this enmity to each other, but they seldom took clearly nation was a Democrat. . . . The man that assassi- opposing positions on the questions of the day. nated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat. . . . Democrats were separated from Republicans more by Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic bodies accidents of geography, religious affiliation, ethnic was given you by a Democrat.” And every scoundrel background, and emotion than by economic issues. or incompetent who sought office under the Questions of state and local importance, unrelated to Republican banner waved the bloody shirt in order to national politics, often determined the outcome of divert the attention of northern voters from his own congressional elections and thus who controlled the shortcomings. The technique worked so well that federal government. many decent candidates could not resist the tempta- The fundamental division between Democrats tion to employ it in close races. Nothing, of course, and Republicans was sectional, a result of the Civil so effectively obscured the real issues of the day. War. The South, after the political rights of blacks Waving the bloody shirt was related intimately to had been drastically circumscribed, became heavily the issue of the rights of African Americans. Throughout Democratic. Most of New England was solidly this period Republicans vacillated between trying to Republican. Elsewhere the two parties stood in fair build up their organization in the South by appealing to balance, although the Republicans tended to have black voters—which required them to make sure that the advantage. A preponderance of the well-to-do, blacks in the South could vote—and trying to win cultured Northerners were Republicans. Perhaps in reaction to this concentration, immigrants, Catholics, and other minority groups—except for blacks—tended to vote Democratic. But the numerous exceptions weakened the applicability of these generalizations. German and Scandinavian immigrants usually voted Republican; many powerful business leaders supported the Democrats. The bulk of the people—farmers, laborers, shop- keepers, white-collar workers—distributed their bal- lots fairly evenly between the two parties in most elections; the balance of political power after 1876 was almost perfect. Between 1856 and 1912 the Democrats elected a president only twice (1884 and 1892), but most contests were extremely close. Majorities in both the Senate and the House fluctu- ated continually. Between 1876 and 1896 the “domi- nant” Republican party controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency at the same time for only a single two-year period.

Recurrent Issues Four questions obsessed politicians in these years. One was the “bloody shirt.” The term, which became part of the language after a congressman dramatically displayed to his colleagues in the House the bloodstained shirt of an Ohio car- petbagger who had been flogged by terrorists in Mississippi, referred to the tactic of reminding the electorate of the northern states that the men who had precipitated the Civil War had been Democrats. Should Democrats regain power, former rebels would run the government and undo all the work The 1860 dollar, minted in gold, front and back. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 532

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conservative white support by stressing economic issues such as the tariff. When the former strategy seemed wise, they waved the bloody shirt with vigor; in the latter case, they piously announced that the blacks’ future was “as safe in the hands of one party as it is in the other.” The question of veterans’ pensions also bore a close relationship to the bloody shirt. Following the Civil War, Union sol- diers founded the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). By 1890 the organization had a membership of 409,000. The GAR put immensepressure on Congress, first for aid to veterans with service-connected disabilities, then for those with any disabil- ity, and eventually for all former Union sol- diers. Republican politicians played on the emotions of the former soldiers by waving the bloody shirt, but the tough-minded leaders of the GAR demanded that they prove their sincerity by treating in open- handed fashion the warriors whose blood When the supply of gold became perilously low during the Civil War, the U.S. Treasury printed Demand Notes, usually in green ink. These “greenbacks” were withdrawn had stained the shirt. after the Civil War and the “” was restored. But not enough gold dollars The tariff was another perennial issue were minted to keep up with the growth of the economy. in post-Civil War politics.Despite con- siderable loose talk about free trade, almost no one in the United States except for a Republicans. Many Republicans endorsed tariff handful of professional economists,most of them reform in principle, but when particular schedules college professors, believed in eliminating duties on came up for discussion, most of them demanded the imports. Manufacturers desired protective tariffs to highest rates for industries in their own districts keep out competing products, and a majority of and traded votes shamelessly with colleagues repre- their workers were convinced that wage levels senting other interests in order to get what they would fall if goods produced by cheap foreign labor wanted. Every new tariff bill became an occasion entered the United States untaxed. Many farmers for logrolling, lobbying, and outrageous politicking supported protection, although almost no compet- rather than for sane discussion and careful evalua- ing agricultural products were being imported. tion of the public interest. Congressman William McKinley of Ohio, who A third political question in this period was cur- reputedly could make reciting a tariff schedule rency reform. During the Civil War, the government, sound like poetry, stated the majority opinion in faced with obligations it could not meet by taxing or the clearest terms: high tariffs foster the growth of borrowing, suspended specie payments and issued industry and thus create jobs. “Reduce the tariff about $450 million in paper money, originally printed and labor is the firsttosuffer,” he said. in green ink. This currency, called greenbacks, did not The tariff could have been a real political issue command the full confidence of a people accustomed because American technology was advancing so to money readily convertible into gold or silver. rapidly that many industries no longer required pro- Greenbacks seemed to encourage inflation, for how tection from foreign competitors. A powerful argu- could one trust the government not to print them in ment could have been made for scientific rate wholesale lots to avoid passing unpopular tax laws? making that would adjust duties to actual condi- Thus, when the war ended, strong sentiment devel- tions and avoid overprotection. The Democrats oped for withdrawing the greenbacks from circulation professed to believe in moderation, yet whenever and returning to a bullion standard—to coining party leaders tried to revise the tariff downward, money from silver and gold. Democratic congressmen from Pennsylvania, New In fact, beginning during Reconstruction, prices York, and other industrial states sided with the declined sharply. The deflation increased the real 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 533

Party Politics: Sidestepping the Issues 533

income of bondholders and other creditors but has of a dead sheep.” When reformers suggested injured debtors. Farmers were particularly hard-hit, establishing the most modest kind of professional, for many of them had borrowed heavily during the nonpartisan civil service, politicians of both parties wartime boom to finance expansion. subjected them to every kind of insult and ridicule Here was a question of real significance. Many even though both the Democratic and Republican groups supported some kind of currency inflation. A parties regularly wrote civil service reform planks into National Greenback party nominated Peter Cooper, their platforms. an iron manufacturer, for president in 1876. Cooper received only 81,000 votes, but a new Greenback Labor party polled over a million in 1878, electing Party Politics: Sidestepping the Issues fourteen congressmen. However, the major parties With the Democrats invincible in the South and the refused to confront each other over the currency Republicans predominant in New England and question. While Republicans professed to be the party most of the states beyond the Mississippi, the out- of sound money, most Republicans favored come of presidential elections was usually deter- expansion of the currency. And while one wing of the mined in a handful of populous states: New York Democrats flirted with the Greenbackers, the conser- (together with its satellites, and vative, or “Bourbon,” Democrats favored deflation as Connecticut), Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The fact much as Republicans did. Under various administra- that opinion in these states on important questions tions steps were taken to increase or decrease the such as the tariff and monetary policy was divided amount of money in circulation, but the net effect on and that every imaginable religious and ethnic inter- the economy was not significant. est was represented in the electorate goes far to The final major political issue of these years was explain why the parties hesitated to commit them- civil service reform. That the federal bureaucracy selves on issues. In every presidential election, needed overhauling nearly everyone agreed. As Democrats and Republicans concentrated their American society grew larger and more complex, heaviest guns on these states. Of the eighteen the government necessarily took on more functions. Democrats and Republicans nominated for presi- The need for professional administration increased. dent in the nine elections between 1868 and 1900, The number of federal employees rose from 53,000 only three were not from New York, Ohio, Indiana, in 1871 to 256,000 at the end of the century. or Illinois, and all three lost. Corruption flourished; waste and inefficiency were Partisanship was intense in these states. the normal state of affairs. The collection of tariff Campaigns were conducted in a carnival atmos- duties offered perhaps the greatest opportunity for phere, entertainment being substituted for serious venality. The New York Custom House, one debate. Large sums were spent on brass bands, bar- observer wrote in 1872, teemed with “corrupting becues, uniforms, and . Speakers of national merchants and their clerks and runners, who think reputation were imported to attract crowds, and that all men can be bought, and . . . corrupt swarms spellbinders noted for their leather lungs—this was [of clerks], who shamelessly seek their price.” before the day of the loudspeaker—and their ability With a succession of relatively ineffective presi- to rouse popular emotions were brought in to dents and a Congress that squandered its energies address mass meetings. on private bills, pork-barrel projects, and other With so much depending on so few, the level of trivia, the administration of the government was political morality was abysmal. Mudslinging, charac- strikingly inefficient. ter assassination, and plain lying were standard prac- Every honest observer could see the need for tice; bribery was routine. Drifters and other dissolute reform, but the politicians refused to surrender the citizens were paid in cash—or more often in free power of dispensing government jobs to their lieu- drinks—to vote the party ticket. The names of per- tenants without regard for their qualifications. They sons long dead were solemnly inscribed in voting argued that patronage was the lifeblood of politics, registers, their suffrages exercised by impostors. that parties could not function without armies of During the 1880 campaign the Democratic national loyal political workers, and that the workers expected chairman, hearing that the Republicans were plan- and deserved the rewards of office when their efforts ning to transport Kentuckians into Indiana to vote were crowned with victory at the polls. Typical was illegally in that crucial state, urged Indiana the attitude of the New York assemblyman who, Democrats to “check this outrageous fraud.” Then, according to Theodore Roosevelt, had “the same idea perhaps seeking an easier solution to the problem, he about Public Life and the Civil Service that a vulture added, “If necessary . . . keep even with them.” 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 534

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Lackluster Presidents: From Hayes in 1876 because of his reputation for honesty and moderation, and his election, made possible by the to Harrison Compromise of 1877, seemed to presage an era of The leading statesmen of the period were disinter- sectional harmony and political probity. ested in important contemporary questions, power- Outwardly Hayes had a sunny disposition; less to influence them, or content with things the way inwardly, in his own words, he was sometimes “ner- they were. Consider the presidents. vous to the point of disaster.” Despite his geniality, he Rutherford B. Hayes, president from 1877 to was utterly without political glamour. He played 1881, came to office with a distinguished record. He down the tariff issue. On the money question he was attended Kenyon College and Harvard Law School conservative. He cheerfully approved the resumption before settling down to practice in Cincinnati. of gold payments in 1879 and vetoed bills to expand Although he had a family to support, he volunteered the currency. He accounted himself a civil service for service in the Union army within weeks after the reformer, being opposed to the collection of political first shell fell on Fort Sumter. “A just and necessary contributions from federal officeholders. war,” he called it in his diary. “I would prefer to go Hayes complained about the South’s failure to into it if I knew I was to die . . . than to live through treat blacks decently after the withdrawal of federal and after it without taking any part.” troops, but he took no action. He worked harder for Hayes was wounded at South Mountain on the civil service reform, yet failed to achieve the “thor- eve of Antietam and later served under Sheridan in ough, rapid, and complete” change he had promised. the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864. Entering In most matters, he was content to “let the record the army as a major, he emerged a major general. In show that he had made the requests.” 1864 he was elected to Congress; four years later he Hayes’s successor, James A. Garfield, fought at became governor of Ohio, serving three terms alto- Shiloh and later at Chickamauga. In two years he rose gether. The Republicans nominated him for president from lieutenant colonel to major general. In 1863 he won a seat in Congress, where his oratorical and man- agerial skills brought him to prominence in the affairs of the Republican party. Garfield had been a compromise choice at the 1880 Republican convention. His election precipi- tated a great battle over patronage, the new president standing in a sort of no-man’s land between contend- ing factions within the party. In July 1881 an unbal- anced office-seeker named Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the Washington railroad station. After lin- gering for weeks, the president died on September 19. The assassination of Garfield elevated Chester A. Arthur to the presidency. A New York lawyer and abolitionist, Arthur became an early convert to the Republican party and rose rapidly in its local councils. In 1871 Grant gave him the juiciest political plum in the country, the collectorship of the Port of New York, which he held until removed by Hayes in 1878 for refusing to keep his hands out of party politics. The vice presidency was the only elective position that Arthur had ever held. Before Garfield’s death, he had paid little attention to questions like the tariff and monetary policy, being content to take in fees ranging upward of $50,000 a year as collector of the port and to oversee the operations of the New York customs office, with its hordes of clerks and laborers. (During Arthur’s tenure, the novelist Herman Melville was employed as In this 1880 campaign lithograph by Currier & Ives, “Farmer Garfield” an “outdoor inspector” by the customhouse.) Of uses a scythe made of honesty, ability, and patriotism to cut a swath to the White House through brush infested by snakes like Falsehood course, Arthur was an unblushing defender of the spoils and Malice. One snake bears the countenance of Garfield’s system, though in fairness it must be said that he was predecessor, Hayes. personally honest and an excellent administrator. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 535

Lackluster Presidents: From Hayes to Harrison 535

The tragic circumstances of his elevation to the settled in Buffalo. Although somewhat lacking in the presidency sobered Arthur. Although he was a genial, social graces and in intellectual pretensions, he had a convivial man, perhaps overly fond of good food basic integrity that everyone recognized; when a and flashy clothes, he comported himself with dig- group of reformers sought a candidate for mayor in nity as president. He handled patronage matters with 1881, he was a natural choice. His success in Buffalo restraint, and he gave at least nominal support to the led to his election as governor of New York in 1882. movement for civil service reform, which had been In the governor’s chair his no-nonsense attitude strengthened by the public’s indignation at the assas- toward public administration endeared him to civil sination of Garfield. In 1883 Congress passed the service reformers at the same time that his basic con- Pendleton Act, “classifying” about 10 percent of all servatism pleased businessmen. When he vetoed a government jobs and creating the bipartisan Civil popular bill to force a reduction of the fares charged Service Commission to administer competitive exami- by the elevated railway on the ground nations for these positions. The law made it illegal to that it was an unconstitutional violation of the com- force officeholders to make political contributions pany’s franchise, his reputation soared. Here was a and empowered the president to expand the list of man who cared more for principle than for the adula- classified positions at his discretion. tion of the multitude, a man who was courageous, As an administrator Arthur was systematic, honest, hardworking, and eminently sound. The thoughtful, businesslike, and at the same time cheer- Democrats nominated him for president in 1884. ful and considerate. Just the same, he too was a polit- The election revolved around personal issues,for ical failure. He made relatively little effort to push his the platforms of the parties were almost identical. On program through Congress. He did not seek a second the one hand, the Republican candidate, the dynamic term in 1884. James G. Blaine, had an immense following, but his The election of 1884 brought the Democrat reputation had been soiled by the publication of the Grover Cleveland to the White House. Cleveland “Mulligan letters,” which connected him with the grew up in western New York. After studying law, he corrupt granting of congressional favors to the Little

James A. Garfield lies mortally wounded. After failing to locate the bullet, surgeons called in Alexander Graham Bell, the famous inventor. Bell conceived of a device, pictured here, that anticipated the mine detector. Bell’s machine failed to locate the bullet, however, perhaps because the metal bed springs interfered with its operation. Garfield died, either from the bullet or the surgeon’s unsuccessful attempts to extricate it. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 536

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Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. On the other hand, it came out during the campaign that Cleveland, a bachelor, had fathered an illegitimate child. Instead of debating public issues, the Republicans chanted the ditty, Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa? Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha! to which the Democrats countered, Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, The continental liar from the State of Maine. Blaine lost more heavily in the mudslinging than Cleveland, whose quiet courage in saying “Tell the truth” when his past was brought to light contrasted favorably with Blaine’s glib and unconvincing denials. A significant group of eastern Republicans, known as mugwumps, campaigned for the Democrats.1 However, Blaine ran a strong race against a general pro-Democratic trend; Cleveland won the elec- tion by fewer than 25,000 votes. The change of 600 bal- lots in New York would have given that state, and the presidency, to his opponent. As a Democrat, Cleveland had no stomach for refighting the Civil War. Civil service reformers over- estimated his commitment to their cause, for he believed in rotation in office. He would not summar- ily dismiss Republicans, but he thought that when they had served four years, they “should as a rule give way to good men of our party.” He did, however, President Grover Cleveland and Frances Folsom in 1888. The couple insist on honesty and efficiency regardless of party. As had married two years earlier; he was 48, and she, 21, the youngest First Lady. Her popularity blunted criticisms that Cleveland, a a result, he made few poor appointments. bachelor, had earlier fathered an illegitimate child. When he lost the Cleveland had little imagination and too narrow 1888 election, his wife predicted that she would return as First Lady. a conception of his powers and duties to be a Four years later, she did. dynamic president. His appearance perfectly reflected his character: A squat, burly man weighing well over 200 pounds, he could defend a position against heavy annual message of December 1887 to the tariff, thereby odds, yet he lacked flexibility. He took a fairly broad focusing public attention on the subject. When worried view of the powers of the federal government, but he Democrats reminded him that an election was coming thought it unseemly to put pressure on Congress, up and that the tariff might cause a rift in the organiza- believing in “the entire independence of the executive tion, he replied simply, “What is the use of being and legislative branches.” elected or re-elected, unless you stand for something?” Toward the end of his term Cleveland bestirred In that contest, Cleveland obtained a plurality of himself and tried to provide constructive leadership on the popular vote, but his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, the tariff question. The government was embarrassed grandson of President William Henry Harrison, carried by a large revenue surplus, which Cleveland hoped to most of the key northeastern industrial states by narrow reduce by cutting the duties on necessities and on raw margins, thereby obtaining a comfortable majority in materials used in manufacturing. He devoted his entire the electoral college, 233 to 168. Although intelligent and able, Harrison was too reserved to make a good politician. One observer called him a “human iceberg.” During the Civil War 1 The mugwumps considered themselves reformers, but on social he fought under Sherman at and won a repu- and economic questions nearly all of them were very conservative. They were sound-money proponents and advocates of laissez-faire. tation as a stern, effective disciplinarian. In 1876 he Reform to them consisted almost entirely of doing away with cor- ran unsuccessfully for governor of Indiana, but in ruption and making the government more efficient. 1881 was elected to the Senate. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 537

African Americans in the South After Reconstruction 537

Harrison believed ardently in protective tariffs. His groups in an effort to split the Democratic South. In approach to fiscal policy was conservative, though he President Cleveland’s day African Americans had was freehanded in the matter of veterans’ pensions. No scarcely a friend in high places, North or South. In more flamboyant waver of the bloody shirt existed. 1887 Cleveland explained to a correspondent why he Harrison professed to favor civil service reform, but opposed “mixed [integrated] schools.” Expert opin- fashioned an unimpressive record on the question. He ion, the president said, believed “that separate schools appointed the vigorous young reformer Theodore were of much more benefit for the colored people.” Roosevelt to the Civil Service Commission and then Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur were Republicans, and proceeded to undercut him systematically. Before long Cleveland a Democrat; party made little difference. the frustrated Roosevelt was calling the president a Both parties subscribed to hypocritical statements “cold blooded, narrow minded, prejudiced, obstinate, about equality and constitutional rights, and neither timid old psalm singing politician.” did anything to implement them. Under Harrison, Congress distinguished itself by For a time blacks were not totally disenfranchised expending, for the first time in a period of peace, in the South. Rival white factions tried to manipulate more than $1 billion in a single session. It raised the them, and corruption flourished as widely as in the tariff to an all-time high. The Sherman Antitrust Act machine-dominated wards of the northern cities. In was also passed. the 1890s, however, the southern states, led by Harrison had little to do with the fate of any of Mississippi, began to deprive blacks of the vote these measures. The Republicans lost control of despite the Fifteenth Amendment. Poll taxes raised a Congress in 1890, and two years later Grover formidable economic barrier, one that also disenfran- Cleveland swept back into power, defeating Harrison chised many poor whites. Literacy tests completed the by more than 350,000 votes. work; a number of states provided a loophole for illit- erate whites by including an “understanding” clause Read the Document Pendleton Civil Service Act at www.myhistorylab.com whereby an illiterate person could qualify by demon- strating an ability to explain the meaning of a section View the Image Harrison and Morton Campaign Ad at of the state constitution when an election official read www.myhistorylab.com it to him. Blacks who attempted to take the test were uniformly declared to have failed it. African Americans in the South After In Louisiana, 130,000 blacks voted in the election of 1896. Then the law was changed. In 1900 only Reconstruction 5,000 votes were cast by blacks. “We take away the Perhaps the most important issue of the last quarter of Negroes’ votes,” a Louisiana politician explained, “to the nineteenth century was the fate of the former slaves protect them justas we would protect a little child and after the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. prevent it from injuring itself with sharp-edged tools.” Shortly after his inauguration in 1877, President Hayes Almost every Supreme Court decision after 1877 that made a goodwill tour of the South and he urged blacks affected blackssomehow nullified or curtailed their to trust southern whites. A new Era of Good Feelings rights. The civil rights cases (1883) declared the had dawned, he announced. Some southern leaders Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. Blacks who made earnest attempts to respect the civil rights of were refused equal accommodations or privileges by African Americans. That same year Governor Wade hotels, theaters, and other privately owned facilities Hampton of proposed to “secure to had no recourse at law, the Court announced. The every citizen, the lowest as well as the highest, black as Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed their civil rights well as white, full and equal protection in the enjoy- against invasion by the states, not by individuals. ment of all his rights under the Constitution.” Finally, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court But the pledge was not kept. By December, Hayes ruled that even in places of public accommodation, was sadly disillusioned. “By state legislation, by frauds, such as railroads and, by implication, schools, segre- by intimidation, and by violence of the most atrocious gation was legal as long as facilities of equal quality character, colored citizens have been deprived of the were provided: “If one race be inferior to the other right of suffrage,” he wrote in his diary. However, he socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot did nothing to remedy the situation. Frederick put them upon the same plane.” In a noble dissent in Douglass called Hayes’s policy “sickly conciliation.” the Plessy case, Justice John Marshall Harlan Hayes’s successors in the 1880s did no better. protested this line of argument. “Our Constitution is “Time is the only cure,” President Garfield said, color-blind,” he said. “The arbitrary separation of cit- thereby confessing that he had no policy at all. izens, on the basis of race . . . is a badge of servitude President Arthur gave federal patronage to antiblack wholly inconsistent with civil freedom. . . . The two 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 538

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A cartoon from Judge magazine in 1892 depicts Ku Klux Klansmen barring a black voter from the polls.

races in this country are indissolubly linked together, These schools had to overcome considerable and the interests of both require that the resistance and suspicion in the white community; they government of all shall not permit the seeds of race survived only because they taught a docile philoso- hatred to be planted under the sanction of law.” phy, preparing students to accept second-class citizen- More than half a century was to pass before the ship and become farmers and craftsmen. Since Court came around to Harlan’s reasoning and proficiency in academic subjects might have given the reversed the Plessy decision. Meanwhile, total segrega- lie to the southern belief that blacks were intellectu- tion was imposed throughout the South. Separate ally inferior to whites, such subjects were avoided. schools, prisons, hospitals, recreational facilities, and The southern insistence on segregating the public even cemeteries were provided for blacks, and these schools, buttressed by the separate but equal decision were almost never equal to those available to whites. of the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, imposed a Most Northernerssupported the government crushing financial burden on poor, sparsely settled and the Court. Newspapers presented a stereotyped, communities, and the dominant opinion that blacks derogatory picture of blacks, no matter what the were not really educable did not encourage these circumstances. Northern magazines, even high- communities to make special efforts in their behalf. quality publicationssuch as Harper’s, Scribner’s, and View the Image Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 at the Century, repeatedly made blacks the butt of www.myhistorylab.com crude jokes. The restoration of white rule abruptly halted the progress in public education for blacks that the Booker T. Washington: A “Reasonable” Reconstruction governments had made. Church groups and private foundations such as the Peabody Fund and Champion for African Americans the Slater Fund, financed chiefly by northern philan- Since nearly all contemporary biologists, physicians, thropists, supported black schools after 1877. Among and other supposed experts on race were convinced them were two important experiments in vocational that African Americans were inferior, white Americans training, Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute. generally accepted black inferiority as fact. Most did 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 539

Booker T. Washington: A “Reasonable” Champion for African Americans 539

not especially wish blacks ill; they simply consigned them complacently to oblivion, along with the Indians. A vicious was established. By denying blacks decent educational opportunities and good jobs, the dominant race could use the blacks’ resul- tant ignorance and poverty to justify the inferior facil- ities offered them. Southern blacks reacted to this deplorable situa- tion in a variety of ways. Some sought redress in racial pride and what would later be called black nationalism. Some became sodisaffected that they tried to revive the African colonization movement. “Africa is our ,” insisted Bishop Henry M. Turner, a huge, plainspoken man who had served as an army chaplain during the war and as a member of the Georgia legislature during Reconstruction. Another militant, T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New York Age and founder of the Afro- American League (1887), called on blacks to demand full civil rights, better schools, and fair wages and to fight againstdiscrimination of every sort. “Let usstand Booker T. Washington in his office at Tuskegee Institute, 1900. up like men in our own organization,” he urged. “If Washington chose a policy of accommodation. Washington did not urge blacks to accept inferiority and racial slurs but to ignore others use . . . violence to combat our peaceful argu- them. His own behavior was indeed subtle, even devious. In ments,itis not for us to run away from violence.” public he minimized the importance of civil and political rights. For a time, militancy and black separatism won Behind the scenes he lobbied against restrictive measures, few adherents among southern blacks. For one thing, marshaled large sums of money to fight test cases in the courts, life was better than it had been under slavery. and worked hard in northern states to organize the black vote and make sure that black political leaders got a share of the Segregation actually helped southern blacks who spoils of office. became barbers, undertakers,restaurateurs, and shop- keepers because whites were reluctant to supply such services to blacks. Even when whites competed with down your bucket where you are,” by which he meant black businesses, the resentment caused by segrega- stop fighting segregation and second-class citizenship tion led blacks to patronize establishments run by and concentrate on learning useful skills. “Dignify people of their own race. According to the most con- and glorify common labor,” he urged. “Agitation of servative estimates, the living standard of the average questions of racial equality is the extremest folly.” southern black more than doubled between 1865 and Progress up the social and economic ladder would 1900. But this only made many southern whites more come not from “artificial forcing” but from self- angry and vindictive. improvement. “There is as much dignity in tilling a This helps explain the tactics of Booker T. field as in writing a poem.” Washington, one of the most extraordinary Washington asked the whites of what he called Americans of that generation. Washington had been “our beloved South” to lend the blacks a hand in born a slave in Virginia in 1856. Laboriously he their efforts to advance themselves. If you will do so, obtained an education, supporting himself while a he promised, you will be “surrounded by the most student by working as a janitor. In 1881, with the patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people financial help of northern philanthropists,he that the world has seen.” founded Tuskegee Institute in . His experi- This Atlanta Compromise delighted white ences convinced Washington that blacks must lift Southerners and won Washington financial support themselves up by their own bootstraps but that they in every section of the country. He became one of mustalso accommodate themselves to white preju- the most powerful men in the United States, con- dices. A persuasive speaker and a brilliant fund- sulted by presidents,inclose touch with business raiser, he soon developed a national reputation as a and philanthropic leaders, and capable of influenc- “reasonable” champion of his race. (In 1891 ing in countless unobtrusive ways the fate of mil- Harvard awarded him an honorary degree.) lions of blacks. In 1895 Washington made a now-famous speech Blacks responded to the compromise with mixed to a mixed audience at the Cotton States International feelings. Accepting Washington’s approach might Exposition in Atlanta. To the blacks he said, “Cast relieve them of many burdens and dangers. Being 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 540

540 Chapter 20 From Smoke-Filled Rooms to Prairie Wildfire: 1877–1896

obsequious might, like discretion, be the better part 5,000 or more homeless people each Christmas,dis- of valor. But Washington was asking them to give up tributed new shoes to the poor children of his district specific rights in return for vague promises of future on his birthday, and arranged summer boat rides and help. The cost was high in surrendered personal dig- picnics for young and old alike. At any time of year the nity and lost hopes of obtaining real justice. victim of some sudden disaster could turn to the local Washington’s career illustrates the terrible clubhouse for help. Informally, probably without con- dilemma that American blacks have always faced: sciously intending to do so, the bosses educated the the choice between confrontation and accommoda- immigrants in the complexities of American civiliza- tion. This choice was particularly difficult in the late tion, helping them to leap the gulf between the almost nineteenth century. medieval society of their origins and the modern indus- trial world. The price of such aid—the bosses were not City Bosses altruists—was unquestioning political support, which Outside of the South, the main issue concerned munic- the bosses converted into cash. In New York, Sullivan ipal government. This was complicated by the religious levied tribute on gambling, had a hand in the liquor and ethnic character of the city dwellers and by the spe- business, and controlled the issuance of peddlers’ cial problems of late-nineteenth-century urban life: licenses. When he died in 1913, he was reputedly rapid, helter-skelter growth; the influx of European worth $1 million. Yet he and others like him were immigrants; the need to develop costly transportation, immensely popular; 25,000 grieving constituents fol- sanitation, and other public utility systems; and the lowed Big Tim’s coffin on its way to the grave. crime and corruption that the size, confusion, and The more visible and better-known city bosses anonymity incidental to urban existence fostered. played even less socially justifiable roles than the The immigrants who flocked into American cities ward bosses. Their principal technique for extract- in the 1880s and early 1890s were largely of peasant ing money from the public till was the kickback. To stock, and having come from societies unacquainted get city contracts, suppliers were made to pad their with democracy, they had no experience with repre- bills and, when paid for their work with funds from sentative government. The tendency of urban work- the city treasury, turn over the excess to the politi- ers to move frequently in search of better jobs further cians. Similarly, operators of streetcar lines, gas and lessened the likelihood that they would develop polit- electricity companies, and other public utilities ical influence independently. were compelled to pay huge bribes to obtain favor- Furthermore, the difficulties of life in the slums able franchises. bewildered and often overwhelmed newcomers, both The most notorious of the nineteenth-century native- and foreign-born. Hopeful, but passive and city bosses was William Marcy Tweed, whose “Tweed naive, they could hardly be expected to take a broad Ring” extracted tens of millions of dollars from New view of social problems when so beset by personal York City during the brief period of 1869–1871. ones. This enabled shrewd urban politicians—most of Tweed was swiftly jailed. More typical was Richard them in this period of Irish origin, since the Irish Croker, who ruled New York’s Tammany Hall orga- being the first-comers among the migrants and, nization from the mid-1880s to the end of the cen- according to mobility studies, more likely to stay tury. Croker held a number of local offices, but his put—to take command of the city masses and march power rested on his position as chairman of the them in obedient phalanxes to the polls. Tammany Hall finance committee. Although more Most city machines were loose-knit neighborhood concerned than Tweed with the social and economic organizations headed by ward bosses, not tightly services that machines provided, Croker was primarily geared hierarchical bureaucracies ruled by a single a corrupt political manipulator; he accumulated a leader. “Big Tim” Sullivan of New York’s Lower East large fortune and owned a mansion and a stable of Side and “Hinky Dink” Kenna of Chicago were typical racehorses, one of which was good enough to win the of the breed. Sullivan, Kenna, and others like them per- English Derby. formed many useful services for people they liked to Despite their welfare work and their popularity, think of as their constituents. They found jobs for new most bosses were essentially thieves. Efforts to arrivals and distributed food and other help to all in romanticize them as the Robin Hoods of industrial bad times. Anyone in trouble with the law could obtain society grossly distort the facts. However, the system at least a hearing from the ward boss, and often, if the developed and survived because too many middle- crime was minor or due to ignorance, the difficulty class city dwellers were indifferent to the fate of the was quietly “fixed” and the culprit wassent off with a poor. Except during occasional reform waves, few word of caution. Sullivan provided turkey dinners for tried to check the rapaciousness of the politicos. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 541

Crops and Complaints 541

Many substantial citizensshared at least indi- rich,” he said, “and nobody can attend to making rectly in the corruption. The owners of tenements the city fit to live in.” were interested in crowding as many rent payers as possible into their buildings. Utility companiesseek- ing franchises preferred a system that enabled them Crops and Complaints to buy favors. Honest citizens who had no selfish The vacuity of American politics may well have stake in the system and who were repelled by the sor- stemmed from the complacency of the middle-class didness of city government were seldom sufficiently majority. The country was growing; no foreign enemy concerned to do anything about it. When young threatened it; the poor were mostly recent immi- Theodore Roosevelt decided to seek a political career grants, blacks, and others with little influence, who in 1880, his New York socialite laughed in his were easily ignored by those in comfortable circum- face. They told him, Roosevelt wrote in his autobiog- stances. However, one important group in society raphy, “that politics were ‘low’; that the organiza- suffered increasingly as the years rolled by: the farm- tions were not controlled by ‘gentlemen’; that I ers. Out of their travail came the force that finally, in would find them run by saloonkeepers, horse-car the 1890s, brought American politics face to face conductors, and the like.” with the problems of the age. Many so-called urban reformers resented the After the Civil War, however, farmers did well. boss system mainly because it gave political power Harvests were bountiful and wheat prices high at over a to people who were not “gentlemen” or, as one dollar a bushel in the early 1870s. Well into the 1880s reformer put it, to a “proletarian mob” of “illiterate farmers on the plains experienced boom conditions. In peasants, freshly raked from Irish bogs, or that decade the population of Kansas increased by Bohemian mines, or Italian robber nests.” A British 43 percent, that of by 134 percent, and that visitor in Chicago struck at the root of the urban of the Dakotas by 278 percent. Land prices rose and problem of the era. “Everybody is fighting to be farmers borrowed money to expand their farms.

A farm family in Custer, Nebraska, in 1888, a region where Populist sentiment was strong. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 542

542 Chapter 20 From Smoke-Filled Rooms to Prairie Wildfire: 1877–1896

In the 1890s disaster struck. First came a succes- sion of dry years and poor harvests. Then farmers in Australia, Canada, Russia, and Argentina took advan- tage of improvements in transportation to sell their produce in European markets that had relied on American foodstuffs. The price of wheat fell to about sixty cents a bushel. Cotton, the great southern sta- ple, which sold for more than thirty cents a pound in 1866 and fifteen cents in the early 1870s, at times in the 1890s fell below six cents. The tariff on manufactured goods appeared to aggravate the farmers’ predicament, and so did the domestic marketing system, which enabled a multi- tude of middlemen to gobble up a large share of the profits of agriculture. The shortage of credit, particu- larly in the South, was an additional burden. The downward swing of the business cycle in the early 1890s completed the devastation. Settlers who had paid more for their lands than they were worth and borrowed money at high interest rates to do so found themselvessqueezed relentlessly. Thousands lost their farms and returned eastward, penniless and dispirited. The population of Nebraska increased by fewer than 4,000 persons in the entire decade of the 1890s.

The Populist Movement The agricultural depression triggered a new outburst of farm radicalism, the Alliance movement. Alliances were organizations of farmers’ clubs, most of which In Kansas in 1893 a Populist governor and a Populist-controlled had sprung up during the bad times of the late 1870s. Senate invalidated the election of some Republicans in the Kansas The first Knights of Reliance group was founded in House of Representatives, giving the Populists control of that body, too. The displaced Republicans, denied seats, smashed their way 1877 in Lampasas County, . As the Farmers’ into the capitol building with this sledgehammer and ousted the Alliance, this organization gradually expanded in Populists, who decided to meet in a separate building. Each northeastern Texas, and after 1885 it spread rapidly proclaimed itself to be the true legislature and passed its own laws. throughout the cotton states. Alliance leaders stressed Eventually the Kansas Supreme Court decided in favor of the cooperation. Their co-ops bought fertilizer and other Republican legislature and disbanded the Populist gathering. Source: Kansas State Historical Society. supplies in bulk and sold them at fair prices to mem- bers. They sought to market their crops cooperatively but could not raise the necessary capital from banks, swept Kansas, captured a majority in the Nebraska leg- with the result that some of them began to question islature, and accumulated enough seats in Minnesota the workings of the American financial and monetary and South Dakota to hold the balance of power system. They became economic and social radicals in between the major parties. the process. A similar though less influential Alliance Such success, coupled with the reluctance of the movement developed in the North. Republicans and Democrats to make concessions to Although the state alliances of the Dakotas and their demands, encouraged Alliance leaders to create a Kansas joined the Southern Alliance in 1889, for a time new national party. By uniting southern and western local prejudices and conflicting interests prevented the farmers, they succeeded in breaking the sectional bar- formation of a single national organization. But the farm rier erected by the Civil War. If they could recruit groups emerged as a potent force in the 1890 elections. industrial workers, perhaps a real political revolution In the South, Alliance-sponsored gubernatorial could be accomplished. In February 1892, farm lead- candidates won in Georgia, , South Carolina, ers, representatives of the Knights of Labor, and vari- and Texas; eight southern legislatures fell under ous professional reformers, some 800 in all, met at Alliance control, and forty-four representatives and St. Louis. They organized the People’s (Populist) three senators committed to Alliance objectives were party, and issued a call for a national convention to sent to Washington. In the West, Alliance candidates meet at Omaha in July. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 543

The Populist Movement 543

and economic injustices not to built-in inequities in the system but to nefarious conspiracies organized by selfish interests in order to subvert the system. The appearance of the new party was the most exciting and significant aspect of the presidential cam- paign of 1892, which saw Harrison and Cleveland refighting the election of 1888. The Populists put forth a host of colorful spellbinders: Tom Watson, a Georgia congressman whose temper was such that on one occasion he administered a beating to a local planter with the man’s own riding crop; William A. Peffer, a senator from Kansas whose long beard and grave demeanor gave him the look of a Hebrew prophet; “Sockless Jerry” Simpson of Kansas, unlet- tered but full of grassroots shrewdness and wit, a for- mer Greenbacker, and an admirer of the single tax doctrine of Henry George; and Ignatius Donnelly, the “Minnesota Sage,” who claimed to be an author- ity on science, economics, and Shakespeare. (He believed that Francis Bacon wrote the plays.) In the one-party South, Populist strategists sought to wean black farmers away from the ruling Democratic organization. Southern black farmers had their own Colored Farmers’ Alliance, and even before Mary Elizabeth Lease was a prominent Populist, noted for her 1892 their leaders had worked closely with the white rallying cry to “raise less corn and more hell.” alliances. Nearly 100 black delegates had attended the Source: Kansas State Historical Society. Populist convention at St. Louis. Of course, the blacks would be useless to the party if they could not vote; That convention nominated General James B. therefore, white Populist leaders opposed the south- Weaver of Iowa for president (with a one-legged ern trend toward disfranchising African Americans and Confederate veteran as his running mate) and drafted called for full civil rights for all. a platform that called for a graduated income tax and The results proved disappointing. Tom Watson lost national ownership of railroads, the telegraph, and hisseat in Congress, and Donnelly ran a poor third in telephone systems. It also advocated a “subtreasury” the Minnesota gubernatorial race. The Populists did plan that would permit farmers to keep nonperishable sweep Kansas. They elected numbers of local officials in crops off the market when prices were low. Under this other western states and cast over a million votes for proposal the government would make loans in the General Weaver. But the effort to unite white and black form of greenbacks to farmers, secured by crops held farmers in the South failed miserably. Conservative in storage in federal warehouses. When prices rose, Democrats, while continuing with considerable success the farmers could sell their crops and repay the loans. to attract black voters, played on racial fears cruelly, To combat deflation further, the platform demanded insisting that the Populistssought to undermine white the unlimited coinage of silver and an increase in the supremacy. Since most white Populistssaw the alliance money supply “to no less than $50 per capita.” with blacks as at best a marriage of convenience, this To make the government more responsive to argument had a deadly effect. Elsewhere, even in the old public opinion, the Populists urged the adoption of centers of the Granger movement, the party made no the initiative and referendum procedures and the significant impression. Urban workers remained aloof. election of U.S. senators by popular vote. To win the By standing firmly for conservative financial poli- support of industrial workers, their platform cies, Cleveland attracted considerable Republican sup- denounced the use of Pinkerton detectives in labor port and won a solid victory over Harrison in the disputes and backed the eight-hour day and the electoral college, 277 to 145. Weaver received twenty- restriction of “undesirable” immigration. two electoral votes. The Populists saw themselves not as a persecuted minority but as a victimized majority betrayed by Read the Document Mary Elizabeth Lease, the Populist Crusader at www.myhistorylab.com what would a century later be called the establish- ment. They were at most ambivalent about the free Read the Document The People’s Party Platform enterprise system, and they tended to attribute social at www.myhistorylab.com 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 544

544 Chapter 20 From Smoke-Filled Rooms to Prairie Wildfire: 1877–1896

Showdown on Silver gold mines in in the 1840s and 1850s depressed the price of gold relative to silver. By One conclusion that politicians reached after analyz- 1861, a silver dollar could be melted down and sold ing the 1892 election was that the money question, for $1.03. No miner took silver to the mint to be particularly the controversy over the coinage of silver, stamped into coin. In a short time, silver dollars was of paramount interest to the voters. Despite the were withdrawn and only gold dollars circulated. wide-ranging appeal of the Populist platform, most of However, an avalanche of silver from the mines of Weaver’s strength came from the silver-mining states. Nevada and gradually depressed the price In truth, the issue of gold versus silver was until, around 1874, it again became profitable for superficial; the important question was what, if any- miners to coin their bullion. Alas, when they tried to thing, should be done to check the deflationary spi- do so, they discovered that the Coinage Act of ral. The declining price level benefited people with 1873, taking account of the fact that no silver had fixed incomes and injured most others. Industrial been presented to the mint in years, had demone- workers profited from deflation except when depres- tized the metal. sion caused unemployment. Silver miners denounced this as the “Crime of By the early 1890s, discussion of federal mone- ‘73.” Inflationists joined them in demanding a tary policy revolved around the coinage of silver. return to . They knew that if more dol- Traditionally, the United States had been on a lars were put into circulation, the value of each dol- bimetallic standard. Both gold and silver were lar would decline; that is, prices and wages would coined, the number of grains of each in the dollar rise. Conservatives, still fighting the battle against being adjusted periodically to reflect the commercial inflationary greenback paper money, resisted value of the two metals. The discovery of numerous strongly. The result was a series of compromises. In

L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and a fan of , perhaps wrote his story as an allegory of the 1896 election. Dorothy, wearing “silver” slippers (in the original), follows a “yellow brick road” (gold) on a crusade to free the Munchkins (the oppressed little people) from the Wicked Witch of the East (the rapacious corporations and financiers). Liberation is to come in Emerald City (greenbacks) through the intervention of a kindly, but ultimately ineffective wizard (Bryan). Only the entire people—Dorothy and entourage— can prevail against wickedness. starred as Dorothy in the film version of The Wizard of Oz (1939). Source: The Wizard of Oz ©1939 The Kobal Collection/ MGM. Warner Brothers Motion Picture Titles. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 545

The Depression of 1893 545

1878 the Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act and by exerting immense political pressure he authorized the buying of between $2 million and obtained the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase $4 million of silver a month at the market price, Act in October 1893. this accomplished was but this had little inflationary effect because the to split the Democratic party, its southern and western government consistently purchased the minimum wings deserting him almost to a man. amount. The commercial price of silver continued During 1894 and 1895, while the nation floun- to fall. In 1890 the Sherman Silver Purchase Act dered in the worst depression it had ever experienced, required the government to buy 4.5 million ounces a series of events further undermined public confi- of silver monthly, but in the face of increasing sup- dence. In the spring of 1894 several “armies”ofthe plies the price of silver fell still further. By 1894, a unemployed, the most imposing led by Jacob S. silver coin weighed thirty-two times more than a Coxey, an eccentric Ohio businessman, marched on gold one. Washington to demand relief. Coxey wanted the gov- The compromises satisfied no one. Silver miners ernment to undertake a program of federal public grumbled because their bullion brought in only half works and other projects to hire unemployed workers what it had in the early 1870s. Debtors noted to build roads. angrily that because of the general decline in prices, When Coxey’s group of demonstrators, perhaps the dollars they used to meet their obligations were 500 in all, reached Washington, he and two other worth more than twice as much as in 1865. leaders were arrested for trespassing on the grounds Advocates of the gold standard feared that unlimited of the Capitol. Their followers were dispersed by silver coinage would be authorized, “destroying the club-wielding policemen. This callous treatment con- value of the dollar.” vinced many Americans that the government had lit- tle interest in the suffering of the people, an opinion strengthened when Cleveland, in July 1894, used fed- The Depression of 1893 eral troops to crush the . Both the and “gold bugs” warned of eco- The next year the Supreme Court handed down nomic disaster if their policies were not followed. several reactionary decisions. In United States v. Then, in 1893, after the London banking house of E. C. Knight Company it refused to employ the Baring Brothers collapsed, a financial panic precipi- Sherman Antitrust Act to break up the Sugar Trust. tated a worldwide industrial depression. In the The Court also denied a writ of habeas corpus to United States hundreds of cotton mills and iron Eugene V. Debs of the American Railway Union, foundries closed, never to reopen. During the harsh who was languishing in prison for disobeying a fed- winter of 1893–1894, millions were without jobs. eral injunction during the Pullman strike. Discontented industrial workers added their voices to On top of these indications of official conser- the complaints of the midwestern farmers. vatism came a desperate financial crisis. Throughout President Cleveland believed that the controversy 1894 the Treasury’s supply of gold dwindled as over silver had caused the depression by shaking the worried citizens exchanged greenbacks (now con- confidence of the business community and that all vertible into gold) for hard money and foreign would be well if the country returned to a single gold investors cashed in large amounts of American secu- standard. He summoned a special session of Congress, rities. The government tried to sell bonds for gold

Table 20.1 The Supreme Court Supports Racial Segregation and Corporate Power

Civil Rights Cases 1883 Overturned Civil Rights Act of 1875 Limited Fourteenth Amendment to protecting blacks from deprivation of rights by states; allowed individuals to do so Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 Upheld principle of “separate but equal” Allowed southern states and municipalities in public accommodations to pass laws enforcing separation of whites and blacks U.S. v. E.C.Knight Co. 1895 Refused to break up the Sugar Trust for Rendered the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 being a monopoly nearly meaningless In Re Debs 1895 Refused to free Eugene V. Debs, president Enabled the government to use injunctions to of the American Railway Union who had stop strikes, thereby depriving union leaders of been jailed for leading a strike the chance to plead their case in court 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 546

546 Chapter 20 From Smoke-Filled Rooms to Prairie Wildfire: 1877–1896

to bolster the reserve, but the gold reserve contin- grow in the streets of every city in the country.” He ued to melt away. Early in 1895 it touched a low ended with a marvelous figure of speech that set the point of $41 million. tone for the coming campaign. “You shall not press At this juncture a syndicate of bankers headed down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns,” by J. P. Morgan turned the tide by underwriting a he warned, bringing his hands down suggestively to $62 million bond issue, guaranteeing that half the his temples.“Youshall not crucify mankind upon a gold would come from Europe. This caused a great cross of gold!” Dramatically, he extended his arms to public outcry; the spectacle of the nation being the side, the very figure of the crucified Christ. saved from bankruptcy by a private banker infuri- The convention promptly adopted a platform call- ated millions. ing for “the free and unlimited coinage of both silver As the presidential election of 1896 approached, and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1” and with the Populists demanding unlimited coinage of sil- went on to nominate Bryan, who was barely thirty-six, ver, the major parties found it impossible to continue for president. straddling the money question. The Populist vote had This action put tremendous pressure on the increased by 42 percent in the 1894 congressional Populists. If they supported the Democrat Bryan, they elections. Southern and western Democratic leaders risked losing their party ; if they nominated feared that they would lose their following unless another candidate, they would ensure McKinley’s Cleveland was repudiated. Western Republicans, led by election. In part because the delegates could not find a Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, were threaten- person of stature willing to become a candidate ing to bolt to the Populists unless their party came out against Bryan, the Populist convention nominated for silver coinage. After a generation of political equiv- him, seeking to preserve the party identity by substi- ocation, the major parties had to face an important tuting Watson for the Democratic vice-presidential issue squarely. nominee, Arthur Sewall of Maine. The Republicans, meeting to choose a candidate Read the Document William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold at St. Louis in June 1896, announced for the gold Speech at www.myhistorylab.com standard. “We are unalterably opposed to every mea- sure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country,” the platform declared. “We are therefore opposed to the free coinage of silver. . . . The Election of 1896 The existing gold standard must be maintained.” The Never did a presidential campaign raise such intense party then nominated Ohio’s William McKinley for emotions. The Republicans from the silver-mining president. McKinley, best known for his staunch states swung solidly behind Bryan. But many solid- advocacy of the protective tariff yet highly regarded money Democrats, especially in the Northeast, by labor, was expected to run strongly in the Midwest refused to accept the decision of the Chicago con- and the East. vention. Cleveland professed to be “so dazed by the The Democratic convention met in July in political situation that I am in no condition for Chicago. The pro-gold Cleveland element made a speech or thought on the subject.” Many others hard fight, but the silveritesswept them aside. The adopted the policy of Governor David B. Hill of high point came when a youthful Nebraskan named New York, who said, “I am a Democrat still—very William Jennings Bryan spoke for silver against gold, still.” The extreme gold bugs, calling themselves for western farmers against the industrial East. Bryan’s National Democrats, nominated their own candi- every sentence provoked ear-shattering applause: date, seventy-nine-year-old Senator John M. Palmer of Illinois. Palmer ran only to injure Bryan. “Fellow We have petitioned and our petitions have been Democrats,” he announced, “I will not consider it scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have any great fault if you decide to cast your vote for been disregarded; we have begged, and they have William McKinley.” mocked when our calamity came. We beg no At the start the Republicansseemed to have longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. everything in their favor. Bryan’s youth and relative We defy them! lack of political experience—two terms in the House—contrasted unfavorably with McKinley’s dis- The crowd responded like a great choir to Bryan’s tinguished war record, his long service in Congress oratorical cues. “Burn down your cities and leave our and as governor of Ohio, and his reputation for hon- farms,” he said, “and your cities will spring up again as esty and good judgment. The severe depression if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will operated in favor of the party out of power, although 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 547

DEBATING THE PAST Populism—Crusade of Cranks or Potent Grass-Roots Protest?

n February 2010 the National Tea Party held its first conven- foundations of Franklin Roosevelt’s . Central to Ition. Sarah Palin, Republican candidate for Vice President in Kazin’s analysis was Bryan’s mastery of an impassioned 2008, delivered the keynote address.“This movement is rhetorical style that appealed to the common person and about the people,”she added,“and Washington has broken mobilized the masses. trust with the people.”Palin’s broad definition of “populism” Palin’s oratory and the Tea Party protests in some evoked the grass-roots insurgency of farmers and industrial ways resemble Bryan’s combative rhetoric style. But Palin’s workers that culminated in the Populist party of the 1890s. critics note that few common people could have afforded Back then, well-educated Americans generally dis- the $349 cost of a ticket to hear her speech in Nashville, missed the Populists as ill-informed and simple-minded, which helped pay her $100,000 fee. Perhaps the most and this disdain persisted well into the twentieth century. important point is that Palin’s supporters and critics alike But in 1931 historian John D. Hicks championed the seek to lay claim to a “populist” label dating back to the Populists as far-sighted reformers who sought to protect 1880s and 1890s. small farmers from the excesses of rapacious railroad barons and eastern financiers. Although the Populist move- Source: John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt (1931); Richard Hofstadter, The Age of ment swiftly collapsed, Hicks insisted that its ideas showed Reform (1955); Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise (1976); Michael Kazin, “an amazing vitality.” A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006). But as Hitler seized power later in the 1930s by appeal- ing to the prejudices of the German masses, American intel- lectuals returned to their skepticism toward grass-roots populism. Historian Richard Hofstadter charged the Populists with bigotry and derided their nostalgia for the past. In 1976 Lawrence Goodwyn countered Hofstadter’s criticisms.The Populists were not backward-looking cranks, but activists in a “cooperative crusade”whose main goal— weakening the monopoly power of the corporations—was sound. But Goodwyn’s assertion raised another question: If the Populists were on the right track, why did their move- ment die out? In 2006 Michael Kazin declared that Bryan had not failed. On the contrary, the Populist movement had laid the

Sarah Palin, latter-day proponent of populism at a Tea Party convention in Nashville (2010), sought to “go back to our roots as a God-fearing nation” that would “start seeking some divine A William Jennings Bryan poster alludes to religion: “no crown of intervention.” thorns” and “no cross of gold.”

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548 Chapter 20 From Smoke-Filled Rooms to Prairie Wildfire: 1877–1896

streets outside. His energy was amazing, and his charm and good humor were unfailing. At one whistle-stop, while he was shaving in his compart- ment, a small group outside the train began clamor- ing for a glimpse of him. Flinging open the window and beaming through the lather, he shook hands cheerfully with each of the admirers. Everywhere he hammered away at the money question. Yet he did not totally neglect other issues. He was defending, he said, “all the people who suffer from the opera- tions of trusts, syndicates, and combines.” McKinley’s campaign was managed by a new type of politician, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, an Ohio busi- nessman. In a sense Hanna was a product of the Pendleton Civil Service Act. When deprived of the contributions of officeholders, the parties turned to business for funds, and Hanna was one of the first leaders with a foot in both camps. Politics fascinated him, and despite his wealth and wide interests, he was willing to labor endlessly at the routine work of polit- ical organization. Hanna aspired to be a kingmaker and early fas- tened on McKinley, whose charm he found irre- sistible, as the vehicle for satisfying his ambition. He spent about $100,000 of his own money on the pre- convention campaign. His attitude toward the candi- William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech inspired this date, one mutual friend observed, was “that of a big, cartoonist’s caricature of it as “plagiarized from the Bible.” Bryan’s speech in favor of bimetallism was, in fact, studded with religious bashful boy toward the girl he loves.” references. He described the unlimited coinage of silver and gold as Before most Republicans realized how effective a “holy cause” supported by those who built churches “where they Bryan was on the stump, Hanna perceived the danger praise their Creator.” and sprang into action. Certain that money was the key to political power, he raised an enormous campaign fund. When business- by repudiating Cleveland the Democrats escaped men hesitated to contribute, he pried open their purses much of the burden of explaining away his errors. by a combination of persuasiveness and intimidation. The newspapers came out almost unanimously for Banks and insurance companies were “assessed” a per- the Republicans. accused Bryan centage of their assets, big corporations a share of their of being insane, his affliction being variously classi- receipts, until some $3.5 million had been collected. fied as “paranoia querulenta,” “graphomania,” and Hanna disbursed these funds with efficiency and “oratorical monomania.” The Democrats had very imagination. He sent 1,500 speakers into the doubt- little money and few well-known speakers to fight ful districts and blanketed the land with 250 million the campaign. pieces of campaign literature, printed in a dozen lan- But Bryan proved a formidable opponent. guages. “He has advertised McKinley as if he were a Casting aside tradition, he took to the stump per- patent medicine,” Theodore Roosevelt, never at a loss sonally, traveling 18,000 miles and making over for words, exclaimed. 600 speeches. He was one of the greatest of orators. Incapable of competing with Bryan as a swayer of A big, handsome man with a voice capable of carry- mass audiences, McKinley conducted a “front-porch ing without strain to the far corners of a great hall campaign.” This technique dated from the first yet equally effective before a cluster of auditors at a Harrison-Cleveland election, when Harrison regularly rural crossroads, he projected an image of absolute delivered off-the-cuff speeches to groups of visitors rep- sincerity without appearing fanatical or argumenta- resenting special interests or regions in his hometown tive. At every major stop on his tour, huge crowds of Indianapolis. The system conserved the candidate’s assembled. In Minnesota he packed the 10,000-seat energies and enabled him to avoid the appearance of St. Paul Auditorium, while thousands milled in the seeking the presidency too openly—which was still 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 549

The Meaning of the Election 549

considered bad form—and at the same time allowed The Meaning of the Election him to make headlines throughout the country. Guided by the masterful Hanna, McKinley brought During the campaign, some frightened Republicans the front-porch method to perfection. Superficially the had laid plans for fleeing the country if Bryan were proceedings were delightfully informal. From every cor- elected, and belligerent ones, such as Theodore ner of the land, groups representing various regions, Roosevelt, then police commissioner of New York occupations, and interests descended on McKinley’s City, readied themselves to meet the “social revolu- unpretentious frame house in Canton, Ohio. Gathering tionaries” on the battlefield. Victory sent such people on the lawn—the grass wassoon reduced to mud, the into transports of joy. Most conservatives concluded fence stripped of pickets by souvenir hunters—the visi- that the way of life they so fervently admired had tors paid their compliments to the candidate and heard been saved for all time. him deliver a brief speech, while beside him on the However heartfelt, such sentiments were not porch his aged mother and adoring invalid wife listened founded on fact. With workersstanding beside capi- with rapt attention. Then there was a small reception, talists and with the farm vote split, it cannot be said during which the delegates were given an opportunity that the election divided the nation class against to shake their host’s hand. class or that McKinley’s victory saved the country Despite the air of informality, these performances from revolution. were carefully staged. The delegations arrived on a Far from representing a triumph for the status tightly coordinated schedule worked out by McKinley’s quo, the election marked the coming of age of staff and the railroads, which operated cut-rate modern America. The battle between gold and sil- excursion trains to Canton from all over the nation. ver, which everyone had considered so vital, had McKinley was fully briefed on the special interests and little real significance. The inflationists seemed to attitudes of each group, and the speeches of delegation have been beaten, but new discoveries of gold in leaders were submitted in advance. Often his secretary Alaska and South Africa and improved methods of amended these remarks, and on occasion McKinley extracting gold from low-grade ores soon led to a wrote the visitors’ speeches himself. His own talks were great expansion of the money supply. In any case, carefully prepared, each calculated to make a particular within two decades the system of basing the vol- point. All were reported fully in the newspapers. Thus ume of currency on bullion had been abandoned. without moving from his doorstep, McKinley met Bryan and the “political” Populists who supported thousands of people from every section of the country. him, supposedly the advance agents of revolution, These tactics worked admirably. On election day were oriented more toward the past than the McKinley collected 271 electoral votes to Bryan’s 176, future; their ideal was the rural America of the popular vote being 7,036,000 to 6,468,000. Jefferson and Jackson. McKinley, for all his innate conservatism, was View the Image McKinley and Hobart Campaign Poster at capable of looking ahead toward the new century. His www.myhistorylab.com approach was national where Bryan’s was basically parochial. Though never daring and seldom imaginative, McKinley was able to deal pragmatically with current prob- lems. Before long, as the United States became increasingly an exporter of manufactures, he would even modify his posi- tion on the tariff. And no one better reflected the spirit of the age than , the outstanding political realist of his gener- ation. Far from preventing change, the outcome of the election of 1896 made possible still greater changes as the Campaign buttons for McKinley and Bryan in 1896. Bryan sought to expand the money supply United States moved into the through the coinage of silver dollars; McKinley sought to remain with the gold standard. twentieth century. 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 550

MAPPING THE PAST Agrarian Discontent and the Populist Challenge

Falling Prices and Farm CANADA WASHINGTON MAINE NORTH Tenancy MINNESOTA MONTANA DAKOTA VT. N.H. After 1870 the falling price of NEW OREGON MASS. wheat and cotton (see the SOUTH WISCONSIN YORK IDAHO MICHIGAN CONN. R.I. DAKOTA WYOMING graph,below) spelled disas- PENNSYLVANIA ter to farmers who were IOWA N.J. NEBRASKA OHIO MD. NEVADA DEL. obliged to make fixed pay- INDIANA WEST ILLINOIS UTAH VIRGINIA ments on their mortgages. COLORADO VIRGINIA KANSAS Beleaguered farmers joined NORTH CALIFORNIA OKLAHOMA CAROLINA the Farmers’Alliance and simi- TENNESSEE TERR. SOUTH lar organizations to pool NEW INDIAN CAROLINA TERRITORY MEXICO TERR. resources and negotiate better TERRITORY MISS. GEORGIA ATLANTIC deals with railroads,banks,and ALABAMA grain merchants.Nevertheless,many TEXAS OCEAN farmers fell behind in their mortgage LOUISIANA Percentage of all payments; millions became bankrupt farmers, 1900 63 Gulf of and lost their farms,obliging them to 55 MEXICO work as sharecroppers,tenant farmers, 40 Mexico 20 or hired hands in the fields. 4 To avert bankruptcy, farmers Sharecroping and Tenancy, 1880–1900 Sharecropping and farm tenancy, which had increasingly formed political prevailed in the South since the Civil War, spread to other parts of the nation after 1880. groups whose chief goal was to drive up farm prices. Many blamed falling prices on the federal govern- increased their delegation in the House by 100 votes.This ment’s return to hard money after the Civil War. Not enough defeat prompted Democrats from the West and South to gold had been minted into dollars during the subsequent reach out to the Populists in 1896; the Democratic party then decades of economic expansion. As more goods were pro- adopted a platform that endorsed the free coinage of silver, duced with a constant or slowly-rising supply of gold dollars, and nominated William Jennings Bryan, a proponent of silver prices fell.Thus the farmers lobbied for an infusion of new currency, for president. currency—greenbacks as well as silver dollars—to raise The Republicans nominated William McKinley, whose prices.“We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge endorsement of the gold standard, though ambiguously of moral, political and material ruin,”declared the People’s worded, ensured that the election of 1896 would be the party in 1892.The nation must abandon the “gold standard.” most sharply defined since the Civil War. On election day,Bryan won in the South,the Plains states, The Rise of Populism in Texas and the Rocky Mountain region.But McKinley carried the East; That Populism was fueled by agrarian discontent is reflected in Index: 1913 = 100 the accompanying map of Texas in the 1890s.In Texas, the 200 birthplace of the Knights of Reliance (Lampasas County) and 180 the Southern Alliance, Populists made the most gains in the 160 Wheat prices marginal cotton-growing counties, the drier counties near the 140 western edge of the cotton-cultivating frontier, and the pine 120 woods of east Texas.Conversely, the more prosperous farming lands of the Black and Grand prairies rarely voted Populist. 100 Populism appealed most to marginal farmers. 80 60 Bryan versus McKinley in 1896 40 Consumer prices 20 Cotton prices The depression of 1893, which lasted much of the decade, 0 altered the geography of American politics. President 1865 1869 1873 1877 1881 1885 1889 1893 Cleveland’s defense of the gold standard fractured the Wheat and Cotton Prices and Consumer Price Indexes, Democrats. In the congressional election of 1894, 1865–1896 Farm prices fell by about 50 percent after the Civil War; Republicans seized control of both houses of Congress and the Consumer Price Index declined, too, though less precipitously.

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the Midwest,including even Iowa, Minnesota,and ; and the Pacific Coast states of Oregon and California. The sharp sectional division marked the failure of the Populist effort to unite northern and southern farmers and also the triumph of the industrial part of the country over the agricultural.Business and financial interests voted solidly for the Republicans, P r a i r i e fearing that a Bryan victory would bring d n e economic chaos.When one Nebraska a i r r i landowner tried to float a mortgage during G a the campaign,a loan company official r P

wrote to him: “If McKinley is elected,we k TEXAS c think we will be in the market,but we do a Lampasas l not care to make any investments while B County there is an uncertainty as to what kind of money a person will be paid back in.” Other social and economic interests were far from being united. Many thou- sands of farmers voted for McKinley, as his MEXICO success in states such as North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota proved. In the farm Gulf of areas north of the Ohio and east of the County carried by the Populists more Missouri Rivers, the agricultural depres- than once between 1892 and 1898 Mexico sion was not severe, and farm radicalism Areas in which the true value of real estate and improvements exceed $10 per acre was almost nonexistent. Westward limit of extensive cotton A preponderance of the labor vote cultivation C. 1890 also went to the Republicans. In part this resulted from the tremendous pressures Populism in Texas, 1892–1898 Populism was strongest in the cotton-farming region of that many industrialists applied to their Texas—east of the red-colored line. But the Populists carried few of the counties in the workers. “Men,”one manufacturer fertile Grande and Black prairies. The poorer cotton-farming counties, such as Lampasas announced,“vote as you please, but if Bryan (birthplace of the Knights of Reliance in 1877), were more likely to elect Populist candidates. is elected . . . the whistle will not blow Wednesday morning.”Some companies placed orders for materials subject to CANADA

cancellation if the Democrats won.Yet WASHINGTON MAINE coercion was not a major factor, for NORTH MINNESOTA MONTANA DAKOTA VT. N.H. McKinley was highly regarded in labor NEW OREGON MASS. SOUTH WISCONSIN YORK circles.While governor of Ohio, he had R.I. IDAHO WYOMING DAKOTA MICHIGAN CONN. advocated the arbitration of industrial PENNSYLVANIA IOWA N.J. NEBRASKA OHIO MD. disputes and backed a law fining NEVADA DEL. INDIANA WEST employers who refused to permit work- UTAH ILLINOIS VIRGINIA COLORADO VIRGINIA ers to join unions. He had invariably KANSAS MISSOURI KENTUCKY CALIFORNIA NORTH based his advocacy of high tariffs on the CAROLINA OKLAHOMA TENNESSEE TERR. argument that American wage levels ARIZONA NEW ARKANSAS SOUTH TERRITORY MEXICO INDIAN CAROLINA would be depressed if foreign goods TERRITORY TERR. MISS. GEORGIA ATLANTIC could enter the country untaxed.The LOUISIANA ALABAMA Republicans carried nearly all the large TEXAS Election of 1896 OCEAN Electoral vote Popular votes cities, and in closely contested states States decisive to the by state cast outcome of the election FLORIDA Republican such as Illinois and Ohio this made the McKinley, Republican (McKinley)GulfG ulf 271ooff 7,036,000 Democrat difference between victory and defeat. Bryan, Democrat (Bryan) MMexicoexi176co 6,468,000 Territories not voting Total 447 13,504,000 Questions for Bryan vs. McKinley, 1896 Democrat/Populist Bryan carried much of the South and West, and Discussion most of the farming regions of the plains. But he failed to win over enough industrial workers to take states in the North. ■ What is the relationship between falling prices and sharecropping and farm tenancy? How do the maps of Populism in Texas and the elec- ■ In the 1896 election, where were Bryan’s strongest tion of 1896 confirm a correlation between agrarian sources of support? McKinley’s? What parts of Texas did discontents and Populist support? Bryan carry?

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552 Chapter 20 From Smoke-Filled Rooms to Prairie Wildfire: 1877–1896

Chapter Review

Milestones

1872 Ulysses Grant is reelected president 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act requires government 1873 Congress suspends the coining of silver (“Crime silver purchase of ‘73”) 1890– Blacks are deprived of the vote in the South 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes is elected president 1900 1877 Farmers’ Alliance movement is founded 1892 People’s (Populist) party is founded 1878 Bland-Allison Act authorizes government Cleveland is elected president a second time silver purchases 1893 Sherman Silver Purchase Act is repealed 1879 Specie payments resume 1893 causes industrial depression 1880 James Garfield is elected president 1894 Coxey’s Army marches to Washington to 1881 Garfield is assassinated; Grover Cleveland demand relief becomes president 1895 Supreme Court declares federal income tax 1881 Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute unconstitutional (Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and for blacks Trust Company) 1883 Pendleton Act creates Civil Service Commission Booker T. Washington urges self-improvement in Supreme Court Overturns Civil Rights Act of Atlanta Compromise Speech 1875 in the civil rights cases J. P. Morgan raises $62 million in gold for the 1884 Republicans support Democrats during U.S. Treasury Mugwump Movement 1896 William Jennings Bryan delivers “Cross of Grover Cleveland is elected president Gold” speech 1887 Interstate Commerce Act regulates railroad rates William McKinley is elected president Cleveland delivers tariff message Supreme Court upholds “separate but equal” in 1888 Benjamin Harrison is elected president Plessy v. Ferguson Englishman James Bryce analyzes American politics in The American Commonwealth

Key Terms Atlanta Compromise A social policy, propounded Pendleton Act An 1883 law bringing civil service by black leader Booker T. Washington in 1895, reform to federal employment; it classified many advocating that blacks concentrate on learning use- government jobs and required competitive exams ful skills rather than agitate over segregation, dis- for these positions, 535 franchisement, and discrimination. In Washington’s People’s (Populist) party The People’s party of view, black self-help and self-improvement was the America was an important “third party,” surest way to economic advancement, 539 founded in 1891, that sought to unite various Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act An 1878 com- disaffected groups, especially farmers. The party promise law that that provided for the limited nominated James B. Weaver for president in coinage of silver, 545 1892 and in 1896 joined with the Democratic civil rights cases A group of cases in 1883 in which party in support of William Jennings Bryan for the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional president, 542 the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had prohibited Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling (1896) racial discrimination in hotels, theaters, and other that held that racial segregation of public accom- privately owned facilities. The Court ruled that the modations did not infringe on the “equal protec- Fourteenth Amendment barred state govern- tion” clause of the Constitution; this “separate but ments from discriminating on the basis of race but equal” doctrine was overturned by Brown v. Board did not prevent private individuals, businesses, or of Education in 1954, 537 organizations from doing so, 537 Sherman Silver Purchase Act An 1890 law that mugwumps A group of eastern Republicans, dis- obliged the federal government to buy and coin gusted with corruption in the party, who cam- silver, thereby counteracting the deflationary ten- paigned for the Democrats in the 1884 elections. dencies of the economy at the time; its repeal in These anticorruption reformers were conservative on 1894, following the Depression of 1893, caused a the money question and government regulation, 536 political uproar, 545 20 Chapter 46423 11/12/10 8:49 AM Page 553

Chapter Review 553

Review Questions 1. The introduction to this chapter suggests that protest? What strategies did African American lead- Americans from 1877 to 1896 were as enthralled ers consider in response to increased segregation? with politics as Americans are today with American 4. Why did such a seemingly dull issue as currency Idol. And yet the chapter contends that the major reform generate such passion, culminating in parties took similar positions on the major issues. William Jennings Bryan’s crusade against “a What explains the high voter turnouts of the era? cross of gold” in 1896? Why did the Populists 2. How did the urban bosses respond to the chal- fail to win the support of northern labor, and lenges confronting the cities? thus the election? 3. How did the decisions of the Supreme Court 5. How has populism fared among historians? How aggravate race relations and give rise to political is populism regarded by politicians today? Why?

Connections Reinforce what you learned in this chapter by studying the many documents, images, maps, review tools, and videos available at www.myhistorylab.com.

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Study and Review Chapter 20 Read the Document Mary Elizabeth Lease, the Populist Crusader, p. 543 Read the Document Pendleton Civil Service Act, p. 537 Read the Document William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold Speech, p. 546 View the Image Harrison and Morton Campaign Ad, p. 537

View the Image Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, p. 538

Read the Document The People’s Party Platform, p. 543

View the Image McKinley and Hobart Campaign Poster, p. 549

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