Brief Run downPopulation boom: 1870 39 million

people, third largest in population in world

Many disillusioned Americans in postwar era. They felt like they fought for nothing because of corruption and political disorganization

Grant elected mostly because he was a war hero. No political experience.

The Republicans nominated Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant, who was a great soldier but had no political experience. The Democrats could only denounce

military Reconstruction and couldn’t agree on anything, disorganized

Corruption in politics because politicians could be bought. Too many judges and legislators put their power up for hire.

Economy: corrupt businessman such as Jim Fisk and Jay Gould harm America. They convinced Grant to not sell any gold so the price would go up. Plan failed when treasury release gold. Grant was found innocent of any wrong doing. He had been duped.

Used bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to drain city of money (200 million)

New York Times exposed Tweed’s scheme. Cartoonist Thomas Nast attacked “Boss” Tweed in a series of cartoons

Here Nast depicts the corrupt Tweed as a powerful giant, towering over a puny Law force

Grants cabinet was corrupt and incompetent.

failed to see the corruption going on, even though many of his friends wanted offices and his cabinet was totally corrupt (except for Secretary of State Hamilton Fish), and his in-laws, the Dent family, were especially terrible.

The Credit Mobilier, a railroad construction company that paid itself huge sums of money for small railroad construction, tarredGrant. Early form of monopoly in business. A New York newspaper finally busted it, and two

members of Congress were formally censured (the company had given some of its stock to thecongressmen) and the Vice President himself was shown to have accepted 20 shares of stock.

In 1875, the public learned that the Whiskey Ring had robbed the Treasury of millions of dollars, and when Grant’s own privatesecretary was shown to be one of the criminals, Grant retracted his earlier statement of “Let no guilty man escape.”

Liberal Republican Party formed because they were disgusted with Grant’s administration. Horace Greeley ran against Grant but lost.

Republican Congress passed general amnesty act, removing political disabilities from 500 former Confederate leaders giving them a little more power.

Panic of 1873, caused by too many railroads and factories being formed than existing markets could bear and the over-loaning by banks to those projects.Essentially, the causes of the panic were the same old ones that’d caused recessions every 20 years that century: (1)over-speculation and (2) too-easy credit.

Hard money: gold and silver coins. Advocates persuaded Grant to stop printing paper money. Resumption Act of 1875: govt’s promise of taking greenbacks from circulating.

Discovery of silver dropped the price and value of coin. Government is trying to figure out a balance between paper money and hard money (coins).

As one means of financing the cost of fighting the Civil War, the federal (Union) government in 1862 began printing legal tender notes. This currency was not backed by specie (gold or silver) and exerted an inflationary impact on the Northern economy. By war’s end about $450 million was in circulation.

The value of the greenbacks, which were printed with green ink on one side, fluctuated with the war's progress. In early 1864, when Union prospects were dim, the greenback dollar held a value of under 40 cents; by the end of the war in 1865, it was around 67 cents. The original intention was for the greenbacks to hold the same value as regular gold-backed notes, but that result never occurred.

Pressure from business interests and creditors in the postwar period led to an effort to retire the greenbacks. These forces did not want to receive payments in cheap money and opposed any government policy that would lead to inflation.

By 1867, the wartime economic boom was over. Farmers and debtors, feeling an economic pinch, began agitation to halt the notes' retirement. It was in their interest to foster inflation (a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency ), which would make it easier for them to pay off their debts.

“The Gilded Age,” was a term coined by Mark Twain hinting that times looked good, yet if one scratched a bit below the surface, there were problems. Times were filled with corruption. Democrats and Republicans had similar ideas on economic issues, but different in some ways.

Republicans traced their lineage to Puritanism.

Democrats were more like Lutherans and Roman Catholics.

Democrats had strong support in the South. Republicans had strong votes in the North

and the West, and from the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), an organization made up offormer Union veterans.

The election was very close, with Tilden getting 184 votes out of aneeded 185 in the Electoral College, but votes in four states,Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and part of Oregon, were unsure anddisputed. Congress had to figure out who was going to count the ballots from those disputed states.

The Electoral Count Act, passed in 1877, set up an electoral commission that consisted of 15 men selected from the Senate, theHouse, and the Supreme Court, which would count the votes. Hayes declared winner but compromises made.

For the North—Hayes would become president if he agreed to remove troops from the remaining two Southern states where Union troops remained (Louisiana and South Carolina), and also, a bill would subsidize the Texas and Pacific rail line.

For the South—military rule and Reconstruction ended when the military pulled out of the South.

The Compromise of 1877 abandoned the Blacks in the South by withdrawing troops, and their last attempt at protection of Black rights was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was mostly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1883 Civil Rights cases

The act supposedly guaranteed equal accommodations in public places and prohibited racial discrimination in public places and prohibited racial discriminations in jury selection. Act not enforced.

As Reconstruction ended and the military returned northward, whites once again asserted their power. Literacy requirements for voting began, voter

registration laws emerged, and poll taxes began. These were all targeted at black voters.

Most blacks became sharecroppers (providing nothing but labor) or tenant farmers (if they could provide their own tools).

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional. Thus “Jim Crow” segregation was legalized.

Lynching: putting a person to death by mob action without due process of law.

Worst years: 1892 (161 blacks and 69 whites), 1884 (164 whites and 51 blacks). Purpose: to ensure the political and economic “new order” southern whites targeted anybody who breaks the racial code of conduct.

In 1877, the presidents of the nation’s four largest railroads decided to cut wages by 10%. Workers struck back, stoppingwork, and when President Hayes sent troops to stop this, violence erupted, and more than 100 people died in the several weeks of chaos.

The failure of the railroad strike showed the weakness of the labor movement, but this was partly caused by friction between races, especially between the Irish and the Chinese.

In 1879, Congress passed a bill severely restricting the influx of Chinese immigrants (most of whom were males who had come to California to work on the railroads), but Hayes vetoed the bill on grounds that itviolated an existing treaty with China. After Hayes left office, the Chinese Exclusion Act,

passed in 1882, was passed, barring any Chinese from entering the United States—the first law limiting immigration.

Caucasian workers, seething with economic anxiety and ethnic prejudice, savagely mistreated the Chinese in California in the 1870s.

In 1880, the Republicans nominated James A. Garfield, a man from Ohio who had risen to the rank of major general in the Civil War, and as his running mate, a notorious Stalwart (supporter of RoscoeConkling) was chosen: Chester A. Arthur of New York.

The Democrats chose Winfield S. Hancock, a Civil War general who appealed to the South due to his fair treatment of it during Reconstruction and a veteran who had been wounded at Gettysburg, andthus appealed to veterans. Garfield wins but dies from a gunshot wound to head.

Made campaign contributions from federal employees illegal, and established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of competitive examinations.

James G. Blaine became the Republican candidate.

The Democrats chose Grover Cleveland as their candidate but received a shock when it was revealed that he might have been the father of an illegitimate child. The campaign of 1884 was filled with perhaps the

lowest mudslinging in history. The contest depended on how New York chose,

but unfortunately, one foolish Republican insulted the race, faith, and patriotism of New York’s heavy Irish population, and as a result, New York voted for Cleveland; that was the difference.

1st Democratic president since Buchanan.

Tries to help veterans get their pensions.

Named two former Confederates to his cabinet.

By 1881, the Treasury had a surplus of $145 million, most of it having come from the high tariff, and there was a lot of clamoring for lowering the tariff, though big industrialists opposed it because it meant lower prices for consumers and less protection for monopolies.

Cleveland lowered tariff (duties on imports and exports).

Republicans and Democrats fight over power in house. Democrats tried to obstruct all House business by refusing to answer roll calls. Reed, Speaker of House told them if they are physically there, business will continue. Billion Dollar Congress refers to all the bills passed such as pensions for Civil War veterans.

The Populist Party emerged in 1892 from disgruntled farmers. Wanted shorter workday, immigration restriction, unlimited coinage of silver, government ownership of the railroads, telegraph, and phones. Pinkerton detectives sent in to crush strike by steelworkers angry over paycuts.

Grover Cleveland won, but no sooner than he had stepped into the presidency did the Depression of 1893 break out. It was the first such panic in the new urban and industrial age, and it caused much outrageand hardships. This completed the almost predictable, every-20-year cycle of panics during the 1800s (panics occurred during 1819, 1837,1857, 1873, and 1893).

About 8,000 American business houses collapsed in six months, and dozens of railroad lines went into the hands of receivers

Value of money became an issue again (hard money(silver) vs. Soft money(paper).

Cleveland was embarrassed at having to resort to J.P. Morgan to bale out the depression.

Republicans won congressional elections of 1894-244 seats to Demos 105

Cleveland failed to cope with economic crisis.