1865 to the Present 10 January 2005
Class notes
The Gilded Age and the Politics of Corruption
The term "The Gilded Age" comes from a novel by the same name, published in 1873 by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, which, though fiction, is a critical examination of democratic politics, and corruption in the United States at the time.
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873)
A book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, which, though fiction, is a critical examination of democratic politics, and corruption in the United States at the time. The central characters, Col. Beriah Sellers and Senator Abner Delworthy, are tied together in a government railroad bribery scheme. Twain and Warner depict an American society that, despite its appearance of promise and prosperity, is riddled with corruption and scandal.
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known as Mark Twain, was one of America's greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Born in Hannibal, Missouri, he observed life along the Mississippi River and later incorporated these insights into his fiction. Clemens invested in several businesses but none prospered, and later in life he became more cynical as he spoke throughout the country.
Two general themes caused tension during the Gilded Age:
1. Laissez-faire "1: a doctrine opposing government interference in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights." Source: Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1990).
2. Concentration of power in the hands of the government at all levels - local, state, and federal. Government during this period assumed more authority and power, especially expanding its bureaucratic control and authority. Major areas of expansion of government power included land policy, railroad subsidies, tax/tariff policy, immigration policy, and Indian policy.
The Homestead Act
The Homestead Act (May 20, 1862) set in motion a program of public land grants to small farmers. Before the Civil War, southern states had regularly voted against homestead legislation because they correctly foresaw that the law would hasten the settlement of western territory, ultimately adding to the number and political influence of the free states.
This opposition to the homestead bill, as well as to other internal improvements that could hasten western settlement, exacerbated sectional conflicts. Indeed, the vision of independent yeomen establishing homesteads on the prairies was offered in the political rhetoric of the 1850s as a vivid contrast to the degradation of slave labor on southern plantations. A homestead bill passed the House in 1858 but was defeated by one vote in the Senate; the next year, a similar bill passed both houses but was vetoed by President James Buchanan. In 1860, the Republican platform included a plank advocating homestead legislation. After the southern states had seceded, homestead legislation was high on the Republican agenda. The Homestead Act of 1862 provided that any adult citizen (or person intending to become a citizen) who headed a family could qualify for a grant of 160 acres of public land by paying a small registration fee and living on the land continuously for five years. If the settler was willing to pay $1.25 an acre, he could obtain the land after only six months' residence.
By the end of the Civil War, fifteen thousand homestead claims had been established, and more followed in the postwar years. But the law did not provide the new beginning for urban slum dwellers that some had hoped; few such families had the resources to start farming, even on free land. The grants did give new opportunities to many impoverished farmers from the East and Midwest, but much of the land granted under the Homestead Act fell quickly into the hands of speculators. Also, over time, the growing mechanization of American agriculture led to the replacement of individual homesteads with a smaller number of much larger farms.
Source: Houghton Mifflin Co, The Reader's Companion to American History (1991).
Transportation Revolution
"...Railroads could reach interior areas, including places where an inadequate water supply or rough terrain made canals impossible. Unlike canals, which froze in winter or became impassable when water was low, railroads ran year round, and they could easily ascend and descend hills and mountains. Initially financed by municipal governments and enterprising businessmen in river, lake, and ocean towns and cities, the first railroads extended short distances into the interior to tap potential markets in the surrounding countryside. Extension and connection of short lines soon provided uninterrupted transportation over long distances. By 1840, the United States had almost three thousand miles of track; by 1860, a network of thirty thousand miles linked most of the nation's major cities and towns..."
Source: George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (1962).
Pacific Railway Acts, 1862, 1864
Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 passed after the South seceded from the Union. The act enabled the U.S. Government to make a direct grant of public land to private corporations for the construction of a trans-continental railroad system. For every mile of track laid down, the government would give 20 sections of public land (12,800 acres), which the corporation could do with as it saw fit. The federal government also guaranteed payment of $48,000 for every mile of track constructed in mountainous terrain. The government also guaranteed a 30 year subsidized loan at below market interest rates.
The Union Pacific Railroad, built West from the Missouri River, met the Central Pacific Railroad, which was built East from Sacramento, California. The two railroad giants met at Promontory Point, Utah, in the spring of 1869. By 1890 five more trans-continental lines were developed.
Credit Mobilier
The Credit Mobilier was a construction company created by leaders of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1867. The company was exposed five years later as one of the major scandals in American History, damaging the reputation of politicians and businessmen alike.
Other:
"The Credit Mobilier scandal of 1872-1873 damaged the careers of several Gilded Age politicians. Major stockholders in the Union Pacific Railroad formed a company, the Credit Mobilier of America, and gave it contracts to build the railroad. They sold or gave shares in this construction to influential congressmen. It was a lucrative deal for the congressmen, because they helped themselves by approving federal subsidies for the cost of railroad construction without paying much attention to expenses, enabling railroad builders to make huge profits. When the New York Sun broke the story on the eve of the 1872 election, Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, a Maine Republican implicated in the scandal, set up a congressional committee to investigate."
Source: The Reader's Companion to American History (1991)
James A. Garfield
(1831 - 1881) A Republican Party leader of the 19th century, who served as president in 1881. His record was marred by his unorthodox acceptance of a fee in the DeGolyer paving contract case and by suspicions of his complicity in the Credit Mobilier scandal. Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, assassinated Garfield after only a few months in office on July 2, 1881.
"The Bloody Shirt"
During the period, neither Democrats nor Republicans hold a monopoly on big businessmen, bankers, or reformers. In short, one party was not guilty of corruption, the other pure. There was a political imbalance, however. Republicans largely controlled the presidency, winning every election between 1868-1912, interrupted only by the Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland. However, Democrats controlled Congress and state legislatures.
From 1868-1880 the most common Republican campaign tactic was to wave the "Bloody Shirt" to remind voters of the South's dishonor of seceding and causing the Civil War. This tactic painted all Democrats as evil destroyers of the Union.
Robert Green Ingersoll
(1833-1899) Born in New York, Ingersoll was a lecturer, lawyer, and politician. He began as a Democrat but later became a member of the Republican Party of Illinois. His most famous speech was the nominating speech for James G. Blaine in 1876 when he dubbed Blaine "the plumed knight."
Ulysses S. Grant
A general and a political leader of the 19th century. He became commanding general of the Union army in the Civil War, and served as president from 1869 to 1877. While Grant, a Republican, was president, many businesses prospered, but often through bribery of government officials. His presidency has one of the worst records of corruption in American History.
James Gillespie Blaine
(1830-1893) Was one of the most powerful men in the Republican Party during the 1870s and 1880s. A member of the United States House of Representatives from 1862-1876, he served as speaker from 1868 until he resigned to seek the Republican nomination for president. He failed to receive the nomination in both 1876 and 1880 but was the Republican candidate in 1886, only narrowly defeated by Grover Cleveland.
Mugwumps
Mugwumps were those Republicans who, refusing to support Blaine in the presidential campaign of 1884, bolted the party and voted for Cleveland. The word, from the Algonquian "mugwomp," was used in John Eliot's translation of the Bible to render the English term "caption." It was later applied in U.S. political slang to any independent voter.
Source: The Oxford Companion to American History (1966)
Stephen Grover Cleveland
Cleveland was born in Caldwell, N. J., on March 18, 1837. He was admitted to the bar in Buffalo, N. Y., in 1859 and lived there as a lawyer, with occasional incursions into Democratic politics, for more than 20 years. He did not participate in the Civil War. As mayor of Buffalo in 1881, he carried through a reform program so ably that the Democrats ran him successfully for governor in 1882. In 1884 he won the Democratic nomination for President.
The campaign contrasted Cleveland's spotless public career with the uncertain record of James G. Blaine, the Republican candidate, and Cleveland received enough Mugwump (independent Republican) support to win. As president, Cleveland pushed civil service reform, opposed the pension grab and attacked the high tariff rates. While in the White House, he married Frances Folsom in 1886. Renominated in 1888, Cleveland was defeated by Benjamin Harrison, polling more popular but fewer electoral votes. In 1892, he was elected over Harrison. When the Panic of 1893 burst upon the country, Cleveland's attempts to solve it by sound-money measures alienated the free-silver wing of the party, while his tariff policy alienated the protectionists. In 1894, he sent troops to break the Pullman strike. In foreign affairs, his firmness caused Great Britain to back down in the Venezuelan border dispute.
In his last years Cleveland was an active and much-respected public figure. He died in Princeton, N.J., on June 24, 1908.
Source: Houghton Mifflin Co, The Reader's Companion to American History (1991).
Money may or may not be the root of all evil, but it certainly played a major role in the politics of the Gilded Age. Of course, this money was not coming out of thin air or growing on trees; instead, the prosperity of the Gilded Age was largely due to the rise of the corporation.
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