Chapter 23. Ulysses S. Grant ~Republican Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) Civil War general and eighteenth president of the United States. Grant's postwar.

Chapter 23

Ulysses S. Grant

~Republican

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) Civil War general and eighteenth president of the United States. Grant's postwar career was decidedly anticlimactic he was elected as a Republican to two terms as president (1869-

1877), but his administrations were marred by indecisive leadership, an inconsistent policy on southern Reconstruction, and massive corruption.

Coupled with a severe economic depression that began in 1873, administration scandals cost Grant much of his popularity.

Nonetheless, his presidency did have some solid accomplishments: The Treaty of Washington in 1872 resolved a major dispute with Great

Britain over damages inflicted on American shipping by Confederate raiders built in British shipyards during the Civil War.

The Enforcement Acts of 1870-1871 broke the power of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction South

Civil Rights Act of 1875 marked an unprecedented attempt to extend federal protection of black civil rights to areas of public accommodations.

Continued… After returning to the United States from a world

tour in the late 1870s, Grant went bankrupt as a result of foolish investments in the fraudulent banking firm of Grant & Ward.

Though once again a failure in civilian life, Grant did much to redeem his place in history by writing his Personal Memoirs. Finished just before his death from throat cancer in 1885, his memoirs stand as one of the clearest and most powerful military narratives ever written.

Corruption “Jubilee” Jim Fisk and Jay Gould The Tweed Ring Credit Mobilier Scandal Whiskey Ring William Belknap George Washington Plunkitt

The Tweed Ring In the late 1860s, Boss William Marcy Tweed created a network of

city officials, Democratic party workers, and contractors in New York City, which his critics dubbed the Tweed Ring. The network was a notorious instance of municipal corruption.

After terms in the 1850s as city alderman and congressman, Tweed was appointed a supervisor of city elections. He gained popularity by supporting labor unions and the Roman Catholic church.

Tweed's associates in the state legislature secured a new city charter that gave New York control of its budget and police. He himself pushed for the overhaul of the city's infrastructure, funded mostly by municipal bonds.

The city soon accumulated large debts while Tweed was making money on kickbacks from contractors.

For example, he formed a printing company and saw that it received all city printing contracts. Railroads and other corporations found it worthwhile to pay the non-lawyer Tweed's "firm" extravagant "retainers."

William M. "Boss" Tweed

A Harpers Weekly cartoon depicts Tweed as a police officer saying to two boys, "If all the people want is to have somebody arrested, I'll have you plunderers convicted. You will be allowed to escape, nobody will be hurt, and then Tilden will go to the White House and I to Albany as Governor."

Continued… Tweed's power declined dramatically once the city's financial peril

became apparent. Cartoonist Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly weakened Tweed's popularity through his caricatures of the politician; one depicted a large thumb crushing Manhattan.

The costs of building a lavish courthouse, which became known as the Tweed Courthouse, aroused particular suspicion.

In 1871 Tweed was arrested and prosecuted for failing to audit contractors' bills to the city for this building; his associates were not charged. He was convicted for the misdemeanor but never prosecuted for related felony charges; his sentence was one year.

The state of New York sued him in the Supreme Court of New York County for over $6 million.

Faced with exorbitant bail and rulings that prevented an effective defense in the suit, Tweed escaped from jail in 1875.

The next year, however, he was identified in Spain and arrested. Returned to New York's Ludlow Street jail, he died before the suit was tried

Bimetallism In economic history, monetary system in which two commodities, usually gold and silver,

were used as a standard and coined without limit at a ratio fixed by legislation that also designated both of them as legally acceptable for all payments.

The term was first used in 1869 by Enrico Cernuschi (1821-96), an Italian-French economist and a vigorous advocate of the system.

In a bimetallic system, the ratio is expressed in terms of weight, e.g., 16 oz of silver equal 1 oz of gold, which is described as a ratio of 16 to 1. As the ratio is determined by law, it has no relation to the commercial value of the metals, which fluctuates constantly.

Gresham's law, therefore, applies; i.e., the metal that is commercially valued at less than its face value tends to be used as money, and the metal commercially valued at more than its face value tends to be used as metal, valued by weight, and hence is withdrawn from circulation as money.

Working against that is the fact that the debtor tends to pay in the commercially cheaper metal, thus creating a market demand likely to bring its commercial value up to its face value.

In practice, the instability predicted by Gresham's law overpowered the cushioning effect of debtors' payments, thereby making bimetallism far too unstable a monetary system for most modern nations.

Aside from England, which in acts of 1798 and 1816 made gold the standard currency, all countries practiced bimetallism during the late 18th cent. and most of the 19th cent.

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lintro.htm

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The Wizard of Oz Since the 1960s historians and economists have explored the

bimetallism in The Wizard of Oz. The original 1900 book centers on a yellow brick road (gold), traversed

by magical silver slippers the 1939 movie changed them to ruby slippers

As Dorothy leads a political coalition of farmers (Scarecrow), Workers (Tin Woodman) Politicians (Cowardly Lion) To petition the President (Wizard) In the capital city of Oz (the abbreviation for ounce, a common unit of

measure for precious metal). The real enemy of the little people (Munchkins) is the giant corporation

or Trust (Wicked Witch of the West), whom Dorothy dissolves, just as the progressives of the era tried to dissolve the corporate trusts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallism

The Greenback Party A political party that emerged around 1874. The party took its

name from the paper money issued during the Civil War. Formed to address the problems of farmers and debtor

groups, the party argued that increasing the number of greenbacks in circulation would cause farm prices to rise, thus giving farmers more money to pay off their debts.

Perceived as the "party of the poor," it also appealed to some labor groups.

The party faded and most of its members joined the Populist Party.

The Gilded Age The period between 1865 and 1900 During this time of great, showy displays of

wealth, large fortunes were made as a result of industrial expansion.

The name, a derogatory one, was derived from the title of a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in 1873.

Hayes-Tilden Standoff In 1876 the Republican party nominated Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio for president

and William A. Wheeler of New York for vice president. The Democratic candidates were Samuel J. Tilden of New York for president and Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana for vice president.

The country was growing weary of Reconstruction policies, which kept federal troops stationed in several southern states. Moreover, the Grant administration was tainted by numerous scandals, which caused disaffection for the party among voters. In 1874 the House of Representatives had gone Democratic; political change was in the air.

Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, receiving 4,284,020 votes to 4,036,572 for Hayes.

In the electoral college Tilden was also ahead 184 to 165; both parties claimed the remaining 20 votes.

The Democrats needed only 1 more vote to capture the presidency, but the Republicans needed all 20 contested electoral votes. Nineteen of them came from South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida—states that the Republicans still controlled.

Protesting Democratic treatment of black voters, Republicans insisted that Hayes had carried those states but that Democratic electors had voted for Tilden.

Two sets of election returns existed—one from the Democrats, one from the Republicans. Congress had to determine the authenticity of the disputed returns.

Continued… Unable to decide, legislators established a fifteen-member

commission composed of ten congressmen and five Supreme Court justices.

The commission was supposed to be nonpartisan, but ultimately it consisted of eight Republicans and seven Democrats.

The final decision was to be rendered by the commission unless both the Senate and the House rejected it.

The commission accepted the Republican vote in each state. The House disagreed, but the Senate concurred, and Hayes and Wheeler were declared president and vice president.

In the aftermath of the commission's decision, the federal troops that remained in the South were withdrawn, and southern leaders made vague promises regarding the rights of the 4 million African-Americans living in the region.

Compromise of 1877 In order to settle the contested 1876 election, a bargain was

struck that also ended Reconstruction. The South would accept Hayes's election, back Republican

James A. Garfield for House Speaker, and protect black rights; Republicans would provide federal aid for internal improvements, patronage, and, especially, home rule.

But Garfield was defeated for Speaker, the government failed to subsidize improvements, and Hayes dispensed patronage and followed existing policy by removing federal troops from the South.

The final southern Republican governments, all in the disputed states, collapsed, leading to the Democratic Solid South and violence and discrimination toward blacks.

Rutherford B. Hayes

~Republican

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893)

Nineteenth president of the United States. Born in Ohio, Hayes graduated from Kenyon College at the top of his class in 1842 and three years later from Harvard Law School.

Beginning in 1853 he defended captured runaway slaves. Later he joined the Republican party, entered politics, and from 1858 to 1861 was Cincinnati's city solicitor.

Outraged by the South's attack on Fort Sumter, Hayes volunteered for the Union army in 1861, served with conspicuous gallantry throughout the war, and emerged a major general and member-elect of Congress.

In Congress from 1865 to 1867, he supported Radical Republican Reconstruction measures before resigning to run successfully for governor of Ohio. Reelected in 1869, Hayes counted as his greatest achievements Ohio's ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and the establishment of Ohio State University. After retiring briefly, Hayes ran successfully for a third term as governor in 1875 and became Ohio's favorite-son candidate for the presidential nomination in 1876.

Hayes won the Republican nomination over his more prominent rivals because his record as a war hero, a Radical Republican congressman, and a reform governor would help him carry his crucial state.

Hayes Continued… With northern public opinion no longer supporting Radical Reconstruction, he

ordered federal troops to cease protecting the last two Republican governors in the South but only after he extracted promises (which proved empty) from incoming Democrats to protect the civil rights of blacks.

Hayes courageously vetoed popular legislation to prevent Chinese laborers from migrating to the United States and to expand the currency (although Congress passed the Bland-Allison Silver Act over his objections).

He enhanced the power and prestige of the presidency by defeating congressional attempts to dictate his appointees and to force him to accept obnoxious legislation (designed to destroy the voting rights of blacks) added as riders to appropriation bills.

During the great railroad strike of 1877, he resisted pressure to operate the railroads and avoided a confrontation between strikers and federal forces, thereby saving lives and property.

In retirement he worked to improve the quality of education for poor black and white children and, in keeping with his liberal use of the pardoning power, served as president of the National Prison Reform Association.

Hayes as a Benevolent Farmer, May 12, 1880This cartoon by J. A. Wales Puck reveals the North's readiness to give up on a strong Reconstruction policy. According to the image, only federal bayonets could support the "rule or ruin" carpetbag regimes that oppressed the south. What do the background and foreground of the cartoon suggest will be the results of President Hayes's "Let ‘Em Alone Policy"? (Library of Congress)

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Jim Crow Laws Laws that segregated races in the South beginning in the

1880s following Reconstruction. Jim Crow laws discriminated against blacks in public schools,

railroads, buses, restaurants, theaters, hotels, and other public facilities.

The Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Fergusson (1896) declared segregation constitutional. (Separate but Equal)

But decisions in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka and the civil rights movement of the same period overturned these laws.

"Jim Crow" was a character in a popular song of the 1830s, and the name was commonly used to refer to blacks.

Plessy v. Ferguson In this landmark decided on May 18, 1896, the Court ruled that the

Reconstruction-era amendments protected the political equality of blacks but not their social equality.

Homer Plessy, a light-skinned, resident of New Orleans with African ancestry (an "octoroon"--a term used at the time to describe someone with seven white great-grandparents and one black grandparent) challenged the state law segregating blacks and "people of color" from sitting with white passengers on municipal trains.

Plessy was arrested because he refused to sit in the "colored only" section of the train, It was the most notorious legal challenge to the wave of Jim Crow laws that swept over the nation in the 1890s, beginning with those in Mississippi aimed at segregating blacks in public facilities that were theoretically "separate-but-equal" to those afforded whites.

The Verdict… The Court ruled against Plessy 7 to 1, contending that the segregation laws

in question did not discriminate on racial grounds but merely recognized a distinction between the races.

It agreed that state laws could not deprive blacks of political rights, but it held that social rights were not considered fundamental in the same sense as political rights.

Moreover, according to the Court, states are constitutionally empowered to protect the public's health, welfare, and morals by passing reasonable laws; segregation laws met this test as a reasonable exercise of the state's police powers.

In the opinion of Plessy's lawyer, Albion Tourgee, the decision destroyed for all practical purposes the Fourteenth Amendment and "emasculated the Thirteenth."

Plessy put the Supreme Court on the side of segregation and disfranchisement, giving credibility to a flood of Jim Crow laws that engulfed the southern states and many parts of the rest of the nation.

Black sharecropping family in front of their cabinSharecropping gave African Americans more control over their labor than did labor contracts. But sharecropping also contributed to the south's dependence on one-crop agriculture and helped to perpetuate widespread rural poverty. Notice that the child standing on the right is holding her kitten, probably to be certain it is included in this family photograph. (Library of Congress)

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Store owner's record book of debts of sharecroppersSharecropping became an oppressive system in the postwar south. At plantation stores like this one, photographed in Mississippi in 1868, merchants recorded in their ledger books debts that few sharecroppers were able to repay. (Smithsonian Institution, Division of Community Life)

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Transcontinental Railroad - 1869 Railway lines connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Pacific Railway Act (1862) authorized the Union Pacific Railroad

Company to build a line westward from Omaha, Nebraska, and the Central Pacific Railway of California to build a connecting line eastward from Sacramento.

The companies recruited armies of workers in what became a competition to put down the most track.

The Central Pacific hired seven thousand Chinese immigrants at one dollar a day The Union Pacific hired Irish immigrants

Construction began in 1865, and after years of grueling labor and hardship, the two lines met on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah.

The Central Pacific had built 689 miles of track, much of it through the Sierra Nevadas, and the Union Pacific 1,086 miles.

California governor Leland Stanford, who was also president of the Central Pacific, drove in the final "golden spike" connecting the two lines.

James A. Garfield

~Republican

James A. Garfield 1831-1881 Twentieth president of the United States. This obscurity is compounded by the brevity of his administration—only

two hundred days from his inauguration to his death at the hands of Charles J. Guiteau, an unhinged religious fanatic (not the "disappointed office seeker" of the familiar catchphrase).

Born in a log cabin on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio, he was the last president to be blessed with that politically potent symbol of humble origins. Reared in rural poverty, he escaped by means of religion and education, becoming a minister in the Disciples of Christ church, the president of what would become Hiram College, and then a lawyer.

When the Civil War broke out, he became the youngest major general in the Union army and then resigned his commission in midwar for a seat in the U.S. Congress.

Garfield Continued… Despite being touched by the Crédit Mobilier and other scandals, he had

become, by 1880, his party's leader in the House of Representatives and was ready to move on to the U.S. Senate to which he had just been elected, when his career took an unexpected turn.

When the Republican National Convention deadlocked between the Stalwart supporters of Ulysses S. Grant and his rivals, the delegates turned to Garfield, nominating him on the thirty-sixth ballot. In November he defeated the Democratic candidate, Winfield Scott Hancock, by less than ten thousand popular votes.

Garfield's brief presidency was marred by a patronage struggle with Senator Roscoe Conkling, the embittered leader of the Stalwart faction. But victory in that struggle gave prestige not only to Garfield but to the institution of the presidency itself.

There are indications that Garfield was planning to use that prestige to reorient the Republican party away from its preoccupation with the issues of Civil War and Reconstruction to a fresh emphasis on the new problems of an industrialized America when death intervened.

Chester A. Arthur

~Republican

Chester A. Arthur – 1829-1886 Twenty-first president of the United States. Born in

Vermont, Arthur graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, and taught school before moving to New York City, where he was admitted to the bar in 1854.

An antislavery Whig, Arthur joined the Republican party at its birth.

The Republicans won the election, but after Garfield was assassinated, Arthur became president in September 1881.

Arthur Continued… To the surprise of his many detractors, Arthur was an able chief executive. In

damning him as a mere machine politician, his critics ignored the fact that he was an intelligent man who had run the largest federal office in the country.

Despite a tendency to procrastinate, Arthur grew in the presidency and was able to meet its demands. Drawing on his expertise, Arthur condemned the existing tariff. But when he failed to convince Congress to make the 20 to 25 percent reduction his tariff commission advocated, he signed the aptly named "Mongrel" Tariff into law (1883). Arthur vetoed the outrageous pork-barrel rivers and harbors bill of 1882 (a thinly disguised raid on the Treasury), only to see Congress pass it over his veto. He signed legislation excluding Chinese laborers from the United States, supported appropriations to modernize the navy, and personally supervised a sumptuous refurbishing of the White House.

He was neither happy nor healthy when president. He grieved over the death in 1880 of his wife and suffered the debilitating effects of Bright's disease, particularly after 1882.

As part of his effort to hide his condition from the public, he did nothing to stop those striving to nominate him in 1884. Their efforts failed, however, partly because he lacked charisma and partly because he was too much of a spoils politician to win reform support, yet too sound an administrator to suit party regulars.

The Chinese Exclusion Act 1882 The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting

immigration into the United States. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers.

Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation's population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white "racial purity."

The statute of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared the Chinese as ineligible for naturalization. Chinese workers already in the country challenged the constitutionality of the discriminatory acts, but their efforts failed.

The act was renewed in 1892 for another ten years, and in 1902 Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal.

The legislation proved very effective, and the Chinese population in the United States sharply declined.

American experience with Chinese exclusion spurred later movements for immigration restriction against other "undesirable" groups such as Middle Easterners, Hindu and East Indians, and the Japanese. The Chinese themselves remained ineligible for citizenship until 1943.

Spoils System A policy of giving government jobs to political party workers who have

supported a particular victorious candidate. The practice began during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson when he, a

Democratic-Republican, followed a policy of not selecting Federalists for appointments.

During the administration of President Andrew Jackson, government employees of the rival party were dismissed from their positions and replaced by members of the Democratic party.

The term spoils system was used as early as 1812, but came into general use when Jackson's friend Senator William Marcy declared in 1832, "To the victor belong the spoils of the enemy."

The system gradually became associated with corruption, and it was modified when Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883 establishing the Civil Service Commission. Although education, experience, and examinations have become important as a basis for appointment to public office, the practice of patronage continues.

Railroad Strike of 1877 What came to be called the great railroad strike of 1877 began on July

17 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, after the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had cut wages for the second time in a year.

Protesting workers refused to let any trains move until the pay cut was restored.

Militia units were sent in by the governor to restore train service, but when the soldiers refused to use force against the strikers, the governor called for federal troops, the first time such troops had been used for strikebreaking since the 1830s.

In the meantime, the strike had spread to Baltimore, triggering bloody street battles between workers and the Maryland militia; when the outmanned soldiers fired into an attacking crowd, ten people were killed.

In Pittsburgh, as in Martinsburg, local law enforcers refused to fire on the strikers, and soldiers brought in from outside were routed by a ferocious crowd, which took control of the city until federal troops imposed order.

R.R. continued… By then, sympathy strikes had spread out along the railroads in every

direction, from line to line, from city to city, from railroad workers to other industries.

In Chicago, demonstrations organized by the Workingmen's party drew crowds of twenty thousand; in St. Louis, a general strike put the city in the workers' hands for nearly a week.

In towns throughout the country, streets were thronged with strikers and their supporters; there were battles and arrests, injuries and deaths.

The struggle seemed to align all workers against all employers. To some, this was a hopeful sign, bearing the promise of future labor victories, but others saw it as a threat to the very foundation of American society.

Federal troops were rushed from city to city, putting down strike after strike, until finally, a few weeks after it had begun, the great railroad strike of 1877 was over.

R.R Continued… In the aftermath, union organizers planned future

campaigns, and politicians and business leaders took steps to ensure that such chaos could not recur.

Many states enacted conspiracy statutes. New militia units were formed, and National Guard armories were constructed in many cities.

For workers and employers alike, the strikes had dramatized the power of workers in combination to challenge the most established structures of American life.

Railroad strike of 1877This engraving depicts striking railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, as they stop a freight train on July 17, 1877, in the opening days of the great railway strike of that year. Engravings such as this, which show the strikers to be heavily armed, may or may not have been accurate depictions of events. But the photography of that day could rarely capture live action, and the technology of the day could not reproduce photographs in newspapers, so the public's understanding of events such as the 1877 strike was formed through artists' depictions. (Library of Congress)

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

McKinley Tariff Act - 1890 Law establishing record-high tariffs on many

imported items. Sponsored by Representative William McKinley,

chair of the House Ways and Means Committee The act was designed to protect American

industries from foreign competition. Its unpopularity led to its replacement by the

Wilson Act in 1894.

McKinley Tariff 1890 Raised rates to the highest peacetime level

ever. This hurt farmers

Forced to buy from high priced American Industrialists

Had to sell own products to unprotected world markets

Republicans would lose their majority

Grover Cleveland

~Democrat

Grover Cleveland 1837-1908 Twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the

United States. Cleveland studied law in Buffalo, New York, and became a leading lawyer there, but for over twenty years he was unknown outside that city.

His rise to the presidency was phenomenal because of its rapidity and because he was so lacking in qualities deemed essential for Gilded Age politicians. Brutally honest, frugal with public money, ungracious, and obstinate, Cleveland was admired for his enemies rather than his friends.

Causes of the Depression of 1893

Splurge of overbuilding and speculation Labor disorders Agricultural depression Free-silver agitation damaged American credit

abroad European began calling in the loans from U.S.

Effects of the Depression 1893 8,000 businesses collapsed in six months Dozens of R.R. lines went into the hands of

receivers Hobos wandered the country Government did nothing Cleveland burdened with a growing deficit

Effects of Depression… Treasury required to issue legal tender

notes for the silver that it bought Owners of the paper currency would then

present it for gold By law the notes had to be reissued New holders would repeat the process Draining away precious gold in an “endless

chain” operation.

How they fixed it… Borrowed money from J.P. Morgan

Total of $65 million in gold Charged a commission of $7 million Agreed to get ½ the gold abroad

Interstate Commerce Act - 1887 Law passed by Congress stating that all

railroad charges should be fair and reasonable, and that forbade interstate railroad abuses.

It established a five-member Interstate Commerce Commission to administer the provisions of the law.

Benjamin Harrison~Republican

Benjamin Harrison 1833-1901 Twenty-third president of the United States.

After graduating from Miami University in Ohio, his birthplace, this grandson of President William Henry Harrison became a lawyer in Indianapolis.

A staunch Republican, he fought for the Union and emerged from the Civil War a brigadier general. Despite an iceberg like personality and the loss of the gubernatorial campaign of 1876, he became Indiana's leading Republican.

Harrison Continued… In conjunction with the Republican-controlled "Billion Dollar

Congress" of 1890, his administration was remarkably productive. To wipe out the $100 million surplus of revenues over expenditures, Congress passed a generous Dependent and Disability Pension Act and the protectionist McKinley Tariff, which raised rates higher than ever before.

Responding to pressure from the West, Congress approved the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required that the government buy 4.5 million ounces of silver each month and pay for it with Treasury certificates.

Congress also passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was by far the most influential law passed during his administration.

In retirement, Harrison lectured and served as chief counsel for Venezuela in its boundary dispute with Great Britain.

Homestead Strike 1892 Labor dispute between steel workers and the Carnegie Steel Company in

Homestead, Pennsylvania, one of the most bitter strikes in American history.

The striking trade union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, refused to accept a decrease in wages and stepped-up production demands by plant manager Henry Clay Frick, who was determined to break the union.

When he brought in three hundred Pinkerton guards to break the strike, they were met by ten thousand workers and violence erupted.

Sixteen men were killed and many more injured. The governor then sent in eight thousand state militia who guarded non-union strike breakers running the plant.

The strike ended after five months. The first major struggle between organized labor and big business resulted in failure for the most important craft union of the age and exhibited the power of American big business.