01:512:205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: William M. Tweed, Thomas Nast, Samuel J. Tilden
18 May 2018
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Chapter 23: Paralysis of Politics in the Gilded Age,
1869-1896
1. The Bloody Shirt Elects Grant
1. In the 1868 presidential election, the Republicans offered Gen. Ulysses
S. Grant. Although he had no political experience, the idea was that his
war-hero status would carry him to victory.
2. The Democratic party was hopelessly disorganized. They agreed on their
criticism of military Reconstruction, but little else. The Democrats
nominated Horatio Seymour.
1. Seymour's popularity took a hit when he said he did not support
redeeming greenback money at full value.
3. Consequently, Grant won, narrowly. His main technique was to "wave the
bloody shirt," meaning to constantly remind voters of his military
record and that he'd led the North to victory.
4. The close victory signaled a couple of things for the future: (a) tightly run
and hard-fighting political parties and (b) narrow election margins of
victory.
2. The Era of Good Stealings
1. Corruption became all too common in the post-Civil War years.
1. The corruption often came via the railroads, meddling with stock
prices, and through corrupt judges.
2. Of special note were the exploits of "Jubilee" Jim Fisk and his
partner Jay Gould. These two came up with, and nearly pulled off, a
scheme in 1869 to corner the gold market to themselves. They tried,
unsuccessfully, to get President Grant involved as well as his brother-in-
law.
3. In New York City, Boss Tweed ran Tammany Hall, a local political
district. Boss Tweed used bribes, graft, and rigged elections to mooch
money and ensure continual power for himself and his buddies.
1. Thomas Nast was a cartoonist who relentlessly attacked Tweed's
corruption. Tweed despised Nast because, although many people in
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Tweed's district couldn't read about the corruption, they could
understand those "them damn pictures."
2. Nast's cartoon's brought down Tweed. Samuel J. Tilden gained fame
in prosecuting Tweed. Tweed eventually died in jail.
3.
4. Tilden would ride the fame to become the nominee for president in
1876 vs. Rutherford B. Hayes.
3. A Carnival of Corruption
1. President Grant was an honest man but there was much corruption
underneath his administration. He either wasn't aware of it or failed to
properly deal with it.
1. Many in the Dent family, his in-laws, obtained government "jobs" for
themselves.
2. One of the worst situations was the Crédit Mobilier scandal
1. The company was constructing the trans-continental railroad and
effectively sub-hired itself to get paid double.
2. They also gave stock to Congressmen in order to avoid getting
busted.
3. A newspaper finally exposed the scandal, two Congressmen went
down, & the Vice Pres. of the U.S. had even taken payments. Though
uninvolved, Grant's name was scarred.
3. The so-called "Whiskey Ring" also looked bad for Grant. Folks stole
whiskey tax money from the government. Grant's own secretary was
involved and, despite him saying "Let no guilty man escape," Grant helped
let the thief off the hook.
4. Lastly, the Secretary of War William Belknap was caught swindling
$24,000 by selling trinkets to the Indians.
4. The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872
1. By the 1872 election, many people had had enough. Reformers started
the Liberal Republican Party to clean things up.
1. The Liberal Republicans nominated Horace Greeley, editor of
the New York Tribune, as their candidate.
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2. Strangely, the Democrats also endorsed Greeley since they were so
eager to gain office.
1. Greeley had lambasted the Democrats through his paper, but he
was soft on allowing the South to return to the nation, which the
Democrats liked.
2. The campaigning was nasty, but colorful. Greeley was called an atheist,
communist, free-lover, vegetarian, brown-bread eater, and co-signor of
Jefferson Davis' bail bond. Grant was called a drunk ignoramus and
swindler.
3. Grant won the election handily, 286 to 66.
5. The Liberal Republicans did spook the Republican Congress into passing
some reforms. (1) An amnesty act was passed which removed restrictions
that'd been placed on many Southerners. Also, (2) there was effort to reduce
the tariff rates and (3) to clean up/out the Grant administration.
6. Depression, Deflation, and Inflation
1. The Panic of 1873 brought economic troubles.
1. It was started by over-spending with borrowed money, this time in
railroads and factories. Growth was too fast and over-extended what
the market could sustain.
2. The causes of the panic were the same old ones that’d caused
recessions every 20 years that century: (1) over-speculation (or over-
spending) and (2) too-easy credit given by the banks.
3. Initially, the panic was sparked when banks and businesses began to
go bankrupt. The situation quickly snowballed from there.
4. Blacks were hit especially hard. Always last-to-be-hired, and now the
Freedman's Savings and Trust Co. went bankrupt, black Americans
lost some $7 million in savings.
2. The tough times hit debtors hard. They wanted inflationary policies to be
pursued. Specifically, debtors wanted paper money ("greenbacks") printed
to create inflation and thus make it easier to pay off debts. This strategy
was called soft money or cheap money policies.
3. Opponents, usually bankers and the wealthy, favored hard
money policies. That is, they favored keeping the amount of money stable
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