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1. Why did politics in the Gilded Age seemingly sing to such a low level? Did the Gilded Age Party system have any strengths to compensate for its weaknesses?
Politics in the Gilded Age did not indeed be terrible. Grant’s entire presidency was tainted with scandals and elections were very sketchy. The first scandal that occurred within Grant’s presidency was the Black Friday scandal, in which “Jubilee Jim” and Jay Gould attempted to rob the market advantaging from gold inflation. The “conspirators worked on President Grant directly and also though the brother in law, who received $25,000 for his complicity (505)”, to connect a plot to sell all their gold on Black Friday, the day Gold prices would peak and the treasury would have refrained from selling gold. Though the “bubble finally broke when the Treasury, contrary to Grant’s supposed assurances, was compelled to release gold “(505), ruining the plans of the two swindlers. Grant, though he claims his innocence, was still responsible as he was the figurehead of the American Government, which ultimately allowed for this scandal to occur. Another notorious [scandal] had to do with the notorious Boss Tweed, in which he was rumored to have “employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to milk the metropolis of as much as $200 million” (505). He used method political machines and gave jobs and supported immigrants in favor with their votes. The New York Times published evidence against him in 1871 despite Tweed offering up a whoppin’ 5 million dollars, which led to his humiliation by Thomas Nast in popular political comics and arrest led by Samuel Tilden. The Gilded Age political system, though flawed, did have a few strengthens. According to the results of this time period, besides the issue between gold and silver, the democrats and republicans were said to have been relatively agreeable. They did not dispute largely since the Compromise of 1887, which “avoided the renewed deadlock”. “Republicans assured the Democrats a place at the presidential patronage through and support for a bill subsidizing the Texas and Pacific RR’s construction of a southern transcontinental line”. Grant was “first tarred by the Credit Mobilier Scandal, which erupted in 1872”(506). The Credit Mobilier was, essentially, a fabricated construction company made by name only in which the Union Pacific RR industry members” cleverly hired themselves” in order to be paid twice as much while demanding payments from the American govt. While Grant did declare “Let no guilty man escape” (506), once the ring was busted, he wrote an affidavit to help his own Sec. of War who was involved escape conviction.
2. What was the most significant election and the most significant presidency of the era? Why?
The most significant election was the Election of 1896, which was the death of the Populists. The theme of this election was primarily the “should we use gold or silver” debate amongst the privileged industrialists and bus. owners and lower class farmers and industrialists. Those who took the side of the farmers, who were pressured economically after the Panic of 1893, were those who wanted silver to be the standard in the American economic currency since silver, which has as much volume in the bank but less value than gold, would inflate the currency and farmers in debt would be able to pay off what they owned since the bushels of grains, cartons of eggs, pounds of cow meat, and baskets of fruits would be worth more. Thus, these farmers and laborers stood on a platform that benefited the lower class people and under William Jennings Bryan, their “masterful boy orator” (620) kid candidate, bet their all. Bryan, like stated left, was a “magnificent oratorical effort”, with “an organlike voice that rolled into the corners of the huge hall” (620). He represented the populists in his “Cross of Gold Speech”, a “sensation” that declared that each 16 oz. of silver would equal one oz. of gold. This would, of course, benefit the populists standing greatly. However, the Populists stood on a platform that had been stolen from the Democrats, and many democrats thus wanted a McKinley victory, not a Populist. When McKinley was elected into office, the Populists party collapsed with it, though it did not simply hit rock bottom but feel into depths of hell, where it would never again be heard of again. The Election of 1896 was the “free silver election of 1896” which “heralded the advent of a new era in American politics”. When Bryan could not band together an entire political majority, it “marked the last serious effort to win the White House with most agrarian votes” (623).
3. What were the short-term and long terms of the “Jim Crow” system in the South? Why was the sharecropping system so hard to overcome?
Congruently, history naturally names antagonists with names of negative connotation. Jim Crow’s name was coined into a set of laws that had “started as the informal separation of blacks and whites in the immediate postwar years developed by the systematic state-level legal codes of segregation”(513). They “enacted literacy requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll taxes to ensure full-scale disfranchisement of the South’s black population”(513). Furthermore, in the Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ruled that “separate but equal” facilities were completely justified under the 14th Amen, an effect of the currency cultural Jim Crow laws. The optimistic sounding “equal” facilities were, in fact, the most segregating assets of this time period. Restrooms, classrooms, restaurants, and RR cars were all “galling reminders” of the American caste system, with blacks teeming at the bottom. As a result of the integration of Jim Crow Laws and court justification, the south adopted such a racially divided lifestyle, which led to a “record number of blacks who were lynched during the 1890’s, most often for the crime of asserting themselves as equals”(513). On the chart, it took as long as until 1965 for the lynching to end completely. “It would take a second reconstruction, nearly a century later, to redress the racial imbalance of the southern society” (513). But, it takes another century for black rights to be put into action.
4. What made the 1890’s a decade of such economic conflict and social unrest?
The nation’s social/economical unrest seemingly stems from the Farmer’s Alliances that became the People’s Party in the early 1890’s. Known as the Populists, these frustrated farmers attacked Wall Street and the “money trusts”