Politics in the Gilded Age
National political contests
After the enormous disruption of the Civil War, the resumption of more traditional political competition, including elections, featured important and often divisive issues and campaigns. The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the first impeachment of a president in American history, and the combative relationship between Johnson and the Republican-controlled Congress as well as the defiant demands of former Confederates for home rule in the south contributed to a bitter series of campaigns. The successive elections of President Ulysses S. Grant, the most popular Union military commander from the Civil War, in 1868 and 1872 was followed by the bitterly fought election of 1876 with Republican Rutherford B. Hayes finally elected president in February 1877 after accusations of vote-stealing by both Republicans and Democrats.
Republicans would control the presidency for most of the late 19th century, outside of Grover Cleveland’s two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897), but Congressional and state and local elections sometimes featured wild swings between the parties; in 1890, after passage of the McKinley tariff, Democrats gained 2 US Senate seats, 86 House seats, and 6 governorships. In the Jim Crow era, though, the Democratic Party came to control the south for nearly 90 years.
Solid south
By the end of the 19th century, the limited political gains for African Americans in the south, including the first elections of African American politicians to different political offices, including to the US Senate, and significant voting participation by African American men, were effectively curtailed. Southern state legislatures, governors, and southern Congressional delegations were overwhelmingly composed of conservative southern Democrats, many of whom opposed the expansion of federal regulation and oversight that could provide benefits to African Americans.
New political parties and movements
During the later 19th century, a variety of political movements and parties, often short-lived but sometimes with enduring legacies, challenged the prevailing laissez-faire approach of local, state and federal politicians, arguing for greater regulation and oversight of industry and capitalism. Spurred in part because of greater government oversight and regulation of industry during the Civil War, disparate political parties and movements, including the Grange, the Greenbacker Party, and the People’s Party, often called the Populists, emerged during the Gilded Age to demand greater use of paper money, the expansion of silver in the economy, regulation of railroads, and **antitrust legislation **to prevent and/or break up monopolies and oligopolies. These political parties won legislative seats in a number of western and plains states, with the Populists achieving their greatest presidential success in 1896 when they and the Democrats both nominated William Jennings Bryan, a Representative from Nebraska; Bryan would deliver a rousing nomination acceptance speech, often referred to as the cross of gold speech, calling for the greater use of silver instead of gold to back the dollar. You will see Bryan’s name several more times in AP US History - he served as President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State in the first Wilson administration and later as prosecutor in the 1925 trial of Tennessee high school biology teacher John Scopes and the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Populist Party platform, 1892
Universal suffrage?
Women and a number of male allies had expressed support for suffrage at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, and hopes were briefly stirred for the establishment of universal adult suffrage during the ratification process for the 15th Amendment; unfortunately for suffrage advocates, while western states and territories recognized women’s rights starting around 1870, national momentum for firmly enshrining women’s suffrage stalled in the late 19th century, in part because of different approaches and arguments over strategies and tactics.
Confidential ballots
In the 19th century, the integrity of the voting process was greatly diminished in comparison to contemporary standards. Until the 1880s, voters could not be assured that their votes were anonymous as ballots came in different colors, shapes, and sizes and were often deposited into clear glass containers; with the adoption of the Australian ballot in the 1880s, voters were provided with uniform confidential ballots, improving overall confidence in the American political system.
American politics remained contentious in the decades after the Civil War, even though the country was spared further armed conflict.
Republicans and Democrats maintained and/or established powerful regional bases of support, with the Democrats dominating southern politics for nearly a century after the end of Reconstruction.
New political parties and movements, including the Grangers and the Populists, emerged during the later decades of the 19th century demanding reforms and greater government regulation, especially of railroads.
Suffrage was expanded to African American men with the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 but women and Native Americans continued to be excluded from voting.