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Gilded Age Notes 1877 to 1890s

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Jocz Productions notes on the Gilded Age (APUSH)

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we are back APUSH homeboys and homegirls today we're going to take a look at Gilded Age politics roughly from 1868 to the 1890 and in 1868 there's an election and President Grant Civil War General Grant wins the presidency for the Republican party in 1868 this guy has no real political experience but hero so he wins the presidency and really a big part of his victory comes from the fact that there was a temporary social and political revolution going on in the South during reconstruction when black voters real first time and those black voters are voting for The Republican candidates and the freedmen give the Republican Party a huge boost got a problem for Grant is there a lot of corruption during his administration is really the people around him that are the kind of key culprits in this corruption there is an event called the credit mobilier Affair where his vice president and members of Congress are involved in the sale of Railroad stock in school scandal there were there personally enriching themselves you have the whiskey ring in 1875 or grants private secretary is found to be stealing three million dollars from the federal government in a tax corruption and there's many other examples of this corruption in fact the term grantism is a term that was used to describe corruption in politics so we could have a hard time as president and the ultimate symbol of Gilded Age political corruption could be seen in Boss Tweed and this is local political corruption because in a place in New York City there was a political machine run by the Democratic party called Tammany Hall on the boss of that political party was that guy right Boss Tweed and he's going to use bribery graft and fraud to steal over two hundred million dollars from your taxpayers and really she is and Tammany Hall itself is is the symbol of this and unfortunately for Boss Tweed Thomas Nast a political cartoonist will ultimately exposes corruption to the weapons in 1873 there's a panic in the Attic 1373 really kind of hurts the entire economy because it's a severe economic collapse that further distract the nation from enforcing reconstruction and so there's this huge pad banks are failing huge amount of unemployment his family is well and there's some causes here that are revealing the economy is not healthy what is overproduction in Industry such as factories Railroad in mining and over speculation by Bankers they were giving out too much money that could he paid back in Hispanic last for a number of years and the hard times are going to be inflicted worst on the debtors and farmers and people in those categories and this brings up a debate over monetary policies debtors advocate for relaxation of Tight money policy where there is a restriction to the access to easy money and the debate comes down to those who favor hard-currency gold and silver purses paper money or soft currency such as greenbacks and ultimately it is going to be a debate that's going to reimburse his special in the 1890s when Farmers the grand sector and other dead our groups want cheap money they want green tax issue they want to make it rain well after two terms as president there's another election and this is the election of 1876 grants gone the Republicans turn to Rutherford B Hayes and he's running against the Democrat Samuel Tilden and this elections in very important election because there is a political controversy 3 of the states of the returns are contested and they all happened in southern States and there's a big Dino controversy as to whether or not it's going to be the Republican guy Hays or the Democrats killed in to take the White House and ultimately a compromise was reached call the compromise of 1870 and in this compromise a couple of things happen when the South and Democrats will recognize the Republican Rutherford B Hayes he will become the president of the United States in exchange for them recognizing Hayes presidency he would agree to pull out the last federal troops from the south informally and reconstruction it was already kind of slowing down underwear only federal troops in about 2. free Southern States but he's going to pull them out and formally and the Reconstruction process and then finally pays the Republicans need to provide the South with political positions patronage and federal aid for the building of a trans Continental railroad for the South through Texas 77 is the formal end of reconstruction and as the federal troops are withdrawn those troops which were protecting African Americans and the Republican governments they are withdrawn and reconstruction is abandoned no it's not just the federal troops leaving which reconstruction the court also under minded little review gear remember the Civil Rights Act of 1875 this protected rights and in this act of 1875 it made it a crime for any individual to deny equal use of public places it also prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection so the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was designed to protect the rights of African-Americans and in the civil rights cases of 1883 the courts strike that law down in these cases the Supreme Court says the Fourteenth Amendment only protected against government violations of civil rights translation individuals can discriminate all they want so if railroad companies or hotels are other businesses would like to discriminate they have the right to do so there for the Civil Rights Act of 1875 is overturned and mine is as reconstruction is abandoned Jim Crow laws are going to spread throughout the South and the Court's decisions are going to support segregation laws throughout the South very important you know is Plessy Ferguson in 1896 and in this case the Supreme Court rules racial segregation was constitutional if equal facilities were made available to each race and this establishes the separate but boat docking and we all hopefully know it was always separate but never equal answer you get Jim Crow laws spreading segregation throughout the South and it is validated and approved by the courts and another thing you should keep in mind is this idea of the new South in the Reconstruction in post-reconstruction Era this idea was promoted especially by Southerners a few Southerners that the South would we build it would industrialize develop their economy but the reality is in spite of these calls for this new South yes there's a rise in textile factories in the South the south is going to largely remain agrarian sharecropping and tenant farming is going to continue dominant economic activity and life for African Americans in the post-reconstruction south is going to continue to be filled with many challenges let me give you a couple of examples 15th amendment if you recall game black men the right to vote and not women and this was a big controversy and slowly you see the systematic disenfranchisement of Southern blacks and this was done in a number of ways and you could see violence and intimidation was one but also things like literacy poll taxes property requirements were designed to disenfranchise African-American voters they also established grandfather clauses which Exempted from electoral requirements anyone in the election of 1860 or prior white people did not have to fulfill these electoral requirements and what you see if you recall that temporary social and political revolution where Republicans black voters were winning Southern States that's going to quickly fall apart after reconstruction ends and Democrats are going to dominate the South White democratic governments the so-called Redeemer Zari assuming political power throughout the one other thing that's happening during this time. outside of reconstruction is a huge increase a large increase in Asian immigration especially from China and Chinese immigrants especially Chinese Manor to play a huge role in the mining boom you could see Chinese miners at that bottom photo and in the pulling of the railroads and after those kind of economic boom and bust Cycles take place Chinese immigrants are going to spread out throughout the west but there's going to be a spike in nativism towards Asian immigrants especially in the west where their populations were larger and as a result of this you're going to get a very important law of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which prohibited further immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States and this is a hugely important law because it's the first immigration restrictions were put in place on the basis of race and nationality and what you see in the Chinese Exclusion Act is a national policy of discrimination towards Chinese and because of race real quickly way to take a look at the Gilded Age presidents and memorize these guys in fact very often they're kind of jokingly referred to as the Forgotten presidents they are the ones with the worst names ever Rutherford Garfield Chester roll over and so on you know you have Republicans you have Democrats serving in office and the Gilded Age is important keep in mind it's this post Civil War post-reconstruction era of Rapid economic and population growth and that term Gilded Age was coined by Mark Twain and he used it as a sarcastic term to criticize this era and in this lecture only going to take a look at the political aspects of the Gilded Age what are the key things you need to keep in mind directly from the APUSH curriculum is Gilded Age politics intimately tied to big business and focus nationally on economic issues such as tariffs and currency policy real exciting stuff I know both political parties during the Gilded Age are going to ignore the political and social consequences of industrialization so with the rise of poverty in bad working conditions are going to be ignored bad Republicans and Democrats because there's going to be a belief in this idea of laissez-faire to leave things alone the government should not regulate or monitor Society born you keep in mind no matter which president were looking at they are largely going pursue a pro-business policy we've already seen one example with the currency issue favoring the kind of hard money gold or silver but one other issue that we're going to look at that becomes an issue in National is civil service reform and Terrace patronage was used by both political parties in that all goes down to this idea that civil service jobs were given to supporters To the victor belong the spoils we saw the spoils system you know talk about during the Jackson lecture and there was growing criticism and calls for reform of the Civil Service there was this perception that these people were very often corrupt and did not know what they were doing and the only reason they got the job was because of loyalty and so there were calls for people to reform that another thing that you need to kind of keep in mind is that you have to camps within the political parties one half-breed advocated civil service reform and their leader is James Blaine and the other group was the stalwarts and these were supporters of patronage and their best represented by Roscoe conkling tariffs was also an issue that you need mine for Gilded Age politics and a big thing that was happening is by the 1880s the US Treasury had a huge Surplus from Tara there was a lot of money and people will you see Grover Cleveland the Democrats and farmers and others wanted to cut Terrace down and lower those Terrace and that's going to be a big issue during this. A couple key things to keep in mind is Rutherford B Hayes he's the guy who gets elected in the disputed election and the compromise of 1877 settles that does send federal troops to break up the great Railroad Strike sending in the federal troops to break up a labor union and we'll learn a little bit more about that in another video James Garfield he's elected he's also Republican he's assassinated I'm in his beat Chester A Arthur takes over and he supports surprise me since he is a stalwart the Pendleton Act which establishes civil service reform and it's that which is the Civil Service Commission so that people federal jobs add to take a competitive exam to prove that they were capable of doing the job Grover Cleveland the Democrats regain the White House in 1884 in the election of 1884 he is a strong advocate of lay are most of these guys are his famous quote though the people support the government the government should not support the people he does sign into law the Interstate Commerce Act which will take a look at in another chapter and then the Republicans regain the White House with Benjamin Harrison grandson of the former president he advocates for keeping the Tariff in fact during his presidency there's going to be this so-called Billion Dollar Congress and they in 1890 were going to pass the McKinley Tariff one of the highest Terrace in American history and also increase the Civil War pensions and then of course for the first and only time in American history a president will come back into the White House to serve non consecutive second term it will take a little bit more about what happens during this time. In other videos that's going to do it for today I hope you found Gilded Age politics excited to my least favorite Topic in can history but if you have any questions you can always post a comment click like on the video if you haven't done so subscribe tell some friends to do the same and get a 5 on that exam people APUSH beast mode

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Gilded Age Notes 1877 to 1890s

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