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+contract to work in specified mines and mills. There seemed to be no
+limit to the factories, forges, refineries, and railways that could be
+built, to the multitudes that could be employed in conquering a
+continent. As for the future, that was in the hands of Providence!
+
+=Business Theories of Politics.=--As the statesmen of Hamilton's school
+and the planters of Calhoun's had their theories of government and
+politics, so the leaders in business enterprise had theirs. It was
+simple and easily stated. "It is the duty of the government," they
+urged, "to protect American industry against foreign competition by
+means of high tariffs on imported goods, to aid railways by generous
+grants of land, to sell mineral and timber lands at low prices to
+energetic men ready to develop them, and then to leave the rest to the
+initiative and drive of individuals and companies." All government
+interference with the management, prices, rates, charges, and conduct of
+private business they held to be either wholly pernicious or intolerably
+impertinent. Judging from their speeches and writings, they conceived
+the nation as a great collection of individuals, companies, and labor
+unions all struggling for profits or high wages and held together by a
+government whose principal duty was to keep the peace among them and
+protect industry against the foreign manufacturer. Such was the
+political theory of business during the generation that followed the
+Civil War.
+
+
+THE SUPREMACY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (1861-85)
+
+=Business Men and Republican Policies.=--Most of the leaders in industry
+gravitated to the Republican ranks. They worked in the North and the
+Republican party was essentially Northern. It was moreover--at least so
+far as the majority of its members were concerned--committed to
+protective tariffs, a sound monetary and banking system, the promotion
+of railways and industry by land grants, and the development of internal
+improvements. It was furthermore generous in its immigration policy. It
+proclaimed America to be an asylum for the oppressed of all countries
+and flung wide the doors for immigrants eager to fill the factories, man
+the mines, and settle upon Western lands. In a word the Republicans
+stood for all those specific measures which favored the enlargement and
+prosperity of business. At the same time they resisted government
+interference with private enterprise. They did not regulate railway
+rates, prosecute trusts for forming combinations, or prevent railway
+companies from giving lower rates to some shippers than to others. To
+sum it up, the political theories of the Republican party for three
+decades after the Civil War were the theories of American
+business--prosperous and profitable industries for the owners and "the
+full dinner pail" for the workmen. Naturally a large portion of those
+who flourished under its policies gave their support to it, voted for
+its candidates, and subscribed to its campaign funds.
+
+=Sources of Republican Strength in the North.=--The Republican party was
+in fact a political organization of singular power. It originated in a
+wave of moral enthusiasm, having attracted to itself, if not the
+abolitionists, certainly all those idealists, like James Russell Lowell
+and George William Curtis, who had opposed slavery when opposition was
+neither safe nor popular. To moral principles it added practical
+considerations. Business men had confidence in it. Workingmen, who
+longed for the independence of the farmer, owed to its indulgent land
+policy the opportunity of securing free homesteads in the West. The
+immigrant, landing penniless on these shores, as a result of the same
+beneficent system, often found himself in a little while with an estate
+as large as many a baronial domain in the Old World. Under a Republican
+administration, the union had been saved. To it the veterans of the war
+could turn with confidence for those rewards of service which the
+government could bestow: pensions surpassing in liberality anything that
+the world had ever seen. Under a Republican administration also the
+great debt had been created in the defense of the union, and to the
+Republican party every investor in government bonds could look for the
+full and honorable discharge of the interest and principal. The spoils
+system, inaugurated by Jacksonian Democracy, in turn placed all the
+federal offices in Republican hands, furnishing an army of party workers
+to be counted on for loyal service in every campaign.
+
+Of all these things Republican leaders made full and vigorous use,
+sometimes ascribing to the party, in accordance with ancient political
+usage, merits and achievements not wholly its own. Particularly was this
+true in the case of saving the union. "When in the economy of
+Providence, this land was to be purged of human slavery ... the
+Republican party came into power," ran a declaration in one platform.
+"The Republican party suppressed a gigantic rebellion, emancipated four
+million slaves, decreed the equal citizenship of all, and established
+universal suffrage," ran another. As for the aid rendered by the
+millions of Northern Democrats who stood by the union and the tens of
+thousands of them who actually fought in the union army, the Republicans
+in their zeal were inclined to be oblivious. They repeatedly charged the
+Democratic party "with being the same in character and spirit as when it
+sympathized with treason."
+
+=Republican Control of the South.=--To the strength enjoyed in the
+North, the Republicans for a long time added the advantages that came
+from control over the former Confederate states where the newly
+enfranchised negroes, under white leadership, gave a grateful support to
+the party responsible for their freedom. In this branch of politics,
+motives were so mixed that no historian can hope to appraise them all at
+their proper values. On the one side of the ledger must be set the
+vigorous efforts of the honest and sincere friends of the freedmen to
+win for them complete civil and political equality, wiping out not only
+slavery but all its badges of misery and servitude. On the same side
+must be placed the labor of those who had valiantly fought in forum and
+field to save the union and who regarded continued Republican supremacy
+after the war as absolutely necessary to prevent the former leaders in
+secession from coming back to power. At the same time there were
+undoubtedly some men of the baser sort who looked on politics as a game
+and who made use of "carpet-bagging" in the South to win the spoils that
+might result from it. At all events, both by laws and presidential acts,
+the Republicans for many years kept a keen eye upon the maintenance of
+their dominion in the South. Their declaration that neither the law nor
+its administration should admit any discrimination in respect of
+citizens by reason of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
+appealed to idealists and brought results in elections. Even South
+Carolina, where reposed the ashes of John C. Calhoun, went Republican in
+1872 by a vote of three to one!
+
+Republican control was made easy by the force bills described in a
+previous chapter--measures which vested the supervision of elections in
+federal officers appointed by Republican Presidents. These drastic
+measures, departing from American tradition, the Republican authors
+urged, were necessary to safeguard the purity of the ballot, not merely
+in the South where the timid freedman might readily be frightened from
+using it; but also in the North, particularly in New York City, where it
+was claimed that fraud was regularly practiced by Democratic leaders.
+
+The Democrats, on their side, indignantly denied the charges, replying
+that the force bills were nothing but devices created by the Republicans
+for the purpose of securing their continued rule through systematic
+interference with elections. Even the measures of reconstruction were
+deemed by Democratic leaders as thinly veiled schemes to establish
+Republican power throughout the country. "Nor is there the slightest
+doubt," exclaimed Samuel J. Tilden, spokesman of the Democrats in New
+York and candidate for President in 1876, "that the paramount object and
+motive of the Republican party is by these means to secure itself
+against a reaction of opinion adverse to it in our great populous
+Northern commonwealths.... When the Republican party resolved to
+establish negro supremacy in the ten states in order to gain to itself
+the representation of those states in Congress, it had to begin by
+governing the people of those states by the sword.... The next was the
+creation of new electoral bodies for those ten states, in which, by
+exclusions, by disfranchisements and proscriptions, by control over
+registration, by applying test oaths ... by intimidation and by every
+form of influence, three million negroes are made to predominate over
+four and a half million whites."
+
+=The War as a Campaign Issue.=--Even the repeal of force bills could not
+allay the sectional feelings engendered by the war. The Republicans
+could not forgive the men who had so recently been in arms against the
+union and insisted on calling them "traitors" and "rebels." The
+Southerners, smarting under the reconstruction acts, could regard the
+Republicans only as political oppressors. The passions of the war had
+been too strong; the distress too deep to be soon forgotten. The
+generation that went through it all remembered it all. For twenty
+years, the Republicans, in their speeches and platforms, made "a
+straight appeal to the patriotism of the Northern voters." They
+maintained that their party, which had saved the union and emancipated
+the slaves, was alone worthy of protecting the union and uplifting the
+freedmen.
+
+Though the Democrats, especially in the North, resented this policy and
+dubbed it with the expressive but inelegant phrase, "waving the bloody
+shirt," the Republicans refused to surrender a slogan which made such a
+ready popular appeal. As late as 1884, a leader expressed the hope that
+they might "wring one more President from the bloody shirt." They
+refused to let the country forget that the Democratic candidate, Grover
+Cleveland, had escaped military service by hiring a substitute; and they
+made political capital out of the fact that he had "insulted the
+veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic" by going fishing on
+Decoration Day.
+
+=Three Republican Presidents.=--Fortified by all these elements of
+strength, the Republicans held the presidency from 1869 to 1885. The
+three Presidents elected in this period, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield, had
+certain striking characteristics in common. They were all of origin
+humble enough to please the most exacting Jacksonian Democrat. They had
+been generals in the union army. Grant, next to Lincoln, was regarded as
+the savior of the Constitution. Hayes and Garfield, though lesser lights
+in the military firmament, had honorable records duly appreciated by
+veterans of the war, now thoroughly organized into the Grand Army of the
+Republic. It is true that Grant was not a politician and had never voted
+the Republican ticket; but this was readily overlooked. Hayes and
+Garfield on the other hand were loyal party men. The former had served
+in Congress and for three terms as governor of his state. The latter had
+long been a member of the House of Representatives and was Senator-elect
+when he received the nomination for President.
+
+All of them possessed, moreover, another important asset, which was not
+forgotten by the astute managers who led in selecting candidates. All
+of them were from Ohio--though Grant had been in Illinois when the
+summons to military duties came--and Ohio was a strategic state. It lay
+between the manufacturing East and the agrarian country to the West.
+Having growing industries and wool to sell it benefited from the
+protective tariff. Yet being mainly agricultural still, it was not
+
+without sympathy for the farmers who showed low tariff or free trade
+tendencies. Whatever share the East had in shaping laws and framing
+policies, it was clear that the West was to have the candidates. This
+division in privileges--not uncommon in political management--was always
+accompanied by a judicious selection of the candidate for Vice
+President. With Garfield, for example, was associated a prominent New
+York politician, Chester A. Arthur, who, as fate decreed, was destined
+to more than three years' service as chief magistrate, on the
+assassination of his superior in office.
+
+=The Disputed Election of 1876.=--While taking note of the long years of
+Republican supremacy, it must be recorded that grave doubts exist in the
+minds of many historians as to whether one of the three Presidents,
+Hayes, was actually the victor in 1876 or not. His Democratic opponent,
+Samuel J. Tilden, received a popular plurality of a quarter of a million
+and had a plausible claim to a majority of the electoral vote. At all
+events, four states sent in double returns, one set for Tilden and
+another for Hayes; and a deadlock ensued. Both parties vehemently
+claimed the election and the passions ran so high that sober men did not
+shrink from speaking of civil war again. Fortunately, in the end, the
+counsels of peace prevailed. Congress provided for an electoral
+commission of fifteen men to review the contested returns. The
+Democrats, inspired by Tilden's moderation, accepted the judgment in
+favor of Hayes even though they were not convinced that he was really
+entitled to the office.
+
+
+THE GROWTH OF OPPOSITION TO REPUBLICAN RULE
+
+=Abuses in American Political Life.=--During their long tenure of
+office, the Republicans could not escape the inevitable consequences of
+power; that is, evil practices and corrupt conduct on the part of some
+who found shelter within the party. For that matter neither did the
+Democrats manage to avoid such difficulties in those states and cities
+where they had the majority. In New York City, for instance, the local
+Democratic organization, known as Tammany Hall, passed under the sway of
+a group of politicians headed by "Boss" Tweed. He plundered the city
+treasury until public-spirited citizens, supported by Samuel J. Tilden,
+the Democratic leader of the state, rose in revolt, drove the ringleader
+from power, and sent him to jail. In Philadelphia, the local Republican
+bosses were guilty of offenses as odious as those committed by New York
+politicians. Indeed, the decade that followed the Civil War was marred
+by so many scandals in public life that one acute editor was moved to
+inquire: "Are not all the great communities of the Western World growing
+more corrupt as they grow in wealth?"
+
+In the sphere of national politics, where the opportunities were
+greater, betrayals of public trust were even more flagrant. One
+revelation after another showed officers, high and low, possessed with
+the spirit of peculation. Members of Congress, it was found, accepted
+railway stock in exchange for votes in favor of land grants and other
+concessions to the companies. In the administration as well as the
+legislature the disease was rife. Revenue officers permitted whisky
+distillers to evade their taxes and received heavy bribes in return. A
+probe into the post-office department revealed the malodorous "star
+route frauds"--the deliberate overpayment of certain mail carriers whose
+lines were indicated in the official record by asterisks or stars. Even
+cabinet officers did not escape suspicion, for the trail of the serpent
+led straight to the door of one of them.
+
+In the lower ranges of official life, the spoils system became more
+virulent as the number of federal employees increased. The holders of
+offices and the seekers after them constituted a veritable political
+army. They crowded into Republican councils, for the Republicans, being
+in power, could alone dispense federal favors. They filled positions in
+the party ranging from the lowest township committee to the national
+convention. They helped to nominate candidates and draft platforms and
+elbowed to one side the busy citizen, not conversant with party
+intrigues, who could only give an occasional day to political matters.
+Even the Civil Service Act of 1883, wrung from a reluctant Congress two
+years after the assassination of Garfield, made little change for a long
+time. It took away from the spoilsmen a few thousand government
+positions, but it formed no check on the practice of rewarding party
+workers from the public treasury.
+
+On viewing this state of affairs, many a distinguished citizen became
+profoundly discouraged. James Russell Lowell, for example, thought he
+saw a steady decline in public morals. In 1865, hearing of Lee's
+surrender, he had exclaimed: "There is something magnificent in having a
+country to love!" Ten years later, when asked to write an ode for the
+centennial at Philadelphia in 1876, he could think only of a biting
+satire on the nation:
+
+    "Show your state legislatures; show your Rings;
+     And challenge Europe to produce such things
+     As high officials sitting half in sight
+     To share the plunder and fix things right.
+     If that don't fetch her, why, you need only
+     To show your latest style in martyrs,--Tweed:
+     She'll find it hard to hide her spiteful tears
+     At such advance in one poor hundred years."
+
+When his critics condemned him for this "attack upon his native land,"
+Lowell replied in sadness: "These fellows have no notion of what love of
+country means. It was in my very blood and bones. If I am not an
+American who ever was?... What fills me with doubt and dismay is the
+degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of democracy?
+Is ours a 'government of the people, by the people, for the people,' or
+a Kakistocracy [a government of the worst], rather for the benefit of
+knaves at the cost of fools?"
+
+=The Reform Movement in Republican Ranks.=--The sentiments expressed by
+Lowell, himself a Republican and for a time American ambassador to
+England, were shared by many men in his party. Very soon after the close
+of the Civil War some of them began to protest vigorously against the
+policies and conduct of their leaders. In 1872, the dissenters, calling
+themselves Liberal Republicans, broke away altogether, nominated a
+candidate of their own, Horace Greeley, and put forward a platform
+indicting the Republican President fiercely enough to please the most
+uncompromising Democrat. They accused Grant of using "the powers and
+opportunities of his high office for the promotion of personal ends."
+They charged him with retaining "notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in
+places of power and responsibility." They alleged that the Republican
+party kept "alive the passions and resentments of the late civil war to
+use them for their own advantages," and employed the "public service of
+the government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence."
+
+It was not apparent, however, from the ensuing election that any
+considerable number of Republicans accepted the views of the Liberals.
+Greeley, though indorsed by the Democrats, was utterly routed and died
+of a broken heart. The lesson of his discomfiture seemed to be that
+independent action was futile. So, at least, it was regarded by most men
+of the rising generation like Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, and
+Theodore Roosevelt, of New York. Profiting by the experience of Greeley
+they insisted in season and out that reformers who desired to rid the
+party of abuses should remain loyal to it and do their work "on the
+inside."
+
+=The Mugwumps and Cleveland Democracy in 1884.=--Though aided by
+Republican dissensions, the Democrats were slow in making headway
+against the political current. They were deprived of the energetic and
+capable leadership once afforded by the planters, like Calhoun, Davis,
+and Toombs; they were saddled by their opponents with responsibility for
+secession; and they were stripped of the support of the prostrate
+South. Not until the last Southern state was restored to the union, not
+until a general amnesty was wrung from Congress, not until white
+supremacy was established at the polls, and the last federal soldier
+withdrawn from Southern capitals did they succeed in capturing the
+presidency.
+
+The opportune moment for them came in 1884 when a number of
+circumstances favored their aspirations. The Republicans, leaving the
+Ohio Valley in their search for a candidate, nominated James G. Blaine
+of Maine, a vigorous and popular leader but a man under fire from the
+reformers in his own party. The Democrats on their side were able to
+find at this juncture an able candidate who had no political enemies in
+the sphere of national politics, Grover Cleveland, then governor of New
+York and widely celebrated as a man of "sterling honesty." At the same
+time a number of dissatisfied Republicans openly espoused the Democratic
+cause,--among them Carl Schurz, George William Curtis, Henry Ward
+Beecher, and William Everett, men of fine ideals and undoubted
+integrity. Though the "regular" Republicans called them "Mugwumps" and
+laughed at them as the "men milliners, the dilettanti, and carpet
+knights of politics," they had a following that was not to be despised.
+
+The campaign which took place that year was one of the most savage in
+American history. Issues were thrust into the background. The tariff,
+though mentioned, was not taken seriously. Abuse of the opposition was
+the favorite resource of party orators. The Democrats insisted that "the
+Republican party so far as principle is concerned is a reminiscence. In
+practice it is an organization for enriching those who control its
+machinery." For the Republican candidate, Blaine, they could hardly find
+words to express their contempt. The Republicans retaliated in kind.
+They praised their own good works, as of old, in saving the union, and
+denounced the "fraud and violence practiced by the Democracy in the
+Southern states." Seeing little objectionable in the public record of
+Cleveland as mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York, they attacked
+his personal character. Perhaps never in the history of political
+campaigns did the discussions on the platform and in the press sink to
+so low a level. Decent people were sickened. Even hot partisans shrank
+from their own words when, after the election, they had time to reflect
+on their heedless passions. Moreover, nothing was decided by the
+balloting. Cleveland was elected, but his victory was a narrow one. A
+change of a few hundred votes in New York would have sent his opponent
+to the White House instead.
+
+=Changing Political Fortunes (1888-96).=--After the Democrats had
+settled down to the enjoyment of their hard-earned victory, President
+Cleveland in his message of 1887 attacked the tariff as "vicious,
+inequitable, and illogical"; as a system of taxation that laid a burden
+upon "every consumer in the land for the benefit of our manufacturers."
+Business enterprise was thoroughly alarmed. The Republicans
+characterized the tariff message as a free-trade assault upon the
+industries of the country. Mainly on that issue they elected in 1888
+Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, a shrewd lawyer, a reticent politician, a
+descendant of the hero of Tippecanoe, and a son of the old Northwest.
+Accepting the outcome of the election as a vindication of their
+principles, the Republicans, under the leadership of William McKinley in
+the House of Representatives, enacted in 1890 a tariff law imposing the
+highest duties yet laid in our history. To their utter surprise,
+however, they were instantly informed by the country that their program
+was not approved. That very autumn they lost in the congressional
+elections, and two years later they were decisively beaten in the
+presidential campaign, Cleveland once more leading his party to victory.
+
+
+=References=
+
+L.H. Haney, _Congressional History of Railways_ (2 vols.).
+
+J.P. Davis, _Union Pacific Railway_.
+
+J.M. Swank, _History of the Manufacture of Iron_.
+
+M.T. Copeland, _The Cotton Manufacturing Industry in the United States_
+(Harvard Studies).
+
+E.W. Bryce, _Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century_.
+
+Ida Tarbell, _History of the Standard Oil Company_ (Critical).
+
+G.H. Montague, _Rise and Progress of the Standard Oil Company_
+(Friendly).
+
+H.P. Fairchild, _Immigration_, and F.J. Warne, _The Immigrant Invasion_
+(Both works favor exclusion).
+
+I.A. Hourwich, _Immigration_ (Against exclusionist policies).
+
+J.F. Rhodes, _History of the United States, 1877-1896_, Vol. VIII.
+
+Edward Stanwood, _A History of the Presidency_, Vol. I, for the
+presidential elections of the period.
+
+
+=Questions=
+
+1. Contrast the state of industry and commerce at the close of the Civil
+War with its condition at the close of the Revolutionary War.
+
+2. Enumerate the services rendered to the nation by the railways.
+
+3. Explain the peculiar relation of railways to government.
+
+4. What sections of the country have been industrialized?
+
+5. How do you account for the rise and growth of the trusts? Explain
+some of the economic advantages of the trust.
+
+6. Are the people in cities more or less independent than the farmers?
+What was Jefferson's view?
+
+7. State some of the problems raised by unrestricted immigration.
+
+8. What was the theory of the relation of government to business in this
+period? Has it changed in recent times?
+
+9. State the leading economic policies sponsored by the Republican
+party.
+
+10. Why were the Republicans especially strong immediately after the
+Civil War?
+
+11. What illustrations can you give showing the influence of war in
+American political campaigns?
+
+12. Account for the strength of middle-western candidates.
+
+13. Enumerate some of the abuses that appeared in American political
+life after 1865.
+
+14. Sketch the rise and growth of the reform movement.
+
+15. How is the fluctuating state of public opinion reflected in the
+elections from 1880 to 1896?
+
+
+=Research Topics=
+
+=Invention, Discovery, and Transportation.=--Sparks, _National
+Development_ (American Nation Series), pp. 37-67; Bogart, _Economic
+History of the United States_, Chaps. XXI, XXII, and XXIII.
+
+=Business and Politics.=--Paxson, _The New Nation_ (Riverside Series),
+pp. 92-107; Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. VII, pp. 1-29,
+64-73, 175-206; Wilson, _History of the American People_, Vol. IV, pp.
+78-96.
+
+=Immigration.=--Coman, _Industrial History of the United States_ (2d
+ed.), pp. 369-374; E.L. Bogart, _Economic History of the United States_,
+pp. 420-422, 434-437; Jenks and Lauck, _Immigration Problems_, Commons,
+_Races and Immigrants_.
+
+=The Disputed Election of 1876.=--Haworth, _The United States in Our Own
+Time_, pp. 82-94; Dunning, _Reconstruction, Political and Economic_
+(American Nation Series), pp. 294-341; Elson, _History of the United
+States_, pp. 835-841.
+
+=Abuses in Political Life.=--Dunning, _Reconstruction_, pp. 281-293; see
+criticisms in party platforms in Stanwood, _History of the Presidency_,
+Vol. I; Bryce, _American Commonwealth_ (1910 ed.), Vol. II, pp. 379-448;
+136-167.
+
+=Studies of Presidential Administrations.=--(_a_) Grant, (_b_) Hayes,
+(_c_) Garfield-Arthur, (_d_) Cleveland, and (_e_) Harrison, in Haworth,
+_The United States in Our Own Time_, or in Paxson, _The New Nation_
+(Riverside Series), or still more briefly in Elson.
+
+=Cleveland Democracy.=--Haworth, _The United States_, pp. 164-183;
+Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. VIII, pp. 240-327; Elson,
+pp. 857-887.
+
+=Analysis of Modern Immigration Problems.=--_Syllabus in History_ (New
+York State, 1919), pp. 110-112.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+