Download AP U.S. History Chapter 23: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age

AP U.S. History
Chapter 23: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age: 1865-1896
Focus Question
Analyze national politics between 1865 and 1896, especially with respect to the issues that
emerged between the Democratic and Republican Parties
Learning Objectives
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Describe the political corruption of the Grant administration and the mostly unsuccessful
efforts to reform politics in the Gilded Age.
Describe the economic crisis of the 1870s, and explain the growing conflict between
hard-money and soft-money advocates.
Explain the intense political partisanship of the Gilded Age, despite the parties’ lack of
ideological difference and poor quality of political leadership.
Indicate how the disputed Hayes-Tilden election of 1876 led to the Compromise of 1877
and the end of Reconstruction.
Describe how the end of Reconstruction led to the loss of black rights and the imposition
of the Jim Crow system of segregation in the South.
Explain the rise of class conflict between business and labor in the 1870s and the growing
hostility to immigrants, especially the Chinese.
Explain the economic crisis and depression of the 1890s, and indicate how the Cleveland
administration failed to address it.
Show how the farm crisis of the depression of the 1890s stirred growing social protests
and class conflict, and fueled the rise of the radical Populist Party.
Questions
The "Bloody Shirt" Elects Grant (488)
1. Why, despite his military success in the Civil War, did General Ulysses S. Grant prove to be
a weak political leader?
2. Why did Republicans "wave the bloody shirt" in the late nineteenth century?
3. How did the votes of former slaves affect the presidential election of 1868?
The Era of Good Stealings (489)
4. Why, in the aftermath of the Civil War, did waste, speculation, and corruption afflict both
business and government?
5. Who or what were Jim Fisk, "Black Friday," Jay Gould, and the Wall Street gold market?
6. How was New York's notoriously corrupt Boss Tweed finally brought to justice?
A Carnival of Corruption (490)
7. What was the Crédit Mobilier scandal, and how did it affect President Grant?
8. How did the owners of the Crédit Mobilier attempt to avoid prosecution for their corrupt
dealings?
The Liberal Republican Revolt of 1872 (490)
9. What caused the Liberal Republican revolt from the regular Republican party in 1872? Why
was President Ulysses S. Grant reelected in 1872 despite the split in his party?
Depression, Deflation, and Inflation (491)
10. What were the major causes of the panic of 1873?
11. Why were Black Americans particularly hard hit by the depression that followed the panic of
1873? What did many debtors advocate as the solution to the depression?
12. What were the political results of Republican hard money policies in the mid-1870s?
Pallid Politics of the Gilded Age (492)
13. During the Gilded Age, why were the Democratic and Republican parties so ferociously
competitive with each other despite having few significant policy differences? Why did
politics so strongly emphasize party loyalty?
14. In religious and cultural terms, to which groups did Republicans especially appeal? To
which groups did Democrats appeal? What were the political bases of the two parties?
15. How did ethnic and cultural differences in the membership of the two parties affect elections
during the Gilded Age?
16. With a lack of national political issues, Gilded Age elections often produced fierce local
contests over what issues?
17. Why did the presidential elections of the 1870s and 1880s arouse enormous turnouts among
voters even though there were few significant issues at stake?
18. With what Republican political faction was each of these politicians associated: Roscoe
Conkling, James Blaine, Horace Greeley, Ulysses Grant
The Hayes-Tilden Standoff, 1876 (494)
19. What was the major problem in the 1876 presidential election?
The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (494)
20. What were the results of the Compromise of 1877?
21. What were the major provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875? What rights for blacks did
it fail to effectively guarantee? In what way did it mark a last gasp of the congressional
radical Republicans?
The Birth of Jim Crow in the Post-Reconstruction South (496)
22. What were the major features of the sharecropping system into which many blacks and poor
whites were forced in the years after Reconstruction?
23. What was "Jim Crow"? How did Southern whites disenfranchise African Americans at the
end of Reconstruction?
24. What did the Supreme Court rule in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson?
25. What was the primary purpose of public executions and lynchings of black men in the Jim
Crow South?
Class Conflicts and Ethnic Clashes (497)
26. What factors underlay labor unrest during the Hayes administration?
27. What were the results of President Rutherford B. Hayes' handling of a national railroad strike
in 1877? What events had caused the strike? What was the fundamental attitude of Hayes
and other Republican presidents toward labor agitation?
28. What were the main reasons that Chinese came to the United States during the Gilded Age?
What effects did the absence of children in largely all-male Chinese immigrant communities
have? What action did the United States Congress take in the wake of anti-Chinese violence
in California?
Garfield and Arthur (498)
29. Why was President James A. Garfield assassinated?
30. What were the major provisions of the Pendleton Act? After passage of the Pendleton Act,
why did politicians increasingly seek money from big corporations?
Makers of America (500)
31. What internal developments in China resulted in Chinese immigration to the United States?
What became of the few Chinese women who emigrated to the United States?
The Blaine-Cleveland Mudslingers of 1884 (502)
32. What was the most notable feature of the 1884 election contest between James G. Blaine and
Grover Cleveland?
"Old Grover" Takes Over (503)
33. Which Gilded Age president had a different party affiliation from the other four?
34. When he was president, Grover Cleveland's strong belief in a laissez-faire approach to
government gained the support of which group or groups?
35. How did Grover Cleveland stir political opposition with his response to veterans' pension
bills?
Cleveland Battles for a Lower Tariff (504)
36. How did Grover Cleveland propose to address the problem of the large federal budget
surplus? Why was the tariff the major campaign issue of the 1888 presidential election?
The Billion-Dollar Congress (504)
37. How did the "Billion-Dollar Congress" dispose of rising government surpluses?
38. What were the provisions, and the political effects, of the McKinley tariff bill of 1890?
The Drumbeat of Discontent (505)
39. How did an epidemic of violent strikes and labor conflict in 1892 lead to the Populists adding
industrial workers to their base of support among farmers?
40. What were the major platform planks adopted by the Populist party in their convention of
1892? What did Kansas, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada have in common in the ensuing
election?
41. What was the ultimate result of the Populist campaign to create a coalition of white and black
farmers?
Cleveland and Depression (508)
42. How did the most severe and extended economic depression up to that time shape the
political developments of the l890s?
43. What fears drove President Cleveland's hostility to silver and silver-backed currency?
44. How did economic unrest and the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act leed to the rise
of William Jennings Bryan?
Cleveland Breeds a Backlash (509)
45. What was the impact of President Cleveland negotiating a loan to the U.S. of $65 million in
gold from J.P. Morgan's banking syndicate?
46. Why was President Cleveland unable to deal effectively with the depression of the 1890s?