The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Recurrent Issues 531

twelve hours because most of the members of an
important committee were too drunk to prepare a
vital appropriations bill for final passage.
The great political parties professed undying
enmity to each other, but they seldom took clearly
opposing positions on the questions of the day.
Democrats were separated from Republicans more by
accidents of geography, religious affiliation, ethnic
background, and emotion than by economic issues.
Questions of state and local importance, unrelated to
national politics, often determined the outcome of
congressional elections and thus who controlled the
federal government.
The fundamental division between Democrats
and Republicans was sectional, a result of the Civil
War. The South, after the political rights of blacks
had been drastically circumscribed, became heavily
Democratic. Most of New England was solidly
Republican. Elsewhere the two parties stood in fair
balance, although the Republicans tended to have
the advantage. A preponderance of the well-to-do,
cultured Northerners were Republicans. Perhaps in
reaction to this concentration, immigrants, Catholics,
and other minority groups—except for blacks—tended
to vote Democratic. But the numerous exceptions
weakened the applicability of these generalizations.
German and Scandinavian immigrants usually voted
Republican; many powerful business leaders supported
the Democrats.
The bulk of the people—farmers, laborers, shop-
keepers, white-collar workers—distributed their bal-
lots fairly evenly between the two parties in most
elections; the balance of political power after 1876
was almost perfect. Between 1856 and 1912 the
Democrats elected a president only twice (1884 and
1892), but most contests were extremely close.
Majorities in both the Senate and the House fluctu-
ated continually. Between 1876 and 1896 the “domi-
nant” Republican party controlled both houses of
Congress and the presidency at the same time for only
a single two-year period.

Recurrent Issues

Four questions obsessed politicians in these years.
One was the “bloody shirt.” The term, which
became part of the language after a Massachusetts
congressman dramatically displayed to his colleagues
in the House the bloodstained shirt of an Ohio car-
petbagger who had been flogged by terrorists in
Mississippi, referred to the tactic of reminding the
electorate of the northern states that the men who
had precipitated the Civil War had been Democrats.
Should Democrats regain power, former rebels
would run the government and undo all the work

accomplished at such sacrifice during the war. “Every

man that endeavored to tear down the old flag,” a

Republican orator proclaimed in 1876, “was a

Democrat. Every man that tried to destroy this

nation was a Democrat.... The man that assassi-

nated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat....

Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic bodies

was given you by a Democrat.” And every scoundrel

or incompetent who sought office under the

Republican banner waved the bloody shirt in order to

divert the attention of northern voters from his own

shortcomings. The technique worked so well that

many decent candidates could not resist the tempta-

tion to employ it in close races. Nothing, of course,

so effectively obscured the real issues of the day.

Waving the bloody shirt was related intimately to

the issue of the rights of African Americans. Throughout

this period Republicans vacillated between trying to

build up their organization in the South by appealing to

black voters—which required them to make sure that

blacks in the South could vote—and trying to win

The 1860 dollar, minted in gold, front and back.