An American History

POLITICS IN A GILDED AGE ★^631

The Politics of Dead Center

In national elections, party politics
bore the powerful imprint of the
Civil War. Republicans controlled the
industrial North and Midwest and the
agrarian West and were particularly
strong among members of revival-
ist churches, Protestant immigrants,
and blacks. Organizations of Union
veterans formed a bulwark of Repub-
lican support. Every Republican can-
didate for president from 1868 to 1900
except James G. Blaine had fought in
the Union army. (In the 1880 cam-
paign, all four candidates— Republican
James A. Garfield, Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, Prohibitionist Neal Dow,
and James B. Weaver of the Greenback- Labor Party, discussed later— had been
Union generals during the war.) By 1893, a lavish system of pensions for Union
soldiers and their widows and children consumed more than 40 percent of
the federal budget. Democrats, after 1877, dominated the South and did well
among Catholic voters, especially Irish- Americans, in the nation’s cities.
The parties were closely divided. In three of the five presidential elections
between 1876 and 1892, the margin separating the major candidates was less
than 1 percent of the popular vote. Twice, in 1876 and 1888, the candidate with
an electoral- college majority trailed in the popular vote. The congressional
elections of 1874, when Democrats won control of the House of Representa-
tives, ushered in two decades of political stalemate. A succession of one- term
presidencies followed: Rutherford B. Hayes (elected in 1876), James A. Garfield
(succeeded, after his assassination in 1881, by Chester A. Arthur), Grover Cleve-
land in 1884, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and Cleveland, elected for the sec-
ond time, in 1892. Only for brief periods did the same party control the White
House and both houses of Congress. More than once, Congress found itself
paralyzed as important bills shuttled back and forth between the House and
Senate, and special sessions to complete legislation became necessary. Gilded
Age presidents made little effort to mobilize public opinion or exert executive
leadership. Their staffs were quite small. Grover Cleveland himself answered
the White House doorbell.
In some ways, American democracy in the Gilded Age seemed remark-
ably healthy. Elections were closely contested, party loyalty was intense, and
80 percent or more of eligible voters turned out to cast ballots. It was an era
of massive party rallies and spellbinding political oratory. James G. Blaine was

Was the Gilded Age political system effective in meeting its goals?

Voted Democrat 4–5 times

Voted Republican 4–5 times

Voted more irregularly

Elections of 1876–1892

Non-voting territory

POLITICAL STALEMATE,

1876–1892