Politics in the Gilded Age

Key Points

• Gilded Age politics were dominated by corruption, as politicians took bribes and rewarded their supporters with posh government jobs
• Elections had high turnout and extraordinarily close results, but neither major party pursued ambitious policies
• In the 1890s, frustrated farmers organized their own party, the Populists
• In 1896, the Democrats co-opted much of the Populist agenda and the Populists supported Democrat William Jennings Bryan for the presidency; Bryan lost and the Populists faded away

"A Stalwart of the Stalwarts"

• Government jobs were distributed through corrupt patronage systems
• President James Garfield was assassinated by a frustrated job-seeker named Charles Guiteau

In 1881, Charles Guiteau, a mentally unstable gadfly, went postal on the President of the United States, James Garfield. Guiteau, whose career ambitions had bounced from religion to law to politics, believed he was entitled to a political appointment to a plum government job after campaigning for Garfield in the election of 1880. When he didn't get the job he thought he deserved, he bought a gun, spent two weeks learning to use it, and then shot Pres. James Garfield as the president was boarding a train. Guiteau realized that he was making history—as he waited at the train station for the president's arrival, he had his shoes shined and then arranged for a cab that could take him to jail in style. But he was not much of a writer; after shooting Garfield, Guiteau shouted his carefully practiced line: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts—Arthur is president now." It was no "Sic semper tyrannis," but Guiteau's prosaic line did reveal the political passions of the times—a period in which party loyalty was a transcendent value and the distribution of patronage was among the national government's central tasks.

Political Corruption

• Corruption scandals were common during Gilded Age
• Crédit Mobilier scandal implicated Vice President Schuyler Colfax
• City politics ruled by corrupt machines like New York's Tammany Hall

The political history of the Gilded Age is usually reduced to a tale of corruption and scandal. And indeed there were plenty of both to go around, at all levels of public life. The administration of President Ulysses S. Grant was a cesspool of graft and abuse. Treasury Department officers demanded bribes from importers if they wanted their goods to be processed efficiently. The Naval Department awarded contracts on the basis of favoritism rather than competitive bidding. The Secretary of War accepted bribes from merchants interested in lucrative trading franchises on Indian lands. Even Grant's personal secretary conspired with whiskey distillers to avoid excise taxes.

The most high-reaching and elaborate scandal involved the Crédit Mobilier, a firm whose shady relationship with the Union Pacific Railroad was shielded from government investigation by the Vice-President of the United States, Schuyler Colfax. In return for running interference against government oversight, Colfax and other government officials were allowed to buy stock using future dividends—that is, he was allowed to "buy" them for free. We should all be so lucky.

At the municipal level, the corruption was just as great—and the headlines were just as sensational. The political machines that dominated urban politics distributed city jobs to loyal supporters regardless of ability, and they awarded city contracts for construction and services to those offering the largest bribes. As cities swelled with migrants moving from rural areas and immigrants arriving from Europe, roads had to be built, sewer and gas lines had to be laid, and police and fire departments had to be staffed. Political insiders grew rich meeting the needs of the rapidly expanding cities.

The most powerful example of this political corruption was New York's Tammany Hall. This Democratic political organization capped off its orgy of self-rewarding control over New York City politics by building an elaborate new city hall. One loyal member of the Tammany organization was dubbed the "Prince of Plasterers" by the New York press when it was discovered that his connections had earned him a tidy $3 million for his work on the new building.¹⁵