Chapter 23: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869-1896
In written format...
- 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 1870's 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 1870's and the growing hostility to immmigrants, especially the Chinese.
- Explain the rise of political conflict in the early 1890's, and the failure of Cleveland to address growing farm and labor discontent.
- Show how the farm crisis of the depression of the 1890's stirred growing social protests and class conflict, and fueled the rise of the radical Populist Party.