The stock market crashed, prompting the Panic of 1893 and leading to the bankrupting of the United States Treasury. The already weakened economy collapsed as people withdrew deposited funds and banks failed. Exports also declined and unemployment grew.
In Hawaii, foreign entrepreneurs, fearing Queen Lili’uokalani’s plan to restore the kingdom to indigenous Hawaiians, staged a revolt by declaring Hawaii a republic and seeking annexation by the US. American Marines invaded, Lili’uokalani surrendered, and the US minister to Hawaii declared it a protectorate of the United States.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the nation’s first law to ban immigration by race or nationality. The act, which was renewed and enforced until 1943, banned Chinese immigration for ten years and prohibited Chinese from becoming citizens.
Grover Cleveland was elected the twenty-fourth president of the United States thanks in part to a third party movement—the Populists—that siphoned off some of the strength of the Republican Party, and by a vigorous campaign against the extravagance of the Republican “Billion Dollar Congress.” But his second term would be ruined by the economic depression of the mid-1890s, the worst economic crisis that the country had ever seen. Insisting on sound money, in his second term Cleveland would seek to keep the country on the gold standard and...