The Rising Spirit of Unrest
The decade of the seventies witnessed the subsidence, if not the
solution, of a problem which had vexed American history for half a
century--the reconciliation of two incompatible social and economic
systems, the North and the South. It witnessed at the same time the rise
of another great problem, even yet unsolved--the preservation of
equality of opportunity, of democracy, economic as well as political, in
the face of the rising power and influence of great accumulations and
combinations of wealth. Almost before the battle smoke of the Civil War
had rolled away, dissatisfaction with prevailing conditions both
political and economic began to show itself.
The close of the war naturally found the Republican or Union party in
control throughout the North. Branded with the opprobrium of having
opposed the conduct of the war, the Democratic party remained impotent
for a number of years; and Ulysses S. Grant, the nation's greatest
military hero, was easily elected to the presidency on the Republican
ticket in 1868. In the latter part of Grant's first term, however,
hostility began to manifest itself among the Republicans themselves
toward the politicians in control at Washington. Several causes tended
to alienate from the President and his advisers the sympathies of many
of the less partisan and less prejudiced Republicans throughout the
North. Charges of corruption and maladministration were rife and had
much foundation in truth. Even if Grant himself was not consciously
dishonest in his application of the spoils system and in his willingness
to receive reward in return for political favors, he certainly can be
justly charged with the disposition to trust too blindly in his friends
and to choose men for public office rather because of his personal
preferences than because of their qualifications for positions of trust.
Grant's enemies declared, moreover, with considerable truth that the man
was a military autocrat, unfit for the highest civil position in a
democracy. His high-handed policy in respect to Reconstruction in the
South evoked opposition from those Northern Republicans whose critical
sense was not entirely blinded by sectional prejudice and passion. The
keener-sighted of the Northerners began to suspect that Reconstruction
in the South often amounted to little more than the looting of the
governments of the Southern States by the greedy freedmen and the
unscrupulous carpetbaggers, with the troops of the United States
standing by to protect the looters. In 1871, under color of necessity
arising from the intimidation of voters in a few sections of the South,
Congress passed a stringent act, empowering the President to suspend the
writ of habeas corpus and to use the military at any time to suppress
disturbances or attempts to intimidate voters. This act, in the hands of
radicals, gave the carpetbag governments of the Southern States
practically unlimited powers. Any citizens who worked against the
existing administrations, however peacefully, might be charged with
intimidation of voters and prosecuted under the new act. Thus these
radical governments were made practically self-perpetuating. When their
corruption, wastefulness, and inefficiency became evident, many people
in the North frankly condemned them and the Federal Government which
continued to support them.
This dissatisfaction with the Administration on the part of Republicans
and independents came to a head in 1872 in the Liberal-Republican
movement. As early as 1870 a group of Republicans in Missouri, disgusted
by the excesses of the radicals in that State in the proscription of
former Confederate sympathizers, had led a bolt from the party, had
nominated B. Gratz Brown for governor, and, with the assistance of the
Democrats, had won the election. The real leader of this movement was
Senator Carl Schurz, under whose influence the new party in Missouri
declared not only for the removal of political disabilities but also for
tariff revision and civil service reform and manifested opposition to
the alienation of the public domain to private corporations and to all
schemes for the repudiation of any part of the national debt. Similar
splits in the Republican party took place soon afterwards in other
States, and in 1872 the Missouri Liberals called a convention to meet at
Cincinnati for the purpose of nominating a candidate for the presidency.
The new party was a coalition of rather diverse elements. Prominent
tariff reformers, members of the Free Trade League, such as David A.
Wells and Edward L. Godkin of the Nation, advocates of civil service
reform, of whom Carl Schurz was a leading representative, and especially
opponents of the reconstruction measures of the Administration, such as
Judge David Davis and Horace Greeley, saw an opportunity to promote
their favorite policies through this new party organization. To these
sincere reformers were soon added such disgruntled politicians as A. G.
Curtin of Pennsylvania and R. E. Fenton of New York, who sought revenge
for the support which the Administration had given to their personal
rivals. The principal bond of union was the common desire to prevent the
reëlection of Grant. The platform adopted by the Cincinnati convention
reflected the composition of the party. Opening with a bitter
denunciation of the President, it declared in no uncertain terms for
civil service reform and the immediate and complete removal of political
disabilities. On the tariff, however, the party could come to no
agreement; the free traders were unable to overcome the opposition of
Horace Greeley and his protectionist followers; and the outcome was the
reference of the question "to the people in their congressional
districts and the decision of Congress."
The leading candidates for nomination for the presidency were Charles
Francis Adams, David Davis, Horace Greeley, Lyman Trumbull, and B. Gratz
Brown. From these men, as a result of manipulation, the convention
unhappily selected the one least suited to lead the party to
victory--Horace Greeley. The only hope of success for the movement was
in coöperation with that very Democratic party whose principles,
policies, and leaders, Greeley in his editorials had unsparingly
condemned for years. His extreme protectionism repelled not only the
Democrats but the tariff reformers who had played an important part in
the organization of the Liberal Republican party. Conservatives of both
parties distrusted him as a man with a dangerous propensity to advocate
"isms," a theoretical politician more objectionable than the practical
man of machine politics, and far more likely to disturb the existing
state of affairs and to overturn the business of the country in his
efforts at reform. As the Nation expressed it, "Greeley appears to be
'boiled crow' to more of his fellow citizens than any other candidate
for office in this or any other age of which we have record."
The regular Republican convention renominated Grant, and the Democrats,
as the only chance of victory, swallowed the candidate and the platform
of the Liberals. Doubtless Greeley's opposition to the radical
reconstruction measures and the fact that he had signed Jefferson
Davis's bail-bond made the "crow" more palatable to the Southern
Democrats. In the campaign Greeley's brilliant speeches were listened to
with great respect. His tour was a personal triumph; but the very voters
who hung eagerly on his speeches felt him to be too impulsive and
opinionated to be trusted with presidential powers. They knew the worst
which might be expected of Grant; they could not guess the ruin which
Greeley's dynamic powers might bring on the country if he used them
unwisely. In the end many of the original leaders of the Liberal
movement supported Grant as the lesser of two evils. The Liberal
defection from the Republican ranks was more than offset by the refusal
of Democrats to vote for Greeley, and Grant was triumphantly reëlected.
The Liberal Republican party was undoubtedly weakened by the unfortunate
selection of their candidate, but it scarcely could have been victorious
with another candidate. The movement was distinctly one of leaders
rather than of the masses, and the things for which it stood most
specifically--the removal of political disabilities in the South and
civil service reform--awakened little enthusiasm among the farmers of
the West. These farmers on the other hand were beginning to be very much
interested in a number of economic reforms which would vitally affect
their welfare, such as the reduction and readjustment of the burden of
taxation, the control of corporations in the interests of the people,
the reduction and regulation of the cost of transportation, and an
increase in the currency supply. Some of these propositions occasionally
received recognition in Liberal speeches and platforms, but several of
them were anathema to many of the Eastern leaders of that movement. Had
these leaders been gifted with vision broad enough to enable them to
appreciate the vital economic and social problems of the West, the
Liberal Republican movement might perhaps have caught the ground swell
of agrarian discontent, and the outcome might then have been the
formation of an enduring national party of liberal tendencies broader
and more progressive than the Liberal Republican party yet less likely
to be swept into the vagaries of extreme radicalism than were the
Anti-Monopoly and Greenback parties of after years. A number of western
Liberals such as A. Scott Sloan in Wisconsin and Ignatius Donnelly in
Minnesota championed the farmers' cause, it is true, and in some States
there was a fusion of party organizations; but men like Schurz and
Trumbull held aloof from these radical movements, while Easterners like
Godkin of the Nation met them with ridicule and invective.
The period from 1870 to 1873 has been characterized as one of rampant
prosperity, and such it was for the commercial, the manufacturing, and
especially the speculative interests of the country. For the farmers,
however, it was a period of bitter depression. The years immediately
following the close of the Civil War had seen a tremendous expansion of
production, particularly of the staple crops. The demobilization of the
armies, the closing of war industries, increased immigration, the
homestead law, the introduction of improved machinery, and the rapid
advance of the railroads had all combined to drive the agricultural
frontier westward by leaps and bounds until it had almost reached the
limit of successful cultivation under conditions which then prevailed.
As crop acreage and production increased, prices went down in accordance
with the law of supply and demand, and farmers all over the country
found it difficult to make a living.
In the West and South--the great agricultural districts of the
country--the farmers commonly bought their supplies and implements on
credit or mortgaged their crops in advance; and their profits at best
were so slight that one bad season might put them thereafter entirely in
the power of their creditors and force them to sell their crops on their
creditors' terms. Many farms were heavily mortgaged, too, at rates of
interest that ate up the farmers' profits. During and after the Civil
War the fluctuation of the currency and the high tariff worked especial
hardship on the farmers as producers of staples which must be sold
abroad in competition with European products and as consumers of
manufactured articles which must be bought at home at prices made
arbitrarily high by the protective tariff. In earlier times, farmers
thus harassed would have struck their tents and moved farther west,
taking up desirable land on the frontier and starting out in a fresh
field of opportunity. It was still possible for farmers to go west, and
many did so but only to find that the opportunity for economic
independence on the edge of settlement had largely disappeared. The era
of the self-sufficing pioneer was drawing to a close, and the farmer on
the frontier, forced by natural conditions over which he had no control
to engage in the production of staples, was fully as dependent on the
market and on transportation facilities as was his competitor in the
East.
In the fall of 1873 came the greatest panic in the history of the
nation, and a period of financial depression began which lasted
throughout the decade, restricting industry, commerce, and even
immigration. On the farmers the blow fell with special severity. At the
very time when they found it most difficult to realize profit on their
sales of produce, creditors who had hitherto carried their debts from
year to year became insistent for payment. When mortgages fell due, it
was well-nigh impossible to renew them; and many a farmer saw years of
labor go for nothing in a heart-breaking foreclosure sale. It was
difficult to get even short-term loans, running from seed-time to
harvest. This important function of lending money to pay for labor and
thus secure a larger crop, which has only recently been assumed by the
Government in its establishment of farm loan banks, had been performed
by private capitalists who asked usurious rates of interest. The
farmers' protests against these rates had been loud; and now, when they
found themselves unable to get loans at any rate whatever, their
complaints naturally increased. Looking around for one cause to which to
attribute all their misfortunes, they pitched upon the corporations or
monopolies, as they chose to call them, and especially upon the
railroads.
At first the farmers had looked upon the coming of the railroads as an
unmixed blessing. The railroad had meant the opening up of new
territory, the establishment of channels of transportation by which they
could send their crops to market. Without the railroad, the farmer who
did not live near a navigable stream must remain a backwoodsman; he must
make his own farm or his immediate community a self-sufficing unit; he
must get from his own land bread and meat and clothing for his family;
he must be stock-raiser, grain-grower, farrier, tinker, soap-maker,
tanner, chandler--Jack-of-all-trades and master of none. With the
railroad he gained access to markets and the opportunity to specialize
in one kind of farming; he could now sell his produce and buy in
exchange many of the articles he had previously made for himself at the
expense of much time and labor. Many farmers and farming communities
bought railroad bonds in the endeavor to increase transportation
facilities; all were heartily in sympathy with the policy of the
Government in granting to corporations land along the route of the
railways which they were to construct.
By 1873, however, the Government had actually given to the railroads
about thirty-five million acres, and was pledged to give to the Pacific
roads alone about one hundred and forty-five million acres more. Land
was now not so plentiful as it had been in 1850, when this policy had
been inaugurated, and the farmers were naturally aggrieved that the
railroads should own so much desirable land and should either hold it
for speculative purposes or demand for it prices much higher than the
Government had asked for land adjacent to it and no less valuable.
Moreover, when railroads were merged and reorganized or passed into the
hands of receivers the shares held by farmers were frequently wiped out
or were greatly decreased in value. Often railroad stock had been
"watered" to such an extent that high freight charges were necessary in
order to permit the payment of dividends. Thus the farmer might find
himself without his railroad stock, with a mortgage on his land which he
had incurred in order to buy the stock, with an increased burden of
taxation because his township had also been gullible enough to buy
stock, and with a railroad whose excessive rates allowed him but a
narrow margin of profit on his produce.
When the farmers sought political remedies for their economic ills, they
discovered that, as a class, they had little representation or influence
either in Congress or in the state legislatures. Before the Civil War
the Southern planter had represented agricultural interests in Congress
fairly well; after the War the dominance of Northern interests left the
Western farmer without his traditional ally in the South. Political
power was concentrated in the East and in the urban sections of the
West. Members of Congress were increasingly likely to be from the
manufacturing classes or from the legal profession, which sympathized
with these classes rather than with the agriculturists. Only about seven
per cent of the members of Congress were farmers; yet in 1870
forty-seven per cent of the population was engaged in agriculture. The
only remedy for the farmers was to organize themselves as a class in
order to promote their common welfare.