Deck 23: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age

Question 1

Identify and state the historical significance of Horatio Seymour.

Answer 1

Ex-governor from New York and failed Democratic presidential candidate.

Question 2

Identify and state the historical significance of William Belknap.

Answer 2

The Secretary of War who had to resign for taking bribes.

Question 3

Identify and state the historical significance of Samuel Tilden.

Answer 3

The Democratic candidate who ran against Hayes. He lost the presidency when a deal was struck to allow Hayes to become president in exchange for the removal of federal troops from two southern states.

Question 4

Identify and state the historical significance of Horace Greeley.

Question 5

Identify and state the historical significance of Rutherford B. Hayes.

Question 6

Identify and state the historical significance of James G. Blaine.

Question 7

Identify and state the historical significance of Roscoe Conkling.

Question 8

Identify and state the historical significance of the Spoils system.

Question 9

Identify and state the historical significance of James A. Garfield.

Question 10

Identify and state the historical significance of Jay Gould.

Question 11

Identify and state the historical significance of Denis Kearney.

Question 12

Identify and state the historical significance of Benjamin Harrison.

Question 13

Identify and state the historical significance of Ulysses S. Grant.

Question 14

Identify and state the historical significance of Winfield Scott Hancock.

Question 15

Identify and state the historical significance of Grover Cleveland.

Question 16

Identify and state the historical significance of Thomas Nast.

Question 17

Identify and state the historical significance of Charles J. Guiteau.

Question 18

Identify and state the historical significance of "Boss" Tweed.

Question 19

Identify and state the historical significance of Jim Fisk.

Question 20

Identify and state the historical significance of Chester A. Arthur.

Question 21

In an attempt to avoid prosecution for their corrupt dealings, the owners of the Crédit Mobilizer

A) left the country.
B) belatedly started to follow honest business practices.
C) used shady bookkeeping to conceal their insider financial deals.
D) tried to gain immunity by testifying before Congress.
E) bribed key congressmen by giving them shares of the company's valuable stock.

Question 22

President Ulysses S. Grant was reelected in 1872 because

A) the Democrats and Liberal Republicans could not decide on a single candidate.
B) he promised reforms in the political system.
C) he was the only candidate who enjoyed support in both the North and South.
D) the Democrats and Liberal Republicans chose the politically and personally eccentric and dubiously sound editor Horace Greeley as their candidate.
E) of the massive support of black voters in the Reconstruction South.

Question 23

Black Americans were hard hit by the gloom times of the depression years of the mid 1870s because

A) many had put their savings in the Freedman's Savings and Trust, only to see it vanish due to bad investments by the savings bank.
B) they did not set aside significant amounts of money for savings, preferring to spend or invest almost every dollar that they earned.
C) mobs of unemployed workers took out their frustrations through violence against blacks.
D) they lost what little money they owned to directly investing in speculation schemes that had gone bankrupt.
E) None of these choices are correct.

Question 24

The Liberal Republican revolt from the regular Republican party in 1872 was motivated primarily by

A) dismay at the Republicans' weakness in upholding radical Reconstruction in the South.
B) a desire to see President Grant reelected among these Liberal Republicans and a fear that the regular Republican Party would not re-nominate Grant for president because of his policies.
C) disgust at the corruption and scandals of the Grant administration.
D) a fervent passion for reforms on behalf of women and blacks.
E) a desire to strengthen the federal government's regulation of big business.

Question 25

In the late 19^th century, those political candidates who campaigned by "waving the bloody shirt" were reminding voters

A) of the gory memories of the Civil War and the Republican party's role in the Union's victory.
B) that the Civil War had been caused by the election of a Republican president.
C) that Republicans had reformed the corrupt radical regimes in the Reconstruction South.
D) that radical Republicans catered to freed slaves during Reconstruction.
E) of Ku Klux Klan violence against blacks.

Question 26

As a solution to the depression that followed the panic of 1873, debtors strongly advocated

A) a return to gold as the only form of American money.
B) establishment of a federally regulated system of savings and loan banks.
C) the appointment of farmers and workers to the Treasury Department.
D) bankers making additional, greater loans at lower interest rates to finance new economic ventures by promoters who were having trouble realizing profits from their previous railroad, mines, factory, and grain field investments.
E) inflation through issuance of far more greenback paper currency.

Question 27

One result of Republican hard money policies in the mid-1870s was

A) the rise of the American dollar against foreign currencies.
B) damage to the country's credit rating.
C) the return to the silver "Dollar of Our Daddies" as the dominant form of U.S. money.
D) the defeat of a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874.
E) a political turn to the Democrats and the rise of the new Greenback Labor party.

Question 28

Those who enjoyed a successful political career in the post-Civil War decades were usually

A) reformers.
B) incorruptible.
C) party loyalists.
D) political independents and gadflies.
E) politicians who did not rely on Civil War veterans or their fraternal organizations for support.

Question 29

Despite the lack of national political issues, Gilded Age elections often produced fierce local contests over culturally and religiously charged issues like

A) imperialism and foreign missions.
B) prohibition and education.
C) race relations and racial justice in the South.
D) sexual morality and women's rights.
E) treatment of criminal prisoners and the mentally ill.

Question 30

The Crédit Mobilier scandal involved

A) public utility company bribes.
B) Bureau of Indian Affairs payoffs.
C) railroad construction kickbacks.
D) bribes to French government officials in exchange to promises of favorable tariff treatment of French goods.
E) manipulating agricultural commodities traded on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Question 31

The presidential elections of the 1870s and 1880s

A) were all won by Republicans.
B) revolved primarily around the charismatic personalities running for the presidency.
C) were all won by Democrats.
D) usually involved sharp partisan differences over issues like currency policy and civil-service reform.
E) aroused enormous turnouts among voters even though there were few significant issues.

Question 32

In religious and cultural terms, the Republicans appealed especially to groups that derived their views from

A) transcendentalism and utopian traditions that opposed war and proposed alternatives to traditional marriage.
B) Catholic and Lutheran traditions of creed, liturgy, and understanding of human weakness.
C) Baptist tradition that feared government intrusion on personal and religious freedom.
D) scientific tradition that saw religion as a fading force in American society.
E) Puritan tradition of strict moral codes and government regulation of morality and society.

Question 33

Identify and state the historical significance of Thomas Reed.

Question 34

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War

A) the push for social, political, and economic reforms intensified and gained momentum in and out of state, local, and the federal government.
B) Americans retained a strong sense of idealistic sacrifice.
C) the North developed a strong sense of moral superiority.
D) concern for racial questions took precedence over economics.
E) waste, speculation, and corruption afflicted both business and government.

Question 35

In the presidential election of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant

A) transformed his personal popularity into a large majority in the popular vote.
B) owed his victory to the votes of former slaves.
C) gained his victory by winning the votes of the majority of whites.
D) won a clear majority of electoral votes in the Electoral College, but narrowly lost the popular vote in the country.
E) All of these choices are correct.

Question 36

Identify and state the historical significance of William McKinley.

Question 37

During the Gilded Age, the lifeblood of both the Democratic and the Republican parties was/were

A) political and social reform movements.
B) the Roman Catholic Church.
C) ideological commitment.
D) big-city political machines.
E) political patronage.

Question 38

Despite his status as a military hero, General Ulysses S. Grant proved to be a weak political leader because he

A) was personally dishonest and corrupt.
B) did not believe in the principles of the Republican party.
C) was incapable of striking the type of political compromises necessary for a successful political leader.
D) had no political experience and was a poor judge of character.
E) lacked political ambition.

Question 39

A major cause of the panic that broke in 1873 was

A) the issuance of millions of dollars in greenbacks.
B) the expansion of more factories, railroads, and mines than existing markets would bear.
C) a credit crunch caused by extremely high interest rates.
D) Wall Street's fears about the power of the radical Greenback Labor party.
E) excessive speculation in mining stocks.

Question 40

The example of New York's Boss Tweed illustrated

A) the typical lack of ethics of the Gilded Age, which also pervaded government in the form of bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections.
B) the concern of urban political bosses with representing the best political and economic interests of their urban constituents.
C) the high value on honesty and ethics put on governing during this age.
D) the inability of the press and the legal establishment to take down a notoriously venal political figure after a lifetime of managing a politically corrupt machine.
E) the effectiveness of the federal government in ferreting out urban political corruption at an early stage in its development.

Question 41

The national railroad strike of 1877 started when

A) President Hayes refused to use troops to keep the trains running.
B) the four largest railroads cut salaries by 10 percent.
C) working hours were cut back by the railroad companies.
D) the railroad workers refused to cross the picket lines of cargo loaders.
E) the railroads tried to hire Chinese workers.

Question 42

The legal codes that established the system of segregation were

A) found only in the North.
B) called Jim Crow laws.
C) overturned by Plessy v. Ferguson.
D) undermined by the crop lien system.
E) unconnected to the informal separation of blacks and whites in the immediate post-Civil War years.

Question 43

Which of the following internal developments in China resulted in Chinese immigration to the United States?

A) the disintegration of the Chinese Empire
B) the seizure of farmland by landlords
C) the intrusion of European powers
D) internal political turmoil
E) All of these choices are correct.

Question 44

The political base of the Democratic party in the late 19^th century lay especially in

A) the small towns of the Northeast and the South.
B) big business and those involved in international trade.
C) Midwestern farmers.
D) the white South and big-city immigrant machines.
E) Northern blacks and Asian immigrants.

Question 45

The major electoral problem in the 1876 presidential election centered on

A) who would be Speaker of the House.
B) the two sets of different election returns, one Democratic, and one Republican, submitted by Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana.
C) Samuel Tilden's association with corrupt politicians of the Northeast.
D) President Grant's campaign for a third term.
E) Rutherford Hayes's controversial ties to U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling and the Stalwarts.

Question 46

At the end of Reconstruction, Southern whites disenfranchised African Americans using

A) literacy requirements.
B) poll taxes.
C) onerous and intimidating voter registration laws.
D) lynching.
E) All of these choices are correct.

Question 47

Which of these is NOT a true statement about the relationship between blacks and sharecropping in the years after Reconstruction?

A) As sharecroppers, blacks found themselves at the mercy of former masters who were now their landlords and creditors.
B) Some merchants manipulated the system so that farmers remained perpetually in debt to them.
C) Black sharecroppers often lived in conditions scarcely better than when they were slaves.
D) White Southerners did not work as sharecroppers.
E) Sharecroppers barely scraped by economically.

Question 48

Labor unrest during the Hayes administration stemmed from

A) agitation by Communist sympathizers and other political radicals.
B) workers being given the legal right to unionize by the federal government.
C) the collapse of the steel industry.
D) workers' unreasonable demands and strikes for higher pay and benefits during a period of economic stagnation.
E) years of depression and deflation that undermined workers' wages and living standards.

Question 49

In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that

A) African Americans could be denied the right to vote.
B) segregation was always unconstitutional.
C) "separate but equal" public schools and facilities were constitutional under the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
D) the Fourteenth Amendment protections of "equal protection" applied only to African Americans who could prove that an individual segregated black school or facility was unequal to comparable white public school or public facility.
E) African Americans born as slaves could not sue in federal court.

Question 50

All of the following are true statements about the Civil Rights Act of 1875 EXCEPT

A) it marked a last political gasp of the congressional radical Republicans.
B) it was supposed to guarantee equal rights in voting and access to education for blacks and whites.
C) its purpose was to ensure equal accommodations in public places.
D) it prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection.
E) much of its content was deemed unconstitutional in the Civil Rights cases of 1883.

Question 51

The fundamental attitude of Hayes and other Republican administrations toward labor agitation was

A) strong support for the railroads and other business in their efforts to crush labor organizing.
B) attempts to establish the federal government as a neutral arbiter between business and labor.
C) support for organized labor's efforts to unionize various industries.
D) to support reasonable regulation of business.
E) to try to enlist farmers as a political counterbalance to industrial laborers.

Question 52

The Compromise of 1877 resulted in

A) a renewal of the Republican commitment to protect black civil rights in the South and the continued presence of federal troops in the South.
B) the withdrawal of federal troops and abandonment of federal protection of black civil and voting rights in the South.
C) the election of Democrat presidential candidate Samuel Tilden to the presidency.
D) Republican support for an inflationary silver-money policy.
E) None of these choices are correct.

Question 53

In the wake of anti-Chinese violence in California, the United States Congress

A) negotiated a restricted-immigration agreement with China.
B) did nothing, as it was California's problem.
C) prosecuted the Kearneyites and other inciters of anti-Kearneyites in San Francisco.
D) sent many Chinese back to their homeland.
E) passed a law prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers to America.

Question 54

The presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes began with

A) improved race relations in the South and the West
B) increased overseas expansion.
C) sharp class conflict and a national railroad strike.
D) public demands for positive immigration reform.
E) All of these choices are correct

Question 55

Which of the following was NOT among the regional groups that formed the solid political base of the Republican party in the late 19^th century?

A) immigrants living in the large Northeastern cities.
B) Union Civil War veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic.
C) Southern black freedmen
D) Midwestern farmers and small merchants.
E) rural and small-town Northeast residents.

Question 56

The absence of children in largely all-male Chinese immigrant communities meant that

A) the economic benefits of child labor were largely absent.
B) the cultural and language assimilation fostered by children were harder to attain.
C) many Chinese organizations sought to bring in adopted children from China.
D) white social work agencies were slower to become involved with Chinese communities.
E) education was seldom a priority in Chinese communities.

Question 57

The main reason(s) that the Chinese came to the United States from the 1850s until 1882 was/were to

A) dig for gold and sledgehammer the tracks for the transcontinental railroad in the West.
B) marry and raise families on the West Coast.
C) replace the newly freed slaves in the South.
D) buy their own farms and cultivate agriculture.
E) work as skilled factory workers on the East Coast.

Question 58

Blacks who violated the Jim Crow laws or other elements of the South's racial code were often

A) criminally prosecuted in federal courts.
B) ostracized by their own community.
C) assailed from both white and black churches.
D) losing their sharecropping and tenant farming employment.
E) lynched by Southern whites.

Question 59

Public executions and lynchings of black men in the Jim Crow South were

A) retaliation for violent crimes against whites.
B) designed to intimidate African Americans to accept second-class status.
C) done to scare blacks into moving out of the South.
D) exceeding rare during the decade between 1890 and 1900.
E) prosecuted vigorously by Southern state and local legal authorities.

Question 60

The sequence of presidential terms of the "forgettable presidents" of the Gilded Age (including Cleveland's two nonconsecutive terms) was

A) Cleveland, Hayes, Harrison, Cleveland, Arthur, and Garfield.
B) Garfield, Hayes, Harrison, Cleveland, Arthur, and Cleveland.
C) Cleveland, Garfield, Arthur, Hayes, Harrison, and Cleveland.
D) Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, and Cleveland.
E) Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, Cleveland, Arthur, and Cleveland.

Question 61

During the mid-to-late 19^th century, Chinese women

A) did not emigrate to the United States at all.
B) settled mostly on the East Coast.
C) outnumbered Chinese men as immigrants to the United States.
D) were very few in number, and most became prostitutes.
E) competed with Irish and black women for jobs in domestic service.

Question 62

Which one of the following Gilded Age presidents had a Democratic party affiliation, differing from the other four presidents?

A) Ulysses S. Grant
B) Rutherford Hayes
C) Grover Cleveland
D) Benjamin Harrison
E) Chester Arthur

Question 63

The Liberal Republican movement favored

A) an end to military Reconstruction in the South.
B) civil-service reform.
C) cheap money.
D) denying Ulysses S. Grant a second term as president.
E) a two-term limit on the presidency.

Question 64

An epidemic of violent strikes and labor conflict in 1892 led to the prospect of

A) a switch of urban workers from the Democratic to the Republican party.
B) Populists declaring their opposition to immigration restrictions.
C) Populist support for a revolutionary overthrow of reactionary state governments.
D) the Populists adding industrial workers to their base of support among farmers.
E) Grover Cleveland's switch to a pro-labor and pro-farmer campaign platform.

Question 65

The 1884 presidential election contest between James G. Blaine and Grover Cleveland was noted for

A) its emphasis on policy differences on economic and social issues.
B) low voter turnout.
C) its viciously personal attacks between the two candidates.
D) a landslide victory for the reform-minded Republicans.
E) its absence of geographic sectionalism in the respective popular support of each candidate.

Question 66

President Cleveland's hostility to silver and silver-backed currency was driven primarily by his fear that

A) the growing drain of gold from the U.S. Treasury would force the United States off the gold standard.
B) the unlimited supplies of silver within the United States would cause an extended depression.
C) supporting free silver would be politically beneficial to Democrats such as William Jennings Bryan.
D) soon gold and silver would both be replaced by strictly paper currency.
E) the U.S. Treasury did not have sufficient capacity to store silver bullion at Fort Knox.

Question 67

President Grover Cleveland aroused widespread public anger by his

A) vetoing the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act.
B) declining to take any federal government action to address the worst economic downturn of the 19^th century.
C) taking the United States off the gold standard.
D) borrowing $65 million in gold from J.P. Morgan's banking syndicate.
E) wasting the federal surplus on pork-barrel spending.

Question 68

The four states completely carried by the Populists in the election of 1892 were

A) Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
B) Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois.
C) Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Kansas.
D) Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
E) Kansas, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada.

Question 69

The early Populist campaign to create a coalition of poor white and poor black farmers resulted in

A) a racist backlash that eliminated black voting in the South through the widespread use of literacy tests and poll taxes to deny blacks the ballot.
B) the transformation of white Populist political leader Tom Watson into a fervent civil rights leader.
C) an alignment of wealthy Bourbon whites with moderate blacks.
D) a long-term political coalition between poor white and poor black farmers being sustained for many years.
E) the emergence of Republican political power and the breakdown of Democratic political power in the South.

Question 70

President Cleveland's response to the depression of the 1890s demonstrated that he

A) was able to work effectively with J.P. Morgan to address the problems of unemployment.
B) understood the problems of urban workers better than those of farmers.
C) had a weak grasp of the economic theory that lay behind the demand for free silver.
D) was unable to deal effectively with such a massive economic crisis.
E) was able to skillfully incorporate some Populist proposals into the Democratic party.

Question 71

With the Pendleton Act prohibiting political contributions from many federal workers, politicians increasingly sought money from

A) new immigrants.
B) contractors doing business with the federal government.
C) factory workers and farmers.
D) foreign contributors.
E) big corporations.

Question 72

Economic unrest and the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act led to the rise in the 1890s of the pro-silver political leader

A) Tom Watson.
B) William Jennings Bryan.
C) William McKinley.
D) Thomas Reed.
E) Samuel Gompers.

Question 73

In the Gilded Age, hard money policies were reflected in

A) the Resumption Act of 1875.
B) Congress formally dropping the coinage of silver dollars in 1873, the "Crime of '73."
C) Grant's veto of a bill to print more paper currency at the behest of creditors.
D) the monetary policy of the Greenback Labor party.
E) the demand for more coinage of silver.

Question 74

President James A. Garfield was assassinated

A) by an ex-Confederate bitter at Garfield's Union army service.
B) by an unknown and an undiscovered assassin.
C) by a jealous former lover.
D) by a deranged, disappointed office seeker.
E) by a political anarchist.

Question 75

Which of the following was NOT among the platform planks adopted by the Populist party in their convention of 1892?

A) government ownership of the railroads, telephone, and telegraph
B) free and unlimited coinage of silver in the ratio of 16 to 1
C) the adoption of the initiative petition and the referendum
D) government guarantees of parity prices for farmers
E) immigration restrictions

Question 76

The Pendleton Act required people applying for many federal government jobs to

A) take a competitive examination.
B) present a written recommendation from a congressman or senator.
C) agree to make financial contributions to their political party.
D) submit a resume listing their experience and providing references.
E) agree not to take a job in a related private business for two years after leaving government service.

Question 77

The political developments of the l890s were largely shaped by

A) the widespread prosperity and federal budget surpluses.
B) America's growing involvement in overseas conflicts.
C) the most severe and extended economic depression up to that time.
D) the growing black rebellion against segregation and racial oppression.
E) the deadlock among Republicans, Democrats, and Populists in Congress.

Question 78

In seeking congressional approval to enact lower tariffs in 1887, President Grover Cleveland

A) sought to reduce an embarrassing federal Treasury surplus of over $100 million.
B) incurred the political wrath of nervous industrialists who provided heavy financial support to the Republicans and their legally dubious vote buying operations during the 1888 presidential election.
C) divided and demoralized his own Democratic party, which was forced to fight the upcoming election over the controversial tariff issue.
D) probably cost himself reelection in 1888 because the tariff issue mobilized the Republicans quite effectively.
E) All of these choices are correct.

Question 79

In late 19^th -century elections, Democrats could generally count on the support of

A) the white South.
B) northern industrial cities.
C) immigrant groups.
D) the Midwest.
E) Catholics and Lutherans.

Question 80

The conservative white Bourbon Democrats of the South largely succeeded in crushing the Populist revolt by

A) demonstrating that Populist economic policies would harm Southern cotton interests.
B) adopting some of the Populist economic policies to appeal to poor white farmers and their economic interests.
C) bribing the Populist leadership to betray the rank and file.
D) persuading black farmers that the Populists really did not have their interests at heart.
E) appealing to poor white farmers' anti-black racial feelings against their economic interests.