History Chat - June 25, 2020

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Summary

History of the republican party, citing the change from Reconstruction years to Big business.

Timestamp 4:13: Grant emphasized peace in his campaign for presidency. This was his effort to revert back to the pre-Andrew Johnson era. He was viewed as a country uneducated man, which didn’t help the fact he didn’t “study”. On the contrary, Grant was smart both militarily and in literature. Grant was not polished, and his divide with Sumner, who wanted the republican ticket, will change American History.

Timestamp 8:14: When it came time to appoint people to government, it was traditionally done by senators via the “patronage” system. Grant didn’t like the idea of the government belonging to the politicians, so he appoints whoever he feels is best, which enrages the Senators. This is because patronage was their way of getting support, and they mock him for filling positions through Cronyism.

Timestamp 11:11: After noticing being mocked by the older generation of republicans, he begins to pay more mind to the younger generation of republican senators, which is led by Roscoe Conkling of New York. He is very politically astute, but only has aspirations of running New York because New York is politically pertinent in elections, which means having the newspapers on your side.

Timestamp 16:28 : Grant wants to boost the economy, so he decides to annex what is the current day Dominican Republic. He sends the corrupt Orville Babcock to generate a treaty between the current day Dominican Republic and the US. Upon his return, it becomes clear that he has an issue with Sumner, who is the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Grant was under the impression Sumner had his full support, and when he didn’t give it, Grant was furious as this took away the chance to expand into the Caribbean. At this point, he chooses to strengthen his relationship with Conkling. In reaction, Sumner chooses to utilize his press contacts to paint himself as the more competent politician in comparison to President Grant.

Timestamp 22:14: Carl Schurz, wants to be President, but since he was born in Germany, he shoots for Senator. He moves from Wisconsin to Missouri to govern, which is a state that was torn apart from the Civil War. As Missouri has a heavy German Population, he thinks he’ll take the state. He takes on the Drake machine during his campaign by saying they are trying to keep Democrats out of office with the re drafted state Constitution, written by Drake, states that if you supported the confederacy at all you have no civic identity. He later turns against Grant, saying he only supported African Americans for the vote. This was in effort to put Sumner in Power.

Timestamp 32:08: Grant is faced with the issue of the KKK rising in the south once African Americans are given rights, but the Southern states don’t do anything to uphold their rights. This provides the opening for journalists to turn against Grant, saying he wants to create an empire and he is supporting the poor and the redistribution of wealth. This group proves to essentially be a group to keep Corrupt white men in power.

Timestamp 36:38:South Carolina taxpayers convention is created and argues that tax dollars are being wasted on the “poor” when they are lazy and fresh out of the fields with no desire to work. This begins the rhetoric of “Socialism” and the fear of workers taking over the government, which is emphasized by the Paris Commune. The observation of the Paris Commune feeds fuel to the fire of “Dangerous workers and Dangerous classes” taking over American society. This is capitalized by the Chicago Fire, when the National labor union was supposed to meet to discuss fair wages for fair work, when the fire was believed to be caused by an uneducated female. This gives Republicans the chance to say “these people shouldn’t have a say in government”.

Timestamp 44:40: In this election, the Financiers of Wall Street, who previously traditionally were democrats, backed The Republican ticket (Grant) instead of the democrat ticket (Greeley). Starting in this election, and for the most part moving forward, they sided with Grant, and therefore Big Business was married to the republican party ever since.

Timestamp 47:12: To prove that the republicans are corrupt, they had to find a reason, which became the The Crédit Mobilier scandal. This is when the Union Pacific Railroad law was re-written. This was written with the California railroads in mind, as well as the Kansas Pacific railroad. The owners on the board of the Union Pacific railroad choose to create their own company to cut out Duran. The way the law is written, they omit a law that says they accept the lowest bids, and puts in a law that says they can take out a loan per mile they ride. Therefore, they make bids at the absolute top dollar per contract, which results in the government issuing them issuing bonds.The scandal that presented itself was when someone who verbally honored buying a large amount of stock, but three months later paid for it and requested the dividends earned was denied. The stock skyrocketed because of his ‘purchase’. After being denied, he said he would tell the newspapers all the politicians bribed by the owners.

Timestamp 57:15: These series of events leads to the Republican party working with Big business as a result of wanting to win New York through Conkling. This results in Grant winning by a landslide, which makes Financiers loyal to the Republican party. This leads to Republicans having a backlash against anything that takes money from big businesses.

[From wikipedia] Richardson’s first book, The Greatest Nation of the Earth (1997), stemmed from her dissertation at Harvard University. Inspired by Eric Foner’s work on pre-Civil War Republican ideology, Richardson analyzed Republican economic policies during the war. She contended that their efforts to create an activist Federal Government during the Civil War marked a continuation of Republican free labor ideology. These policies, such as war bonds and greenbacks or the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act, revolutionized the role of the Federal Government in the U.S. economy. At the same time, these actions laid the groundwork for the Republican Party’s shift to Big Business after the Civil War.

In this 2001 book, Richardson "focused on the “Northern abandonment of Reconstruction.” Building on the earlier work of C. Vann Woodward, she argued that a more complete understanding of the period required appreciation of class, not only race. As Reconstruction continued into the 1870s and especially the 1880s, Republicans began to view African Americans in the South more from a class perspective and less from the perspective of race that had driven their earlier humanitarianism. In the midst of the labor struggles of the Gilded Age, Republicans came to compare “the demands of the ex-slaves for land, social services, and civil rights” to the demands of white laborers in the North. This ideological shift was the key to Republican abandonment of Reconstruction, as they chose the protection of their economic and business interests over their desire for racial equality." [From wikipedia]

In this 2007 book, "Richardson presented Reconstruction as a national event that impacted all Americans, not just those in the South. She incorporated the West into the discussion of Reconstruction as no predecessor had. Between 1865 and 1900, Americans re-imagined the role of the federal government, calling upon it to promote the well-being of its citizens. However, racism, sexism, and greed divided Americans, and the same people who increasingly benefited from government intervention—white, middle-class Americans—actively excluded African-Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and organized laborers from the newfound bounties of their reconstructed nation." [from wikipedia]

In this book, published in 2010, Richardson "focused on the U.S. Army’s slaughter of Native Americans in South Dakota in 1890. She argued that party politics and opportunism led to Wounded Knee. After a bruising midterm election, President Benjamin Harrison needed to shore up his support. To do so, he turned to The Dakotas, where he replaced seasoned Indian agents with unqualified political allies, who incorrectly assumed that the Ghost Dance Movement presaged war. The Army responded by sending one third of its force in order to avoid spending cuts from Congress. After the event, Republicans tried to paint the massacre as a heroic battle to stifle the resurgent Democrats." [wikipedia]

In this 2014 book, Richardson "extended her study of the Republican Party into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book studied the entire life of the GOP, from its inception in the 1850s through the presidency of George W. Bush. The party’s founders united against the “slave power,” a small group of wealthy white men who controlled all three branches of government. These Republicans articulated a new vision of an America in which all hardworking men could rise. But after the Civil War, Republicans began to emulate what they originally opposed. They tied themselves to powerful bankers and industrialists, sacrificing the well-being of ordinary Americans. A similar process took place after World War II, when Republicans sought to dismantle successful New Deal policies and prop up the wealthy. However, in both cases, reformers within the party were able to return the GOP to its founding vision of equality of opportunity, first Theodore Roosevelt during the Progressive Era, and then Dwight D. Eisenhower, who enforced integration and maintained the New Deal. The Nixon and Reagan administrations have represented yet another fall from the GOP’s founding purpose. It's ironic, Richardson points out, that Republicans treated Barack Obama with an unprecedented level of disrespect, as Obama's rise from humble beginnings to the highest office in the nation embodied the vision of the original Republicans." [wikipedia]

In her most recent publication, Richardson argues "that America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other. United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found and expanded upon deep racial hierarchies, meaning that hierarchical values survived in American politics and culture despite the crushing defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy. Those traditions--a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color--have found a home in modern conservative politics, leaving the tremendous promise of America unfulfilled." [wikipedia]