"covered in gold age for america"
Gilded Age
What is the Gilded Age?
The term was coined by writers Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), satirizing what they believed to be an era of serious social problems disguised by a thin gold gilding.
The Gilded Age was an era of enormous growth, especially in the North and West. This attracted millions of emigres from Europe. However, the Gilded Age was also an era of enormous poverty. The average annual income for most families was $380, well below the poverty line.Railroads were the major industry, but the factory system, mining, and labor unions also increased in importance. Two major nationwide depressions known as the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893 interrupted growth.The Bloody Shirt Campaign
Grant had remained a popular Civil War hero, and the Republicans continued to wave the "bloody shirt" as a patriotic symbol representing the North. The Republicans favored high tariffs and a continuation of Radical Reconstruction policies that supported five military districts in the Southern states. Grant also favored amnesty to former Confederate soldiers like the Liberal Republicans.
The election season degenerated into the opposing sides launching vicious personal attacks on the opposition candidate. Tilden, who had become wealthy as a lawyer in New York City, was accused of participating in fraudulent railroad deals. And the Republicans made much of the fact that Tilden had not served in the Civil War. Hayes had served heroically in the Union Army and had been wounded several times. And the Republicans continually reminded the voters that Hayes had participated in the war, a tactic sharply criticized by Democrats as “waving the bloody shirt.”Corruption During the Gilded Age
Thomas Nast
Thomas Nast
Thomas Nast
Compromise of 1877
Was an unwritten deal that settled the 1876 Election. It ended the reconstruction era and pulled federal troops out of state politics in the south. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was crowned president over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. The only reason Hayes won was because Hayes promised that he would take out troops from whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state government in Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. The decision was made by the democrats who controlled the House of Representatives allowing the decision of the Electoral Commision. Grant moved the troops out of Florida before leaving office and Hayes took out the remaining from South Carolina and Louisiana.