THE GILDED AGE
An Age That Was Gilded
What does "gilded" mean?
Grant and the Bloody Shirt Campaign
Grant did very little to advertise his campaign for Presidency, whereas the Democratic candidate, Horatio Seymour, traveled all through the country striving to sway voters to his favor. He ultimately failed, and Grant swept into victory by "waving the bloody shirt," a euphemism for reminding America of the negative impact that the South and the Democratic Party had recently had on the country's overall welfare.
Political Corruption
Ultimately, Boss Tweed's illegal campaign was brought to a screeching halt by a series of exposés ran in the New York Times. These primarily consisted of political cartoons drawn by caricaturist and editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast. His goal in printing these simple and direct strikes against Tweed was to educate an ignorant population to a dangerous machine of corruption that they were blindly fueling. Immigrants began to become more hesitant to accept Tweed's offers, and when the higher government received word of the situation, they captured Tweed, who had attempted to flee to Cuba, by using one of Nast's drawings as a means of identifying him.