Gilded Age
By: Caitlyn Ching
A. Glided Age
Election of Grant
Results: Grant was the first president to be elected with a minority of the white vote. The democratic party was split over the monetary dispute of paper or gold as money, thus giving more advantage to Grant. Grant was pro reconstruction with federal power.
B. "Bloody Shirt" Campaign
C. The Corruption and Boss Tweed
Grant's administration resided over a Gilded time of great corruption. His own VP Colfax was a part of the Credit Mobilier scandal that went with the Pacific Continental Railroad. as the railroad went bankrupt the owners just transferred all the money to the credit co. at the expense of the stock and shareholders.
The Tweed ring in NYC is credited for taking $200 million from the city through kick-backs and bribes. He led the Tammany Hall Political machine that would gain votes into office by any means necessary. The spoils system was prominent here and elsewhere as well. Thomas Nast is known to be the father of the american political cartoon and for helping take down the Tweed ring. He went into the Harper's weekly to attack them with multiple cartoons and in the 1871 election the Tweed ring was voted out and in 1873 Tweed was convited of fraud.