The coming wave
It began to build in the summer of 1873.
Newspaper editors, attuned to the mood of their readers, felt it coming. Politicians from Maine to Oregon – two of the 16 states that held off-year elections between congressional and presidential elections – sensed it too, and tried to respond accordingly.
Mid-term congressional elections are viewed today as referendums on the president. The party in power in the White House typically loses seats in the House and sometimes, as in 1994 and 2006, loses control of one or both houses of Congress in what has come to be known as a “wave” election. Many believe one is coming this fall.
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A print from 1873 showed a farmer in a “Granger shirt” explaining the movement’s principles to visiting politicians. Library of Congress.
Modern historians and political junkies point to the congressional election of 1874, in which Democrats went from being a picked up 92 House seats, as the defining wave election of the Gilded Age. That election brought to an end Republican control of the House that began on the eve of the Civil War and marked the beginning of a 20-year era in which presidential elections were decided by razor thin margins.
While the party of Lincoln still controlled the Senate and the White House in the aftermath of its drubbing in 1874, its days of unchallenged hegemony in Washington were over. But the dramatic results of 1874 were foreshadowed by state balloting that occurred one year earlier.
Today, only four states – New Jersey, Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana – hold off-year gubernatorial and legislative elections (Kentucky elects its governor in off-year balloting but votes for state legislators in even-numbered years). But the practice was far more common in the 19th century, and far more important. With U.S. senators chosen by state legislatures, state elections took on a national significance they don’t possess today.
As the two parties mobilized for elections that would determine the control of state houses, voter discontent was palpable.
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The New York Sun headline on its scoop revealing the Credit Mobilier stock sales in Congress. Library of Congress.
The state elections followed on the heels of two disastrous missteps on Capitol Hill. The Credit Mobilier scandal – the discovery that members of Congress were buying profitable stock from a colleague who was selling the shares to promote the interests of the Union Pacific Railroad – preoccupied the House and Senate and filled front pages from New York to Sacramento.
Three congressional investigations (catalogued in previous blog posts) generated embarrassing revelations and disclosed that members lied about their stock purchases from Rep. Oakes Ames. Despite evidence that the stock was sold to further the interests of the railroad – evidence drawn from letters written by Ames and the lawmaker’s own testimony — the House took no action against anyone who bought the stock. The House committee investigating the stocks sales recommended the expulsion of Ames and Rep. James Brooks, D-N.Y., but they were merely censured for their actions.
This was bad enough. But Congress compounded its difficulties by voting itself a retroactive pay raise that earned universal condemnation from the public and the press. The so-called “salary grab” quickly became a serious liability for incumbents – particularly those who voted for it.
While Credit Mobilier and the salary grab hung in the air as state party bosses began to plot their fall campaigns, additional concerns loomed behind the specter of scandal and self-enrichment.
Violent resistance to Reconstruction in the South began to take its toll on Northerners weary of strife and sympathetic to the racist view that African Americans weren’t capable of self-government. Reconstruction wasn’t on the ballot in the state elections of 1873, but it cast a pall over the electorate.
In September, a massive stock-market crash forced banking houses to close and businesses to shut their doors and lay off workers. The damage caused by the Panic of 1873 would occur slowly and become more pronounced after the election, but it represented another worrisome development that could only make voters less sympathetic to the party in power.
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The closing of the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 20, 1873, in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Library of Congress.
Finally, farmers across the Midwest and South mobilized in opposition to the rising political and economic clout of railroads, who had dominated state legislatures across the country for decades with campaign cash, bribes and other benefits. Beginning in the early 1870s, farmers flocked to the new, non-partisan Patrons of Husbandry, also known as the Grange. The agrarian social organization quickly became the focal point for anti-railroad agitation.
The Washington Evening Star took early note of the emerging crusade. “The movement of the western people against the great railroad monopolies begins to assume definite shape,” the Evening Star wrote on Feb. 20, “and it is pretty certain that the control of railroad fares and freight will be the issue on which the next legislatures in several of the western states will be chosen.”
Over the next nine months, as voters stewed about Credit Mobilier and the salary grab and demanded action to control the railroads, parties and politicians scrambled to get on the right side of the electorate.
Democrats poked Republicans for Credit Mobilier and the salary grab. Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from the scandal and the pay raise. Both parties condemned abuses by railroads and tried to align themselves with angry farmers.
Republican state platforms published in the summer of 1873 show a remarkable uniformity. Credit Mobilier and the salary grab figured in the campaign programs of Republicans in Iowa, Minnesota and Oregon. In many platforms, the phrase “Credit Mobilier” connoted not just the railroad stock scandal but any scheme of insider self-enrichment.
At the same times, the state platforms oozed with hostility toward railroads. Several called for state or federal action to support “cheap transportation” reverberated in state Republican conventions across the country as the party scrambled to get on the side of voters angry at the Iron Rail.
The New York Tribune, a leading “liberal” organ of the day opposed both to corruption and government involvement in the economy, might not have been comfortable with such proposals. But the newspaper recognized the potency of anti-railroad sentiment and urged farmers to act on their fury with the industry.
The corruption of “Railway rings and Credit Mobilier rings” hurt farmers, the Tribune argued. “We look to the Farmers, more than to any other class, to counteract the mischievous money influence which has filled our public coffers with venality and selfishness.”
By the time all the voting was done in November (many states held their elections in October), the results were clear. Democrats, often in concert with Anti-Monopolist forces, surged to power in state houses across the country or made significant inroads on Republican majorities.
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Cadwallader C. Washburn in 1861. Library of Congress.
In Ohio, Republican Gov. Edward F. Noyce fell to Democrat William Allen. Wisconsin Republican Gov. Cadwallader C. Washburn, well known for his criticism of Credit Mobilier and railroads, lost to Democrat and Granger William R. Taylor. Iowa Republican Gov. Cyrus Carpenter joined the Grange and avoided defeat but had to contend with a lower house where Democrats and Anti-Monopolists tied Republicans for control.
With the effects of the Panic becoming more pronounced each day, another issue would soon join concerns about corruption, Credit Mobilier, the salary grab and the power of railroads. “Hard times have come. There is no doubt about that,” the Chicago Tribune warned on Nov. 9. “Capitalists are nervous and wary, merchants cautious and foreboding, workingmen pinched and apprehensive, and everybody forced to retrenchment.”
The coming wave was gaining strength.
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The elections of 1873 and 1874 are covered in Congress and the King of Frauds: Corruption and the Credit Mobilier Scandal at the Dawn of the Gilded Age, available at amazon.com .
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