"The Best Men": Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age

by John G. Sproat

The Best Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

John G. Sproat's The Best Men offers a sardonic study of the "Liberal Republican" movement of the 1870s and 1880s. Sproat views the movement, despite the word "liberal's" modern connotations, as essentially a conservative reaction to the perceived excesses of the Radical Republicans and other reformers of post-Civil War America. They're a polyglot bunch - intellectuals like Henry Adams, journalist Horace Greeley, politicians Carl Schurz and Charles Sumner - who abandoned Reconstruction and civil rights to focus on good government and combating political corruption. A worthy cause in isolation, perhaps, but Sproat views them as a baleful influence on 19th Century politics. Republicans who could no longer stomach defending the rights of black men and women could instead focus on nominally non-partisan issues like civil service reform, creating a "Party of the Center" more in tune with conservative Democrats than fellow Republicans. Certainly most "Liberal Republicans" felt no sympathy for the era's labor movement, painting capitalist Social Darwinism as key to a healthy, progressive society. In other words, trying to make reactionary ideas palatable to progressives. Despite his potentially dry subject, Sproat's dry sarcasm and skewering of 19th Century politicos ("Very little in Grover Cleveland's background and personality hinted that he could be the champion of anything") makes for an immensely enjoyable book, showing the shortcomings of myopic reform movements that truly "reform" nothing.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

John G. Sproat's book offers a critical analysis of the politics and achievements of college-educated independents during the Gilded Age. He identifies these liberal reformers by their shared characteristics: their belief in classical liberalism, a moral code firmly based in their Protestant faith, independence from parties in the political process, moderate reform goals, and their confidence that their intentions made them truly the "best men" in the political process. Those objective was to create a small, technically efficient government run by themselves, which would allow them to reduce taxes, encourage individualism, and curtail public services so as to allow each man regardless of their social origins to use their talents to benefit society without warping natural laws.

Yet for all of their earnestness these reformers more often failed than succeeded in attaining their goals. Sproat attributes their failure to their inability to come to terms with the times in which they lived. In spite of their open-mindedness in terms of social progress, they proved too fixed in their social and moral standards and rigid in their economic and political ideas. Their unwillingness to compromise their ideological purity, along with their elitist rejection of involvement with mass movements, effectively limited their impact by depriving them of the opportunities to gain power that would have allowed them to implement their agenda.

Though published nearly a half-century ago, Sproat's book remains the best work available on this prominent group of Gilded Age activists. Its endurance is in no small measure credited to Sproat's acute analysis, which continues to define how these men are understood today. As such it remains required reading for anyone wishing to better understand Gilded Age politics and the limits of contemporary efforts to reform government.

[Harry Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is well argued and organized. Some of the chapters are thematic (concerning, say, the liberal response to tariffs and greenbacks) and others are more chronological (focusing on liberal behavior in Gilded Age presidential elections). Sometimes it feels like each chapter is a bit too full, of examples in the thematic chapters, and details in the chronological ones; but if Sproat's points are belabored, at least they are clear.

The chief fault of the Gilded Age liberals was demophobia, which came in a racist/elitist/sexist melange. The liberals despised both the Reconstruction governments of the South and the machine systems of the North, because they empowered the wrong sort. They regretted the expansion of the franchise to immigrants (and, abortively, to African-Americans) and railed against even the potential of women's suffrage. Additionally, they betrayed their liberalism by coming down always on the side of property. They reflexively supported the policy of sending in the national army to break strikes (p. 239), and they even seemed to resent domestic servants' tendency to "flit about" among employers, receiving ever more "unnatural" wages (p. 209). Sproat himself seems no great fan of classical liberalism in the first place, believing it to have become obsolete in the age of industrialization; but he is right to point out that the classical liberals of the Gilded Age fell far short of their own supposed principles, exposing their cause to "warranted charges of bigotry and hypocrisy" (p. 276).

Gilded Age liberals' one partial success was in the field of civil service reform, because they could rally behind the idea of government by the "best people." Sproat summarizes their attitudes in this campaign in ways that can apply to the whole liberal movement:

What they meant by 'honest, efficient public service' was government by an elite class of men like themselves. Distrustful of democracy and contemptuous of the brash, rich businessmen-politicians in government, they pictured themselves as ideal public servants. Well-bred, financially comfortable, 'disinterested' in such sordid matters as party politics, and supremely confident that they alone understood the meaning of virtue in society, they resented bitterly the power and authority that 'lesser men' than they exercised. They were the 'best men,' and they knew it; yet they never could have won high office in a democracy, for they flaunted their distaste for democracy. A carping, pedantic, often sniveling quality permeated their remarks on political reform. They displayed toward their opponents not mere political disapproval but a scornful vindictiveness sadly devoid of compassion or understanding of human nature. (pp. 270-271)

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to give a bad review to your professor!