The Republicans were finding it difficult to appease reformers, both antimonopolist and evangelical, while maintaining the ethnocultural alliance that formed their base, but their main problem across the North remained the tariff. Whatever the tariff’s promised benefits, they had not yet been realized, while merchants, seeing an opportunity, raised prices on a wide range of goods alarming voters. The Democrats presented themselves as defenders of American consumers. The Republicans sloughed off large numbers of voters. Some went to the Democrats, Populists, or Independent slates; others simply
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