Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre

by Heather Cox Richardson

The late nineteenth-century Republican approach to American government left a lasting legacy. The Harrison Republicans were consummate party politicians, willing to ignore reality, manipulate government machinery to stay in power, and destroy those in the way of their plans. Harrison’s men convinced themselves that the protection of big business through the tariff was crucial to the survival of the nation. They refused to recognize the artificial bubble of western growth or the growing gap between rich and poor in America, problems their own policies exacerbated. They saw protests as an attack on the American system rather than as an attempt to save it. They could not acknowledge the faltering economy; they explained away the many signs of a looming depression and convinced themselves that the new tariff, the culmination of their program, would magically make the economy boom. They could not recognize the legitimacy of workers’ worries about declining wages in the face of extraordinary wealth, or their widespread concerns about the cozy relationship of business and government. Anyone opposing the Republicans’ extreme pro-business policy opposed America, Republicans believed, and must be silenced.