Bringing Down the Colonel Quotes

“When President Grover Cleveland called for tariff reform in 1887, Breckinridge traveled around the country promoting the Democrats’ tariff reform plan, casting tariffs as a tax on consumers that would dampen trade and foster a corrupting surplus. “The money in the Treasury is not the money of the Government, it is the money of the people, wrung from them by a false and wrong policy of taxation,” he told a large audience in Philadelphia, who arose “almost en masse and applauded for several minutes” when he finished, before demanding an encore, which, the New York Times reported, Breckinridge obliged, making “another brief address.”
― Patricia Miller, Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "powerless" Woman Who Took on Washington

“But it was the Great Tariff Debate of 1888—“two days of oratory in which the best gladiators of the House participated,” as the historian Allan Nevins has described it—that made Breckinridge a star. Other than the question of gold or silver currency, tariffs were the biggest political issue of the day. The Democrats generally opposed high tariffs on imported products as impediments to free trade and also because they didn’t want to see the federal government swollen with revenue that it would be tempted to spend. The Republicans supported high tariffs as a means of protecting farming and manufacturing interests from import competition and as a way of raising revenue for what they deemed badly needed infrastructure improvements for the country at a time when there was no income tax, just internal revenue taxes, mainly on tobacco and whiskey.”
― Patricia Miller, Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "powerless" Woman Who Took on Washington

“The notorious conduct of congressmen and public men in Washington is a national disgrace and the women are now thoroughly awakened on the subject and are determined to demand a better order of things.”
― Patricia Miller, Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "powerless" Woman Who Took on Washington

“Gentlemen of the jury, take this case and dispose of it,” he said as the courtroom burst into laughter.”
― Patricia Miller, Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "powerless" Woman Who Took on Washington