A History of the United States

by Charles Kendall Adams; William P. Trent

613. Notable Events.—In 1881 the nation celebrated with a great naval display the one hundredth anniversary of the surrender of the British at Yorktown. In recognition of the country’s friendship for Great Britain, President Arthur, with characteristic tact, ordered at the end of the ceremonies a national salute to the British flag. In 1884 a World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition was held at New Orleans, which revealed the increasing prosperity of the country at large and of the South in particular. The years 1881–1884 were also notable for brave Arctic explorations conducted by Lieutenant A. W. Greely.

POLITICAL EVENTS.

614. Anti-Polygamy Law.—For many years polygamy among the Mormons had given offense to a vast majority of the people of the country. The practice had been supposed to be so essentially a part of the Mormon religious system that Congress had hesitated to interfere with it. In 1882, however, Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont succeeded in carrying through Congress a law which repealed the charter of the Mormon church, made polygamy criminal in any territory of the United States, and deprived of the elective franchise any persons who should refuse to take the oath to obey the stringent provisions of the act.

615. Tariff Commission.—The tariff and internal revenue laws, enacted in 1862, for the purpose of raising a war income (§§ [456], [457]), produced so large an income that the national debt was greatly reduced and a large surplus accumulated in the Treasury. This surplus could not be used to pay the debt, because the latter had been refunded,—that is, loosely speaking, readjusted on subsequent borrowing at a lower rate of interest than was paid when the debt was first incurred,—and the new obligations had not yet fallen due. It was therefore deemed desirable to reduce the income by a modification of the tariff. As questions of protection and free trade were not the chief motives of the change, it was decided to appoint a Tariff commission of business men to study the matter and report a suitable bill to Congress. On the basis of the recommendations of the Commission, a law was framed and passed in 1883; but it failed to diminish the income, and the accumulations in the Treasury went on as rapidly as before. It was thought, however, that the Commission had been influenced too much by the urgent recommendations of the protectionists. The final action was regarded by Democrats and by advocates of free trade as amounting to excessive taxation, and so an active agitation was begun in favor of a more liberal tariff law (§ [627]).

616. Condition of the Civil Service.—The murder of Garfield called attention anew to the bad condition of the Civil Service. It was evident that the number of appointments to be made had become so great that the President was obliged to give too much of his time to the subject, and even then thousands of offices had to be bestowed on the demand of politicians who showed little sense of responsibility in making their recommendations. Congress, therefore, in 1883, revived the Civil Service question that had been dropped in the time of President Grant, and the so-called “Pendleton Bill,” supported by Senator George H. Pendleton of Ohio, was enacted. According to this law, a large number of subordinate appointments were to be made by the President from those candidates who had been most successful in competitive examinations. These examinations were to be held by a Board of Commissioners, duly provided by Congress for the purpose. This method had been very successful in other countries and had been approved and encouraged by Grant, Hayes, and Garfield. Under the act a Commission was appointed, which has been continued and has rendered great service to the country.

617. Prosperity during Arthur’s Administration.[^[282]]—The country during Arthur’s administration passed through a period of prosperity, which, up to that time, was unexampled. Agriculture, trade, and manufactures everywhere flourished. Laborers found abundant employment. The South had, for the first time since the war, become somewhat prosperous. Free labor was proving more profitable than slave labor, and new industries of various kinds began to spring up in all parts of the Southern states. Manufactories of cotton goods, which, up to the time of the war, had flourished only in the North, now made a beginning in the South. Industrial expositions showed that a New South had come into existence. But in some Southern states, notably Virginia, where there was great agitation for the adjustment of the state debt, politics were still in a bad condition. On the Pacific coast, agitation on the part of more or less shiftless citizens, not only against Chinese immigration but also against the moneyed classes,—known from its leader, Dennis Kearney, as Kearneyism,—was quieting down, and the lawlessness of the Middle West, represented by the crimes of Jesse James and his fellow train robbers, was finally suppressed. Toward the end of Arthur’s administration much attention was called to the growth of corporations. In 1884 an “Anti-Monopoly” party was organized, and General Benjamin F. Butler was nominated for President.

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1884.

618. Demands for Reform.—As the time for the election of 1884 approached, it was evident that demands for further Civil Service improvement and for tariff reform were to play a very prominent part in the campaign. Many Republicans insisted upon the selection of candidates who would support measures of reform, and threatened, in case such nominations should not be made, to vote for the Democratic candidates. Such advocates of reform called themselves “Independents”; but they were stigmatized by their enemies as “Mugwumps.”[^[283]] These Independent voters proved to be sufficiently numerous to decide the coming election.

James G. Blaine.