Category Archives: Gilded Age

Bull Moose

The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know. Harry Truman

The story began with a promise. Following his electoral victory in 1904, Theodore Roosevelt vowed to the public he would not run again in 1908. Assuming office in 1901, following the death of William McKinley, then Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt could have run in ‘08. But he had made that promise. 

Selecting an heir, TR tapped the occupation governor of the Philippines, William Howard Taft. TR believed he could happily step aside and pursue private interests with Mr. Taft in the White House. Taft did not want to be president, but his wife did. Though preferring a seat on the Supreme Court, Taft soon caved to his wife and accepted TR’s offer. 

Reform and good government played a large part in Roosevelt’s administration. He challenged unfettered capitalism, pushing for regulations of railroads, and breaking John D. Rockefeller’s stranglehold on the oil industry. One of Theodore’s paramount issues was preserving America’s treasure trove of national parks, and wilderness areas. 

TR loved the West and wished to regulate development where it wasn’t needed. After completing his term, and Taft safely elected, TR went on safari in Africa with one of his sons. By the time Roosevelt returned he learned things were not to his liking in Washington. Taft had made decisions, and endorsed policies Roosevelt had opposed during his administration. 

In short, Taft had the audacity to run his own administration. 

A big issue of contention was conservation of lands and natural resources. Unlike TR, Taft opened up Alaska’s Chugach National Forest to coal mining. Worse, Taft fired TR’s man in the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, a spokesman for public land as recreational for the people. Suffice it to say this, and other disputes turned ugly.

The 1912 campaign season began with TR’s new third party, the Progressive or Bull Moose Party. William Howard Taft also announced his run for a second term for the GOP. New Jersey Governor, Woodrow Wilson, received the Democratic nomination in Baltimore. 

Of course the Republican Party split between Republican conservatives, and the Progressives backing Roosevelt. And Wilson became the 28th President of the United States.

What does that moment of time portend for today? Certainly a major Republican split between traditional and reactionary members is in the offing. Much like TR’s progressive agenda, and Taft’s middle-of-the road-conservatism, GOP voters are going to have to decide. 

Clearly this same party is sliding into another major split in 2024. Is neofascism the preference of today’s organization? That one announced candidate has another term coming, and has made plenty of promises too. Will middle of the road conservatives tone him down and redeem the party in their own image? Maybe. But for today the smart money is on that 80-year-old moderate incumbent.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Chumbley has penned two historic plays, “Clay” about the life of statesman Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears,” exploring the the beginnings of slavery and racism.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

A Different Code

“He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.”Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments 1848.

Nurse Margaret Sanger related an experience that inspired her career in family planning. Called to a dilapidated tenement building, Sanger found a pre-teen immigrant girl writhing in the throes of childbirth.

Attempting to assist the child, Sanger soon recognized the girl was slipping away, bleeding out on a filthy mattress. Indifferent, the girl’s family crowded nearby in a small parlor seemingly resigned to the life and death drama in the next room. 

Soon the bloody battle ceased, as both girl and infant were no more.

A mother herself, Sanger built her life’s work in promoting a woman’s right to choose if, or when to bear a child. 

As for Sanger, she found herself under arrest in 1916 for advocating sex education and birth control through the mail. The charge sheet read that her actions were indecent. Despite that legal setback, a determined Sanger founded Planned Parenthood later that same year.

June 24th, 2022 the Supreme Court ruled women no longer have physical autonomy. The government claims an overriding interest in American women’s reproduction. Plainly females are once again set aside as second-class citizens, leaving men free of any culpability for their actions. For one moment think if men were required a reversible vasectomy at age 16. No male would tolerate such a law, and this is the same invasion of privacy women are forced to obey.

Justice Alito, in his majority opinion, stressed moral judgement over legal arguments when the issue is reproduction. 

In fact, in overturning Roe, women are stripped of the most consequential of life decisions, reinforcing Mrs Stanton’s phrase in 1848, that “a different code” is still alive and well. Women cannot be trusted with their own bodies.

That Planned Parenthood offers so many other services is not the point. That neonatal disorders portend a fatal, and agonizing death for newborns isn’t the point, either.

One of the most precious American underpinnings is the right to privacy. And remember that Prohibition, too, attempted to police private practices. That fiasco resulted in an uptick of violent crime, and corruption because like it or not, people drink. The same is true of abortion. The procedure has not been halted in the country, but made more risky.

The Supreme Court has not ended abortion in America. 

This isn’t over.

*Justice Thomas indicates he would go after birth control next. Does he realize he opens a pandora’s box that could threaten overturning Loving V. Virginia? 

The Unforgivable Curse

Many of us have read JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books and/or watched the films. The author created a wondrous world of spells, incantations, and even included law and order via three unforgivable curses. 

There are guardrails in this tale, and a bit of a messiah storyline. Harry willingly sacrifices himself, as had his parents and many others before. However, the “Boy Who Lived,” does, and returns to fight and vanquish wickedness. 

Love, too, permeates the storyline, and the righteous power of good over evil. 

But that’s not my take.

As a career History educator I came to a different conclusion; Harry Potter told me that failing to understand our shared past can be lethal. And that was the metaphor I preached to my History students.

Harry rises to the threat and defends all that is good and valuable in his world. If he didn’t, Harry could have been killed and his world destroyed.

It’s so apropos at this moment in our history to grasp our collective story as Americans.

Honest differences within the confines of our beliefs is one thing. Obliterating the tenants of democracy is quite another. 

Americans cannot surrender our country to this would-be dictator, the things that have cost our people so dearly. Freezing soldiers at Valley Forge did not languish to enable DJT to trademark his brand to hotels, steaks or a failed university. The fallen at Gettysburg, and the suffering in Battle of the Bulge was not to pave the way for DJT to get us all killed from a ravaging plague. The girls who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the miners murdered in the Ludlow Massacre, or humiliated Civil Rights workers beaten at the Woolworth’s lunch counter was not for Donald Trump to validate racism and sexism and undo labor laws. 

He doesn’t know our nation’s history, and as George Santayana warned us, we are condemned to sacrifice all over again. 

Vote. 

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

Half-breeds, Stalwarts, and Mugwumps

His political career was none too stellar, except for that one moment he seized history.

This dapper-looking fellow is President Chester Alan Arthur, (1881-1885). Arthur was considered a dandy, pursuing an opulent lifestyle filled with fine food, drink, and expensive suits; largely paid for from the public trough.

Arthur came of political age in the post-Civil War Gilded Age, a world of political machines, graft and corruption. When a supporter helped their man get elected, position and profit rained down in return.

This dubious system functioned rather well for victorious elective candidates through countless election cycles. The political universe of Chet Arthur and his band of Republican cronies became expert skimmers from the public trough and the public trust. In the Republican Party this faction was christened Stalwarts, and Stalwarts liked their well-oiled approach to public service very much, indeed.

Arthur, himself, had been named Collector for the New York Customs House during the Grant Administration, and money from this lucrative Customs House flowed to Arthur’s friends and political operatives. His particular patron was the powerful New York Senator, Roscoe Conkling, a master in Senate handiwork.

Opposing this Old Guard of money changers were the crudely titled, Half-breeds. This oddly pejorative moniker (too common in that era) represented a growing group of reformers in the GOP who aimed to clean up the corrupt practice of patronage. Senator James G. Blaine of Maine believed government jobs should be based on merit, not connections, and Blaine promoted the use of Civil Service Exams. In other words, Half-breeds endorsed qualified government workers over payola for their friends. The Stalwarts were horrified.

In the 1880 Presidential Election the Republicans, in a heated convention, split the ticket with candidates of both wings. For President, James Garfield, a Half-breed, and for Vice President, Stalwart, Chester Arthur, crony of Sen. Conkling. The Party felt it had fused the differences between the two factions, and the fat cats believed they could continue to prey. Then came the Garfield assassination.

In July, 1881, President Garfield, a distinguished Union general, and a former member of the House of Representatives, appeared at the Baltimore and Potomac Rail Station in Washington DC. In the crowd waited Charles Guiteau, an unhinged, office-seeking Stalwart. Guiteau approached the President in the crowd, shooting him at close range. Garfield died two months later from his infected wounds.

Guiteau had shouted, after opening fire, that he was a Stalwart, and would now get a government job. He didn’t. In fact, all Guiteau received was a date with the hangman, carried out in June, 1882.

And what of Chester A. Arthur? He assumed the presidency in a charged atmosphere of national grief. So changed was Arthur, that he promoted passage of the Pendleton Act of 1883. This act created the Civil Service Commission, and mandated written exams for classes of government jobs. The Stalwarts were horrified, but politically could do nothing. Garfield had been made a martyr for reform, and Arthur took the high road, making that reform real.

Oh, and by the way, the Mugwumps were another reforming splinter of the GOP. So appalled by the legacy of bribery and corruption, they bolted the party in 1884 for Democrat, Grover Cleveland.

Wonder how the 2020 Election will reshape the current GOP?

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both books are available on Kindle.

gailchumbley@gmail.com