Return to the “Gilded Age,” America’s golden age of industrial fortunes, corruption, and political shenanigans in the late 19th century.my century, after the Civil War. If Donald Trump wins the presidential election on November 5, he will achieve the greatest political comeback in recent American history. Only one president managed to be elected a second time after being defeated: Grover Cleveland (1837-1908), elected in 1884, defeated in 1888 and re-elected in 1892.
The man is a bit of the antithesis of Donald Trump: he was the first Democratic president elected after the Civil War, in an atmosphere of economic euphoria and entrepreneurialism. Former mayor of Buffalo (New York State) and former governor of New York, this honest and austere man won with an anti-corruption program, opposed to high customs duties, against bimetallism (gold became scarce, silver was used as a second currency, but its use led to inflation) and against emerging US imperialism. He won against some of his own party, notably Tammany Hall, New York’s clientelistic Irish Catholic political machine, which ruled the city, but with the support of corruption-weary Republicans, the Mugwumps.. He was attacked for having had an illegitimate child. His Republican opponent, James Blaine, had been implicated in railroad corruption scandals.
“We will return in exactly four years”
Grover Cleveland opposed aid to Western farmers with a famous statement about the non-involvement of the federal state: “Even if the people support the government, the government should not support the people. » He was defeated in 1888 by the Republican Benjamin Harrison, the last American president to wear a beard: he lost the popular vote by 90,000 votes, but won among the voters (233 against 168), winning in particular the United States, key to New York and Indiana. .
Harrison praised the “providence”. “Providence had nothing to do with it”Matthew Quay, Republican “boss” and senator from Pennsylvania, criticized the press. “He will never know how some of his followers had to approach the prison doors to make him president. » The White House website, which tracks the biography of its tenants, confirms the matter : “Although Harrison had not reached any political agreement, his followers had made countless promises in his name. »
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