The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896

Abstract

What are the mainsprings of American politics? To historians of Charles A. Beard's generation differences in economic situation were the real stuff of politics, and the impact of major depressions can hardly be denied. A more recent generation has joined Lee Benson in pointing to the potent effects of pietistic sects versus the more liturgical churches. Both of these issue dimensions compete within an institutional framework itself subject to change, and buttressed by habitual party loyalty to the Republican and Democratic parties. The relative impact of economic and moral issues is most evident in those relatively few elections in which party lines are broken, and new loyalties emerge. Burnham seeks to examine such major changes from the days of Andrew Jackson to Richard Nixon, but with most emphasis on the realigning election of 1896. Richard Jensen presents a more detailed account of the changes culminating in the election of 1896 in the Midwest. Jensen covers much the same ground as Paul Kleppner's The Cross of Culture (1970), and with similar emphasis. Both Jensen and Kleppner see changes in the late nineteenth-century Midwest turning primarily on cultural or moral issues such as state enforcement of prohibition and state regulation of parochial schools. The GOP, reflecting its Know-Nothing and Abolitionist background, was the usual vehicle of the pietistic reformers. In the evenly balanced Midwest both parties sought to mobilize their voters by vast army-like campaigns, with professional politicians directing the use of patronage workers, funds, and floating voters. Jensen is at his best in recreating this lost world. Just how greatly the post-1896 political universe differs from others is a theme taken up by Burnham. Why the great change wrought by 1896 in the Midwest? Jensen's answer might be summarized as showing that reformist amateur leaders were catapulted into office by pietistic Republican voters in the late 188os. Once in office they imposed moralistic reforms-prohibition in Iowa, the Bennett Law requiring schools to use the English language in Wisconsin -that brought electoral disaster. German-Americans swung to the Democrats, who won smashing victories in 1890 and 1892. But the panic of 1893 was universally blamed on the Cleveland administration, and Bry-

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