DeCanio - State Autonomy and American Political Development

In the 1980s, many scholars of both comparative and
American politics argued that states often act au-

tonomously from social demands.
1
Rejecting reduc-
tionist assumptions regarding the primacy of social
groups for public policy, both groups of scholars ex-
amine how government actors and preexisting insti-
tutional constraints influenced policy implementa-
tion.
2
Since then, however, while the state has been
retained as the primary unit of analysis for most stud-
ies of American political development, interest in the
autonomy of the state has dwindled, and scholars have
increasingly focused on how social groups and elec-
toral outcomes explain state formation and public
policy, especially in the nineteenth century.
3
In some
instances, scholars have even denied that state autono-
Studies in American Political Development, 19 (Fall 2005), 117136.
2005 Cambridge University Press ISSN 0898588X/05 $12.00 117
State Autonomy and American
Political Development: How Mass
Democracy Promoted State Power
Samuel DeCanio, Ohio
State University
The danger in presuppositions does not lie merely in the fact that they exist or that
they are prior to empirical knowledge. It lies rather in the fact that an ontology hand-
ed down through tradition obstructs new developments, especially in the basic
modes of thinking, and as long as the particularity of the conventional theoretical
framework remains unquestioned we will remain in the toils of a static mode of
thought which is inadequate to our present stage of historical and intellectual de-
velopment.
Karl Mannheim
Thanks to Paula Baker, Nicholas Barreyre, Emery Beneby, Michael
Brown, Greg Caldeira, Stephen DeCanio, Jeffrey Friedman, James
Gutowski, Ted Hopf, Richard John, Dean Lacy, Patrick Lynch, Mor-
gan Marietta, Amanda Miller, Kathleen McGraw, Kevin Miles, John
Mueller, Irfan Nooruddin, Kristin Roebuck, Elizabeth Sanders,
James C. Scott, and David Stebbene for comments on prior drafts.
Special thanks to the extensive comments provided by an anony-
mous referee. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the
2005 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association,
Chicago, IL.
1. Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of
Analysis in Current Research, in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Pe-
ter Evans et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion
of National Administrative Capacities, 18771920 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1982); Stephen Krasner, Defending the Na-
tional Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Eric Nordlinger,
On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1981); Eric Nordlinger, Taking the State Seri-
ously, in Understanding Political Development, ed. Myron Weiner and
Samuel Huntington (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1987);
Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968); J.P. Nettl, The State as a
Conceptual Variable, World Politics 20 (1968): 55992.
2. David Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Alfred
Knopf, 1956); Robert Dahl, Pluralist Democracy in the United States:
Conflict and Consensus (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967); Walter Dean
Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics
(New York: Norton Books, 1970).
3. For example, one scholar claims that what previously
passed for an agenda is now common wisdom the state is back
in . . . politics is now the new center piece of the social problem,
not a mere epiphenomenon (Stephen Skowronek, Whats
Wrong with APD? Studies in American Political Development 17
[2003]: 110). For studies focusing on the social basis of political
conflict, see Richard Bensel, The Political Economy of American In-
dustrialization, 18771900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000); Martin Shefter, Political Parties and the State: The Amer-
ican Historical Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1994); Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State
Authority in America, 18591877 (Cambridge: Cambridge Universi-
ty Press, 1990); Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers,
and the American State, 18771917 (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1999); Daniel Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autono-
my: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies,
18621928 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
my is a relevant concept for the study of American po-
litical development.
4
The extensive levels of nineteenth-century elec-
toral participation seem to lend credibility to this
drift away from a concern with state autonomy. Al-
though unelected bureaucrats can ignore electoral
demands, it is unclear how elected officials could im-
plement policies the demos opposed when over 80 per-
cent of the eligible electorate voted. Far from pos-
sessing autonomy from society, it is usually assumed
that elected officials were constrained by Americas
vibrant participatory democratic culture.
This essay argues against this view, and suggests that
existing studies have underestimated the autonomy
of nineteenth-century American government. Specif-
ically, I argue that, despite high levels of voter partic-
ipation, democratic officials could generate autono-
my from electoral pressures by manipulating public
opinion and packaging popular desires in ways that
freed the state from societal control.
5
Instead of as-
suming that democracy places external barriers upon
state power, elite manipulation of public opinion can
open a gap between democratic theory and the actu-
al operation of democratic politics that allows one to
bring the autonomous state back in to the analysis
of democratic governance.
I begin by summarizing recent studies suggesting
that the high levels of democratic engagement re-
sulted in popular control of public policy. I then ar-
gue that, despite high levels of political participation,
elected officials can elude popular control by manip-
ulating election outcomes and public opinion, even
in a highly participatory political culture. I proceed
to examine whether election outcomes and public
opinion constrained the elected officials directing
monetary policy following the Civil War. Using the
1875 Ohio gubernatorial election as a case study, I ar-
gue that voters did not control monetary policy be-
cause elected officials deliberately manipulated pub-
lic opinion to win elections and to remove economic
policies from popular control. Finally, I discuss how
the Ohio contest influenced the selection of presi-
dential nominees for the election of 1876, resulting
in the nomination of candidates opposed to popular
demands for currency inflation.
I. NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC
CULTURE
In the final decades of the nineteenth century, Amer-
icas agrarian economy and decentralized govern-
ment were transformed into an industrial market
economy regulated by a centralized bureaucratic
state.
6
In Europe, these transitions occurred before
the mass population gained the franchise. In Amer-
ica, they occurred during a period known for its vigor-
ously participatory democratic politics.
7
Nineteenth-
century Americans cast ballots in unprecedented
numbers, attended political rallies en masse, and took
part in massive torchlight parades, creating a demo-
cratic culture where politics seemed to enter into
everything.
8
Americans propensity for electoral
participation was so extensive that virtually all histo-
rians agree that political engagement, which went
118 SAMUEL DECANIO
4. As two founders of the field note,
[recent studies often] dissolve any stark analytic sep-
aration between state and society. As it has turned
out, bringing the state back in has been less a mat-
ter of asserting the autonomy of government insti-
tutions than a matter of asserting the primacy of the
categorical realm of authority within which social re-
lations are organized, political identities formed,
and transformative ambitions directed. (Stephen
Skowronek and Karen Orren, The Search for American
Political Development [Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2004], 19)
Similarly, others conclude: Having brought the state back in, . . .
scholars now recognize that the fit between public officials and
organized constituencies . . . limits the autonomy of the state (Bri-
an Balogh, Preserving American Political Development as a Mul-
tidisciplinary Field [unpub. mss., 2004].
5. The possibility that characteristics of mass opinion grants
elected officials autonomy from societal oversight has been tan-
gentially recognized by several studies, but has never been directly
confronted or developed. See Robert Wiebe, The Opening of Amer-
ican Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf ), 35152; Richard Bensel, The Ameri-
can Ballot Box in the Mid Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 2003), chap. 7; Ronald Formisano, The Birth of
Mass Political Parties, Michigan, 18271861 (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1971), 1112. I draw heavily from Philip Con-
verse, The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics, in Ideology
and Discontent, ed. David Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964).
For general theoretical orientations to this approach, see An-
tonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks (New York: Interna-
tional Publishers, 1971); Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy (New York: Harper), 26164; Robert Michels, Polit-
ical Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern
Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1962), 111, 6567, 7071, 107
14; Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1939), 5053; Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (New York: Har-
court, Brace, and Company, 1921); Walter Lippman, The Phantom
Public (New York: Macmillan Co., 1930), 4748, 6162, 71; Murray
Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1967); Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass
Opinion Promotes State Power (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
6. See Oscar and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study
of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts,
17741861 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947);
Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania,
17761860 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1948); William Novak,
The Peoples Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century Ameri-
ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Colleen
Dunlavy, Mirror Images: Political Structure and Early Railroad
Policy in the United States and Prussia, Studies in American Politi-
cal Development 5 (1991): 135.
7. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), chap. 2; Martin
Shefter, Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experi-
ence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Bensel, Yan-
kee Leviathan; Political Economy.
8. William Gienapp, Politics Seem to Enter into Everything:
Political Culture in the North, 18401860, in Essays on American
Antebellum Politics, 18401860, ed. Stephen Maizlish and John
Kushma (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982), 6.
well beyond voting, was both widespread and deeply
felt within the electorate.
9
Given the extent of political participation, eco-
nomic and political modernization scholars often
suggest that elected officials served as delegates
fresh from the people, ever mindful that they must
obey the public will.
10
Americas vibrant grass-roots
political culture allegedly ensured that congressmen
listened to the opinions of their constituents and
translated their needs and desires into law.
11
Because
regulation of the emerging market economy oc-
curred alongside unprecedented electoral participa-
tion, many suggest that politics and economic de-
velopment were not separate processes, unfolding
according to distinct logics; they were, instead, insep-
arably and intimately interconnected in ways that ul-
timately produced rapid industrialization within a ro-
bust democratic polity.
12
The demands of social groups bearing the costs as-
sociated with economic modernization are said to
have figured prominently in this process. The elec-
toral preferences of farmers and laborers, for exam-
ple, are thought to have interacted with the struc-
ture of Congress and the electoral system to give them
a driving force and an institutional strength not
shared by other groups.
13
The legislature in partic-
ular is seen as having been prone to societal pressures
due to congressmens close ties to localized electoral
constituencies.
14
Allegedly, the pressures forcing con-
gressmen to heed the publics wishes were so exten-
sive that,
When the American national state began to
acquire the legal authority and the administra-
tive capability to regulate a mature industrial
economy and protect its citizens from the ac-
knowledged pathologies of large-scale capital-
ism, it did so in response to the demands of po-
litically mobilized farmers.
15
These popular economic demands found political ex-
pression in party platforms [that] translated popular
sentiment into fairly clear public policy alternatives
that unambiguously traced out the lines of class and
sectional conflict.
16
Such scholars conclude that
electoral pressures were so influential that,
[It is impossible to study American political
economy] without acknowledging the impact
of popular sentiment on both the policy de-
signs of the major parties and the construction
of developmental institutions. Participation
was high, political opinion was informed, or-
ganized insurgency was common, and people
felt that the outcome of elections mattered. In
all these ways, the late nineteenth century was
a far more democratic era than the present
and, compared with other developing coun-
tries then and since, the United States was well
on the democratic side of the spectrum.
17
Popular pressures were allegedly so pervasive that
they extended beyond elected officials, influencing
STATE AUTONOMY AND AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT 119
9. Glen Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Limits of Political
Engagement in Antebellum America: A New Look at the Golden
Age of Participatory Democracy, Journal of American History 84
(1997): 855; Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The
American North, 18651928 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986); Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 18531892
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); James A.
Morone, The Democratic Wish: Popular Participation and the Limits of
American Government (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990);
Joel Silbey, The American Political Nation, 18381893 (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1991); Alexander Keyssar, The Right to
Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York:
Basic Books, 2000); Jean Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture
of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cor-
nell University Press, 1983); Walter Dean Burnham, Theory and
Voting Research: Some Reflections on Converses Change in the
American Electorate, American Political Science Review 68 (1974):
10021023.
10. Altschuler and Blumin, Limits of Political Engagement,
856.
11. Heather Cox Richardson, The Greatest Nation of the Earth:
Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 9; Baker, Affairs of Party, 23.
12. Bensel, Political Economy, 17; Elizabeth Sanders, Industri-
al Concentration, Sectional Competition, and Antitrust Politics in
America, 18801890, Studies in American Political Development 1
(1986): 142214; Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Work-
ers, and the American State 18771917 (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1999); Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Antimo-
nopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997); Michael Schudson, The Good
Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York: Free Press, 1998);
Barry Weingast, Political Stability and Civil War: Institutions,
Commitment, and American Democracy, in Analytic Narratives,
ed. Robert Bates et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1998), 14893; Thomas Gilligan, William J. Marshal, and Barry R.
Weingast, Regulation and the Theory of Legislative Choice: The
Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, Journal of Law and Economics 32
(1989): 3561.
13. Sanders, Roots of Reform, 4; Elizabeth Sanders, State The-
ory and American Political Development, Studies in Law, Politics,
and Society 10 (1990): 95.
14. Sanders, Roots of Reform, 46. This is also the conclusion of
studies investigating the autonomous power of government. See
Krasner, Protecting the National Interest, 62, 64. Assuming that Con-
gress was closely tied to social demands poses clear problems for
any study of the autonomous power of the nineteenth-century fed-
eral government. If the executive was the only branch capable of
autonomous action, nineteenth-century doctrines of legislative
dominance and the norms prohibiting the executive from advo-
cating, or even endorsing, specific policies indicates that studies of
American state formation must remain tied to fundamentally so-
cially reductionist frameworks. Only after providing explanations
for how elected officials could escape constituency oversight can
we assert the existence of autonomous governmental power. On
the power of the nineteenth-century legislature, see John Sher-
man, John Shermans Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and
Cabinet (Chicago: Werner Company, 1896), 447; Leonard D. White,
The Republican Era: A Study in Administrative History, 18691901
(New York: Free Press, 1958), chap. 2; Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical
Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987); Joseph
Cooper and Cheryl D. Young, Bill Introduction in the Nineteenth
Century: A Study of Institutional Change, Legislative Studies Quar-
terly 14 (1989): 67105.
15. Sanders, Roots of Reform, 1.
16. Bensel, Political Economy, 102.
17. Ibid., xvii.
nonelected bureaucrats as well. Some argue that
bureaucracies were able to act independently of Con-
gress only after broad portions of the . . . [Ameri-
can] public became convinced that some bureaucra-
cies could provide unique and efficient public
services, create new and valuable programs, and
claim the allegiance of diverse coalitions of previous-
ly skeptical citizens.
18
Thus even unelected bureau-
crats policy programs allegedly required broad soci-
etal support to ensure successful implementation.
19
Given such assumptions, mass political participa-
tion is seen as inhibiting the growth of a strong state
because [it] allowed constantly shifting public opin-
ion to sweep unhindered through the structure of
government, preventing the erection of stable insu-
lated, and self-conscious bureaucratic forms.
20
The
implementation of public policy independent of, or
antagonistic to, social preferences is often thought to
be impossible in such an environment. It was not un-
til this highly mobilized and highly competitive elec-
toral democracy was significantly defused, [that] gov-
ernmental elites . . . [could] sustain support for the
kind of insulated institutional machinery needed to
develop a coherent regulatory posture.
21
By assuming that public opinion and electoral
coalitions established external barriers upon state
power, existing studies have established an unwritten
but alluring template for the study of policy reform.
First comes a social movement, then comes legisla-
tion . . . then comes rote administrative implementa-
tion.
22
As a result of this orientation, sweeping as-
sertions of the responsiveness of [government] . . . to
the popular will . . . now constitute the conventional
wisdom.
23
Instead of emphasizing the states auton-
omy from society, scholars increasingly focus on how
electoral coalitions and social groups influence state
formation and policy implementation.
Nor is there much to argue with in this view as long
as one assumes that the strength of public opinion and
state power are inversely related. Indeed, it is difficult
to see how state autonomy is possible when elected of-
ficials are subjected to competitive elections and the
pressure of public opinion.
24
In democratic societies,
the power of public opinion, operating through the
electoral mechanism and through politicians antici-
pations of this mechanism, often makes it hard to
distinguish the state from the citizens in whose name
its authority is being exercised.
25
As Richard T. Ely,
founder of the American Economic Association, not-
ed some time ago, in democratic societies, we assume
that the state is not something apart from us and out-
side us, but we ourselves.
26
In democratic societies, the state is generally be-
lieved to be capable of autonomous action only to the
extent that government is rendered less democratic
for example, through franchise restrictions, the indi-
rect election of state officials, or the creation of bu-
reaucracies isolated from popular demands. Given
the high levels of electoral participation and the re-
stricted size of the federal bureaucracy during the
nineteenth century, it is difficult to see how American
government could have operated independently of
electoral demands. Perhaps as a result, scholars often
attribute causal primacy to electoral outcomes, yet de-
vote comparatively less attention to documenting (as
opposed to assuming) what issues influenced voters,
or how political elites interpreted public opinion. As
a result, we cannot verify that the nineteenth-century
American state was responsive to public opinion.
Although voting restrictions and the creation of
unelected bureaucracies can insulate government
from popular pressures, the autonomy of democratic
120 SAMUEL DECANIO
18. Carpenter, Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy, 14; William
Nelson, The Roots of American Bureaucracy, 18301900 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
19. Carpenter, Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy, 367.
20. Bensel, Yankee Leviathan, 5; Huntington, Political Order,
129. Bensel rejects this position; the quote refers to the modern-
ization theorists whom he criticizes.
21. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Ex-
pansion of National Administrative Capacities, 18771920 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 136.
22. Daniel Carpenter, State Building through Reputation
Building: Coalitions of Esteem and Program Innovation in the Na-
tional Postal System, 18831913, Studies in American Political De-
velopment 14 (2000): 123.
23. Ronald Formisano, The Party Period Revisited, Journal
of American History 86 (1999): 94.
24. I am essentially defining society as being synonymous with
the electorate. Later, I will refer to business and financial groups,
which are not nominally parts of the state, as groups separate
from society (the electorate). For analytic purposes, I define the
state as that collectivity of individuals from whose decisions there
is no legitimate appeal. I avoid Webers classic definition as it both
highlights coercive features of the state that are deployed only in
exceptional instances, and because of Webers own recognition
that coercion is exercised to a considerable extent by the private
owners of the means of production and acquisition, to whom the
law guarantees their property and whose power can thus manifest
itself in the competitive struggle of the market (Max Weber, Econ-
omy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology [Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press], 730). If the private owners of capital can
coerce those dependent upon their investment decisions (as they
most certainly can), the conceptual distinction between state and
society is quickly blurred. This is not to minimize the fact that
much of what the nineteenth-century American state did was ac-
tually quite coercive. Rather it is merely to point out that there is
no clear conceptual differentiation between the coercion exert-
ed by the private owners of capital and coercion arising out of
public decisions which influenced the distribution of goods, ser-
vices, or property rights.
25. Gabriel Almond, The Return to the State, American Po-
litical Science Review 82 (1988): 855; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Eve-
lyne H. Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and
Democracy (Chicago: Chicago University Press). As Almond notes:
The tendency to abandon the state concept and re-
place it by other concepts was attributable to the
enormous political mobilization that took place in
the Western world in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries and the proliferation of new political insti-
tutions political parties, pressure groups, the mass
media, and the like that accompanied it. (ibid.,
855)
26. Richard T. Ely, An Introduction to Political Economy (New
York: Hunt and Eaton, 1894), 8588.
states may have less to do with their formal powers
than with elected officials ability to manipulate pub-
lic opinion. Indeed, if elected officials can success-
fully manipulate public opinion, or alternatively, if
they can fabricate the popular demands they are sup-
posed to be responding to, democracy might not nec-
essarily establish an external barrier to state power;
rather, it might function as a means of legitimating
the authority of an autonomous, yet formally demo-
cratic, elite. If, instead of forcing elected officials to
obey the dictates of public opinion, elections actual-
ly provide a forum for them to manipulate and man-
ufacture popular desires, democracy itself might allow
elected officials to pursue goals that are not simply
reflective of the demands or interests of social groups,
classes, or society.
27
If this view of state power is correct, nineteenth-
century Americas restricted federal bureaucracy and
high levels of voter turnout might offer little insight
on the autonomy of government during this peri-
od.
28
Paradoxically, both of these conditions could be
fully compatible with rule by state elites if their au-
tonomy is derived from the manipulation of public
opinion.
In the following section, I examine how elite ma-
nipulation of public opinion influenced popular con-
trol of one of the most contentious regulatory issues in
the decades following the Civil War, namely efforts to
resume the gold standard. After giving a brief overview
of financial regulation during this period, I discuss the
Specie Resumption Act, the legislation ultimately re-
sponsible for returning America to the gold standard
and ending popular hopes of greenback inflation. I
then use the 1875 Ohio gubernatorial campaign as a
case study to demonstrate how elites manipulated pub-
lic opinion to free themselves from popular control.
29
Finally, I trace the effects of this election upon the sub-
sequent presidential contest of 1876.
Drawing from letters written by elected politicians,
bureaucratic officials, and party cadres struggling for
state power and control of the legislative agenda, I
specifically focus on individuals responsible for fi-
nance policy, such as Senator John Sherman, and
those in charge of the Ohio campaign, most notably
Rutherford Hayes and the incumbent Democratic
governor, William Allen. I also use letters from local
party officials and politicians who were either moni-
toring or taking part in the election, such as Manton
Marble and Samuel Tilden. These epistolary sources
reveal what policies political elites thought the public
wanted; what messages politicians thought were per-
suasive to the public; and why, in the view of contem-
porary observers, the Republicans ultimately carried
the state.
30
II. FINANCE POLICY IN THE POSTBELLUM PERIOD
The course of American state formation was deeply
influenced by the Civil War. Although secession was
crushed by force of arms, the conflicts unprecedent-
ed expenses forced the federal government to em-
ploy credit instruments that would set the terms of
political conflict for the next four decades. The gov-
ernment used three primary strategies to finance the
war. First, it reorganized the heterogeneous state
banks to create a national banking system.
31
Second,
27. Skocpol, Bringing the State Back in, 9; Huntington, Po-
litical Order, 2021; James Mar. and Johan Olsen, The New Insti-
tutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life, American Po-
litical Science Review 78 (1984): 73489. It is tempting to conclude
that the collapse of the entire state theory agenda, which ap-
peared poised to dominate the field of political science in the
1980s, can ultimately be traced to state theorists inability to demon-
strate how democratic states achieve autonomy from the societies
they govern. This shortcoming has lead some to conclude that
no one has confirmed empirically the existence of
political or social characteristics that allow govern-
ments to act autonomously. . . . As a result analyses
tend to focus more on the policy outcomes them-
selves rather than on the state structure that is hy-
pothesized to produce the outcome. (Barbara Ged-
des, Politicians Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin
America [Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994], 56)
As a result, most state-centered studies assume that the effective-
ness of public officials . . . and thus their autonomy, very much
hinges upon the states internal features (Nordlinger, Taking the
State Seriously, 360). Given such assumptions, existing studies ig-
nore the possibility that social divisions or variables, such as the ig-
norance of public opinion, can, in certain situations, grant the
state autonomy from social constraint.
28. By focusing on the role of information, the diffusion of
ideological belief systems, and the disjunctures between the ideas
and information held by voters and elected officials, this approach
deviates from both instrumental and structural Marxist approach-
es to examining state autonomy. Both approaches ultimately col-
lapse into functionalist theorizing that do not meaningfully devi-
ate from socially reductionist accounts of policy implementation.
See Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic
Books, 1969); Nicos Poulantzas, The Problem of the Capitalist
State, New Left Review 58 (1970): 6778; Nicos Poulantzas, Political
Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973); Nicos
Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1978).
The most compelling critique of the structuralist position is Axel
Van den Berg, The Immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the State to the
State of Marxism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
29. It should be noted that although currency inflation fig-
ured prominently in the election under examination, monetary
policy could in no way be controlled by a governor. Although some
might conclude that this illustrates the importance of economic is-
sues during the period in question, an assertion which I would not
necessarily challenge, this may actually underline the general sym-
bolic nature of such elections.
30. See Lee Benson, Toward the Scientific Study of History, Select-
ed Essays of Lee Benson (New York: J.B. Lippincott Publishing, 1972):
13637. I examined both incoming and outgoing correspondence
between a number of officials during the period immediately sur-
rounding the Specie Resumption Act, the Ohio election, and the
presidential conventions in 1876. Newspapers analyzed were lo-
cated through newspaperarchive.com, a searchable, online data-
base of historic newspapers. I conducted keyword and subject
searches specifically focused on the Ohio election.
31. For the national banking system, see David Gische, The
New York City Banks and the Development of the National Bank-
ing System, 18601870, American Journal of Legal History 23:
(1979), 2167; Bensel, Yankee Leviathan, chap. 4.
the Department of the Treasury created a class of fi-
nanciers, including businessmen such as Jay Cooke,
to market war bonds.
32
Finally, the government issued
paper currency (greenbacks) that was not backed by
gold.
33
Although the greenbacks total volume was fixed by
legislation, Republican politicians and Treasury sec-
retaries began efforts to contract their volume im-
mediately after the wars end, which was considered a
necessary step toward resuming the gold standard.
This contraction to achieve specie resumption, in
fact, became a central plank of the Republican plat-
form.
34
Although specie resumption initially enjoyed bi-
partisan support, Democrats became increasingly
hostile to the currency contraction that went with it.
35
Public opposition to contraction spread after 1867,
when Ohio Democrats introduced the Ohio Idea,
also known as the Pendleton Plan, after Ohio De-
mocrat George Pendleton, who endorsed paying the
war debt in depreciated greenbacks instead of gold.
36
Although eastern financiers and national banks were
subjected to considerable popular invective, manipu-
lating the volume of greenbacks circulating in the na-
tional economy became the most contentious aspect
of postwar fiscal policy.
Popular opposition to contraction eventually
spread to include rural agrarians, labor groups, and
elements of the business and financial commun-
ities. Midwestern businessmen, manufacturers, and
bankers; Pennsylvania iron interests; and some East-
ern bankers, among others, came to support infla-
tion.
37
Republican congressmen, presidents, and
Treasury officials were regularly attacked by newspa-
pers, finance journals, businessmen, and most omi-
nously, by voters in their districts whenever they at-
tempted to contract the volume of greenbacks.
Price deflation and the resumption of specie pay-
ments were never popular, a fact admitted by the
elites who supported specie payments.
38
Many were
subsequently convinced that the public believed the
best cure for depression was printing more money. It
seemed that everybody wants more money as they al-
ways do and a great many are convinced that if more
government notes were lying around loose they
would have a fair chance in the scramble to get a
share.
39
In the agrarian Midwest, Republican fi-
122 SAMUEL DECANIO
32. Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Na-
tionalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 2002), chap. 2; Ellis Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke Financier of the
Civil War (New York: Sentry Press, 1907).
33. For studies of financial policies during this period, see Ir-
win Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of Ameri-
can Finance, 18651879 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1964); Robert Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party An Economic Study of
Civil War and Reconstruction (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press,
1959); Bensel, Yankee Leviathan, chaps. 45; Heather Cox Richard-
son, The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Polices Dur-
ing the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997);
Richard Timberlake, Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellec-
tual and Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993); Allen Weinstein, Prelude to Populism: Origins of the Silver Issue,
18671878 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press); Laurence
Laughlin, The History of Bimetallism in the United States (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1968); Walter Nugent, The Money Question Dur-
ing Reconstruction (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1967); Wal-
ter Nugent, Money and American Society 18651880 (New York: Free
Press, 1968); Wesley Clair Mitchell, A History of the Greenbacks with
Special Reference to the Economic Consequences of their Issue: 186265
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903); Bray Hammond, Sov-
ereignty and an Empty Purse: Banks and Politics in the Civil War (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); Don Carlos Barrett, The
Greenbacks and Resumption of Specie Payments, 18621879 (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931).
34. For a general overview of Republican economic programs,
see Charles Calhoun, Political Economy in the Gilded Era: The
Republican Partys Industrial Policy, Journal of Policy History 8
(1996): 291309.
35. Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party, chap. 2.
36. Washington McLean, editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer,
popularized the idea of paying the war debt in depreciated green-
backs as part of his effort to catapult his faction of Ohio Democrats
back into national politics. McLean was originally an ardent hard-
money Jacksonian Democrat, as was George Pendleton. Pendle-
ton subsequently endorsed McLeans idea, coopting the issue from
this competing faction of Ohio Democrats. See Chester McArthur
Destler, American Radicalism, 18651901: Essays and Documents
(New London: Connecticut College, 1946), chaps. 23; Max Ship-
ley, The Background and Legal Aspects of the Pendleton Plan,
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 24 (1937): 32940.
37. Irwin Unger, Greenback Era, chaps. 23; Bensel, Yankee
Leviathan, 297; David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the
Radical Republicans, 18621872 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967).
Stanley Coben, Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruc-
tion: A Re-examination, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 46
(1959): 7884; Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party.
38. Popular opposition to specie resumption, especially in the
Midwest, has been well documented in several studies. The most
comprehensive treatment is Irwin Ungers magisterial Greenback
Era, chaps. 23. See also Max L. Shipley, The Background and Le-
gal Aspects of the Pendleton Plan, Mississippi Valley Historical Review
24 (1937): 329340; Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party, 8591; Bensel,
Yankee Leviathan, 254, 266, 27580; William G. Carlton, The Mon-
ey Question in Indiana Politics 18651889, Indiana Magazine of
History 42 (1946): 10750, William G. Carlton, Why Was the Dem-
ocratic Party in Indiana a Radical Party, 18651890?, Indiana Mag-
azine of History 42 (1946): 20528; J. Cooke to H.D. Cooke, Phila-
delphia PA, 19 Sept. 1867; J. Cooke to H. Cooke, Philadelphia PA,
20 Sept. 1867, Jay Cooke Papers, Pennsylvania Historical Society
(cited hereafter as Cooke Papers); Edward Atkinson to Hugh Mc-
Culloch, Boston MA, 7 Nov. 1867, Hugh McCulloch Papers, Library
of Congress (cited hereafter as McCulloch Papers); G. Rathbore to
H. McCulloch, 11 Dec. 1867, McCulloch Papers; A. Denny to J.
Sherman, Eaton, OH, 14 Oct. 1867, John Sherman Papers, Library
of Congress (cited hereafter as Sherman Papers); C. Davenport to
J. Sherman, Barnesvill, OH, 15 Oct. 1867, Sherman Papers; A. Den-
ny to B. Wade, Eaton, OH, July 1867; E. Ward to B. Wade, Detroit,
MI, 13 Oct. 1867, Benjamin Wade Papers, Library of Congress.
39. R.M. Kelly to B. Bristow, Louisville, KY, 1874, Benjamin
Bristow Papers, Library of Congress (cited hereafter as Bristow Pa-
pers). Along similar lines, one Democratic Ohio newspaper asked
voters:
You remember a year or two ago when money was
more abundant you had good times in comparison
to what they are now. Did you then think you had too
much money? Well, in order that the Government
might take care of the RICH and the rich take care
of the Poor, the Republican leaders called in, or took
out of circulation, millions of dollars of paper cur-
rency, and that is the reason money is so scarce, times
nancial polices became so unpopular that they
threatened to return the Democrats to power, or
splinter Midwestern Republicans from their Eastern
brethren, the former promoting greenback inflation,
the latter specie resumption and the gold standard.
40
Republican efforts to resume specie payments ac-
celerated following Democratic victories in the 1874
midterm elections, which were widely interpreted as
a mandate supporting inflation.
41
Although the Re-
publicans still narrowly controlled the Senate, the
election had reversed the Republican majority in the
House, giving the Democrats a sixty-seat majority.
When the lame-duck Republicans convened in De-
cember 1874, they worried that the incoming Demo-
cratic majority would implement inflationary legisla-
tion, moving the country further from reinstating the
gold standard.
42
Nor were such fears misplaced. Public opposition
to greenback contraction had been apparent to Re-
publicans and Treasury secretaries ever since the
Ohio Democrats had conceptually linked financial
crises to their contraction.
43
The first postwar Trea-
sury Secretary, Hugh McCulloch, readily admitted
that the policy of retiring the United States notes,
even when they were at a heavy discount, was never
popular with the masses.
44
As early as 1869, Sherman
had echoed McCullochs comments, remarking to an
associate: I like your object, specie payments, but the
real difficulty is that the great body of the people dont
want specie payments.
45
Sherman, who was to have
significant influence on financial and regulatory is-
sues in the coming decades, was convinced nonethe-
less that, although the process is a very hard one, and
will endanger the popularity of any man or adminis-
tration that is compelled to adopt it . . . specie pay-
ments must be resumed.
46
The Democrats resurgence in the 1874 midterm
election merely reinforced Shermans realization
that a large portion and perhaps a majority of our
people [demand] more paper money, a view echoed
by other congressmen who recognized that a large
number of more than ordinary able men really be-
lieve in cutting loose altogether from a gold stan-
dard.
47
Specie resumptions unpopularity was ap-
parent to hard-money Democrats as well. Manton
Marble, editor of the New York World, complained
that,
the hindrances in the way of currency reform
are . . . the ignorance of the people which will
be long in enlightening, shared by the . . . ig-
norance of politicians who are rarely willing to
run counter to popular . . . opinions.
48
Likewise, inflationary Democrats were convinced
that,
90 out of every 100 voters in the United States
favor the greenback policy [of inflation], and
if we could get that question submitted to
them, pure and simple, it would carry the
whole country New York and New England in-
cluded.
49
The unpopularity of specie resumption was appar-
ent to economic elites as well. H.D. Cooke, brother of
and lobbyist for railroad tycoon Jay Cooke, noted that
it would take considerable agitation by hard-money
newspapers to counteract inflationary public senti-
ment.
50
Business groups such as the New York Com-
mittee of Commerce, which supported the Resump-
tion Act, dourly noted that the popular will has been
opposed to congressional action in the direction [of
specie resumption].
51
Reflecting on both the inflationary measures pro-
posed in the prior congressional session and the gen-
eral tenor of public opinion, Republican Treasury
Secretary Benjamin Bristow decried the undefined
and incoherent desire for some sort of change . . . the
chief . . . [result of which] is that the party in power
will always be held responsible for hard times.
52
so hard, prices so low and you are so hard pressed to
get bread for yourselves and your families. (Defiance
Democrat, Sept. 30, 1875)
40. Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party, 9297; Unger, Greenback
Era, 23344; Sanders, Roots of Reform, 10116.
41. Unger, Greenback Era, 250; Irwin Unger, The Business
Community and the Origins of the 1875 Resumption Act, Business
History Review 35 (1961): 252; Keith Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia:
The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 71; Clifford H. Moore,
Ohio in National Politics, 18651986, Ohio Archaeological and His-
torical Publications 37 (1928): 294.
42. John Sherman, John Shermans Recollections of Forty Years in
the House, Senate and Cabinet (Chicago: Werner Company, 1896),
434; James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to
Garfield. With a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolu-
tion of 1860 (Norwich: Henry Bill Publishing Company, 1886), 563,
565.
43. Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party, 86.
44. Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century (New
York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1889), 213.
45. This quote is in A.B. Nettleton to J. Cooke, Chicago, IL, 4
Sept. 1869, Cooke Papers.
46. J. Sherman to W.T. Sherman, St. Louis, MO., 20 Dec. 1868,
in The Sherman Letters Correspondence between General and Senator Sher-
man From 1837 to 1891, ed. Rachel S. Thorndike (New York: Scrib-
ners Sons, 1894); J. Sherman to J.W. Ellis, Washington DC, 10 June
1877, Sherman Papers.
47. Sherman, Recollections, 426; Garfield Diary, 10 Apr. 1874,
Nov. 9, 1875, James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress (cited
hereafter as Garfield Papers).
48. Manton Marble to unk., [?] Aug. 1875, Manton Marble Pa-
pers, Library of Congress (cited hereafter as Marble Papers).
49. James Buchanan to T. Ewing, Indianapolis, IN, June 29,
1875, Ewing Family Papers, Library of Congress (cited herafter as
Ewing Family Papers).
50. A.B. Nettleton to J. Cooke, Chicago, IL, 4 Sept. 1869, J.
Cooke Papers.
51. Report of the Special Committee, New York Chamber of
Commerce, 28 Nov. 1873, in Annual Report of the Corporation of the
Corporation of the Chamber of Commerce, of the State of New-York, for the
Year 187374, 8788.
52. B. Bristow to J. Sherman, Washington DC, 27 Aug. 1875,
B. Bristow to Horace Maynard, Washington DC, 25 Sept. 1875, Bris-
Even while claiming the election gave no mandate to
any specific financial policy, Bristows annual report
admitted that the opinions entertained and ex-
pressed by public men and communities of peo-
ple . . . must be accepted as one of the factors of the
financial problem.
53
The volume of circulating cur-
rency had become controlled by the legislative will
and . . . party exigencies, a condition he found ob-
jectionable in the highest degree.
54
Bristows annual report recommended immediate
steps toward resumption, including repealing the le-
gal tender status of the greenbacks, funding the
greenbacks through a long-term bond, and redeem-
ing fractional greenbacks with silver coinage.
55
In the
House, Bristows report was denounced by William
Pig Iron Kelly and Benjamin Butler, who exhibited
their inflation doctrines in full blast, and who were
in turn denounced by hard-money advocates James
Garfield and Henry Dawes.
56
The Republican Party
had degenerated into hopeless division on the ques-
tion of the currency, and it was becoming doubtful
that the Republicans would be able to field a unified
ticket in the approaching presidential contest.
57
In the midst of a deteriorating political situation,
and deeply concerned that the incoming Democrat-
ic majority would implement inflationary legislation,
it was essential for the Republicans to take steps to-
ward resumption. In December 1874, several Repub-
licans in Congress began drafting a resumption mea-
sure out of committee and away from the glare of
publicity not surprising, given the evidence of
widespread social opposition.
58
Their bill, the Specie
Resumption Act, granted the Treasury secretary the
authority to issue bonds in order to accumulate the
gold reserve, and to coin recently demonetized silver
currency, to retire fractional greenbacks, and re-
sume specie payments by January 1 1879.
59
Given public opposition to resumption, one might
conclude that the Republican Partys passage of the
Specie Resumption Act reflected the demands of
those powerful economic groups that endorsed the
gold standard.
60
Since a considerable number of east-
ern financiers opposed inflation, this suggestion is, at
first glance, plausible. However, there is little evi-
dence that economic elites were responsible for, or
even aware of, the measures introduction.
61
In the weeks prior to the measures introduction,
eastern financial journals that supported resump-
tion, such as the Financier and the Commercial and Fi-
nancial Chronicle, had pleaded that,
if there is one thing more than another which
industrial growth and banking prosperity
wants and must have, it is stability and quiet. In
illustration of this, we hear on every side the
wish expressed that Congress would stop legis-
lating on the currency.
62
Given the magnitude of the Republicans 1874 de-
feat, many predicted that there will be no rash legis-
lation either as to the contraction of the currency or
for the disturbance of business by any crude financial
experiments.
63
The absence of business and financial support for
the Resumption Act became apparent the moment
the measure was introduced in the Senate. Many
senators complained that the Republican caucus re-
sponsible for the measure had not involved the busi-
ness community in their deliberations. Adlai Steven-
son (D-IL) demanded the bill be delayed so he could
have an opportunity of knowing what the business
sentiment of the country is upon the great subject of
the finances of the country, and claimed it was
doubtful whether the business men of the country in
the great centers of this wide domain can themselves
tell what its precise operation will be.
64
Similarly, Thomas Bayard (D-DE) urged delay in
order to give an opportunity . . . [for] the intelligent
business sense of the country [to] learn what the pro-
124 SAMUEL DECANIO
tow Papers. The Republican defeat in 1874 was probably driven by
voters negative sociotropic evaluations of national economic
performance. See Donald Kinder and Roderick Kiewiet, Eco-
nomic Discontent and Political Behavior: The Role of Personal
Grievances and Collective Economic Judgments in Congressional
Voting, American Journal of Political Science 23 (1979): 495527;
Donald Kinder and Roderick Kiewiet, Sociotropic Politics: The
American Case, British Journal of Political Science 11 (1981): 129
61.
53. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1874, 11.
54. Ibid., 12.
55. Ibid., 1416, 22.
56. Garfield Diary, 8 Dec. 1874, Garfield Papers; Unger, Green-
back Era, 252.
57. Garfield Diary, 8 Dec. 1874, Garfield Papers; Sherman,
Recollections, 509.
58. As early as 12 December, Garfield reported having a long
interview with Secretary Bristow in reference to a bill for specie
payments (Garfield Diary, 12 Dec. 1874, Garfield Papers).
59. Fractional greenbacks were small denomination green-
back notes. For discussions of the Specie Resumption Act see We-
instein, Prelude to Populism, 4148. Unger, Greenback Era, 24960.
Although the Resumption Act included a free-banking clause at
the insistence of John Logan of Illinois, presumably to placate his
inflationary constituents, those close to the proceedings dismissed
the clauses relevance noting that the amendment in the Sixth
Section, making free banking after 6 mos. from the passage of the
act is in deference to a supposed popular wish, harmless, and . . .
is expedient (B.T. Nourse to B. Bristow, Washington DC, 15 Dec.
1874, Bristow Papers).
60. See generally, Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of Ameri-
can Civilization (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927); Howard Beale,
The Critical Year, 1866: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1930).
61. Unger, Business Community, 24762.
62. Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 20 June 1874.
63. Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 7 Nov. 1874.
64. Congressional Record, 43rd Cong., 2 Sess., 1875, 187. Steven-
son indicated that the business community remained divided in
their financial views since the long debate that we had last year
shows how business men differ in regard to what the exact needs
of the country are in relation to a system of finance, and com-
plained that he could not vote now knowingly on this bill; and if
you were to force me to vote to-day I should not exactly know how
to vote. I have not had time either to consider it or to know its
probable operation (ibid.).
posed measure is, and not only to learn what it is, but
make some accommodation of their affairs to the re-
sult.
65
Others claimed that the public could neither
be aware of the bill, nor expected to understand it,
given its sudden appearance and the lack of congres-
sional debate.
66
Requests for delay and deliberation
were ineffective, however, and, under Shermans
guidance, the bill was submitted for a roll-call vote
hours after its introduction. The Resumption Act
passed along straight party lines in the Senate, and,
after an abrupt period of contention, passed the
House.
Given that the Resumption Acts harshest critics
were the conservative financial groups who endorsed
resumption, the measure was hardly drafted by east-
ern financial elites, many of whom objected to the
power the act granted the Treasury department. In al-
lowing the Treasury secretary to issue loans and con-
tract the money supply at his discretion, many fi-
nanciers worried the measure centralized too much
power in the hands of a single executive officer. In-
deed, in the eyes of conservative financiers, the bill
conferred upon the secretary dangerous and unlim-
ited powers [that] are too complicated and too risky
to be dealt with by vague legislation, or to be confid-
ed by Congress to one man.
67
Such business oppo-
sition was all too apparent to Sherman, who freely
recognized that the resumption act was generally re-
ceived with disfavor by those who wished the imme-
diate resumption of specie payments.
68
Commenting on the heavy-handed legislative tac-
tics used to pass the measure, the New York Times de-
risively observed that the humor of this transaction
deserves to be fully appreciated.
69
Other conserva-
tive financial papers also greeted the measure with
disdain, claiming the act was responsible for inflicting
upon bankers,
losses, which are estimated at 10 millions of
dollars . . . We are assured by leading bankers
and financiers of . . . [New York City] that the
effect of the Congressional determination to
interfere with the currency is checking enter-
prise, that it is causing failures in various
ways.
70
Openly contemptuous of the new legislation,
hard-money businessmen complained bitterly that
the Resumption Act stands alone in the financial leg-
islation of this country as an expedient which popu-
lar opinion has neither demanded nor accepted as
final.
71
It is precisely those eastern financiers sup-
porting resumption who complained that Congress
is entirely disregarded by the business community in
its calculations.
72
Given the publics opposition to
the act, and the condemnation it received from those
economic groups who supported resumption, the Re-
sumption Act appears to have been the the product
of distinctly political forces.
73
Under pressure to
provide a unified Republican financial position prior
to the 1876 presidential nominations, the Republican
Party had drafted a measure that was at heart politi-
cal in origin, as isolated from public opinion as any
political event can be where universal male suffrage
prevails.
74
III. THE OHIO GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION OF 1875
Immediately following the Resumption Acts passage,
many Republicans worried that their financial poli-
cies guaranteed defeat in the approaching guberna-
torial contests, especially in agrarian states such as
Ohio and Pennsylvania. Although the unpopularity
of specie payments was widespread, it perpetually
threatened to turn the Republicans from power in
the Midwest. Ohios 1875 gubernatorial contest was
exactly the sort of election Republicans feared. Oc-
curring immediately after the Resumption Acts pas-
sage, and against a backdrop of a deteriorating econ-
omy, the Ohio election threatened to solidify the
gains the Democrats secured in the 1874 Congres-
sional elections.
The Ohio election was seen as crucial because gu-
bernatorial elections were used as barometers for
public opinion, and thus had considerable influence
over approaching presidential nominations. The Re-
publicans were anxiously awaiting the results of the
Ohio contest to determine whether a hard-money
presidential nominee would be possible in 1876.
75
Similarly, Democrats looked to the gubernatorial
contests in the Midwest to determine whether the
western inflationist or eastern hard-money faction
would prevail to select the presidential candidate for
1876.
Ohio Republicans initially vacillated between nom-
inating Alfonso Taft and Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes
initially refused the nomination out of deference to
Tafts candidacy, and due to serious doubts regarding
the Republicans prospects.
76
However, Taft was ulti-
mately rejected due to his role in the Cincinnati
65. Ibid., 188.
66. Ibid., 204.
67. Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1875.
68. Sherman, Recollections, 433.
69. Clipping in George McCartee to B. Bristow, 9 Dec. 1874,
Bristow Papers.
70. Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 26 Dec. 1874.
71. Unger, Business Community, 248; Commercial and Finan-
cial Chronicle, 2 Jan. 1875.
72. Financier 8 (27 Nov. 1875), 35859, cited in Unger, Busi-
ness Community, 261.
73. Ibid., 248.
74. Unger, Greenback Era, 255.
75. Ibid., 275; J. Smith to J. Sherman, Ashland OH, 6 Aug.
1875, Sherman Papers; William Sweet to R. Hayes, Washington DC,
25 June 1875, Rutherford B. Hayes Papers, Hayes Memorial Li-
brary, Fremont, OH (cited hereafter as Hayes Papers).
76. Hayes Diary, 18 Apr. 1875, in Diary and Letters of Rutherford
Birchard Hayes, Nineteenth President of the United States. Volume III
18651881, ed. Charles Williams (Columbus: Ohio State Archaeo-
logical and Historical Society, 1924).
Bible war, in which, as a state Supreme Court Jus-
tice, he ruled in favor of removing the Bible from
public schools. Hayes reported that Tafts record on
the Bible question in the schools . . . [made] his nom-
ination . . . impossible.
77
Given the Republicans
plan to focus the campaign on religious issues, Taft
was clearly the wrong candidate for the Republican
Party.
78
Despite his initial reluctance to enter the contest,
Hayes agreed to run, realizing that victory in Ohio
would practically assure him of the presidential nom-
ination in 1876.
79
However, even after entering the
race, Hayes remained concerned that economic is-
sues would generate votes for the Democrats. He con-
fessed that the Democrats scheme for inflating our
irredeemable paper currency is bad enough; but
there are debtors and speculators in large numbers in
Ohio who want it. They are not all Democrats. We
shall lose some votes on this question.
80
He com-
plained that, in parts of Ohio, the tariff and finances
are controlling subjects.
81
Yet despite recognizing
the unpopularity of the partys currency position,
Hayes refused to alter his support for resumption,
noting: at any rate, we are right.
82
Republicans quickly recognized that the Ohio con-
test had importance beyond the selection of Ohios
next governor. Treasury Secretary Bristow worried:
I dont know what is to become of us if old
[William Allen] is re-elected. I have not much
faith in the good sense of the people, and I
believe that the election of some Copperhead
as President would be almost sure to follow.
83
Given the importance of the contest, the Ohio elec-
tion became the most closely watched state contest
since the Lincoln-Douglas campaign of 1858.
84
Rec-
ognizing its importance, Republicans were soon not-
ing that everything turned on Ohio.
85
A victory for
the Democrats would extend popular demands for in-
flation and strengthen the odds for inflationary pres-
idential candidates, while a Republican victory would
solidify support for the Resumption Act and hard-
money presidential nominees.
For the Republicans, initial indications were dis-
couraging.
86
Across the Midwest, it appeared that
the whole people are opposed to the infamous
Sherman resumption bill, and members of the busi-
ness community worried that specie resumption
would be ruinous to all industries and cannot be car-
ried out.
87
One Republican newspaper critically ob-
126 SAMUEL DECANIO
77. Diary, 31 May 1875, in Diary and Letters of Rutherford Bir-
chard Hayes.
78. Ward McAfee, Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The Public
School in the Politics of the 1870s (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1998), 178.
79. G.E. Howe to R. Hayes, Lancaster, OH, 13 May 1875; W.
Knapp to R. Hayes, Massillon, OH, 25 May 1875; Isaac Newton to
R. Hayes, Renton, OH, 27 May 1875, Hayes Papers.
80. R. Hayes to J. Garfield, Fremont OH, 28 June 1875, in Di-
ary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes. Democrats echoed this
conclusion noting that a portion of the Germans and a few oth-
ers, complain of the financial plank in the platform, but with the
masses it has positive strength (G.W. Morgan to W. Allen, 4 July
1875, Cleveland, OH, William Allen Papers, Library of Congress
[cited hereafter as Allen Papers]). It is worth noting that the
groups that most concerned Republicans debtors, farmers, min-
ers, and laborers working in manufacturing industries are pre-
cisely those that state-centered political economists claim voted on
economic issues and divisions. It is important to recognize that
these groups were clearly influenced by economic considerations
and were opposed to the Republicans financial policies specifi-
cally on economic grounds.
81. R. Hayes to J. Sherman, Fremont, Ohio, 29 June 1875, in
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes.
82. R. Hayes to J. Sherman, Fremont Ohio, 5 July 1875, in ibid.
Hayes hardly endorsed the wisdom of public opinion. Comment-
ing on elected officials positions on public schooling, Hayes not-
ed:
I recognize fully the evil of rule by ignorance. I see
enough of it under my own eyes. You are not so much
worse off in this respect than New York, Chicago, and
other cities having a large uneducated population.
But the remedy is not, I am sure, to be found in the
abandonment of the American principle that all
must share in government. The whites of the South
must do as we do, forget to drive and learn to lead
the ignorant masses around them. (Ibid., 263)
Elsewhere, Hayes noted in his diary that Winthrop says something
like this: Each one of us is engaged in the formation of public opin-
ion. Each of us is in some degree responsible for its course and
character. Opportunity, powers, and employment of them
(Hayes Diary, 21 Apr. 1878, ibid.). Hayess recognition of the ig-
norance of public opinion actually led him to restrain certain Re-
publican bureaucratic appointees from participating in election
contests. This was an effort to prevent elite domination of the pol-
icy process, and to ensure that office holders shall not run the peo-
ple, but allow political ideas and movements to spring from the
people instead of from those in office (see J. Sherman to S.
Arnold, Washington DC, 14 June 1877, Sherman Papers).
83. W. Knapp to R. Hayes, Massillon, OH, 25 May 1875, Hayes
Papers.
84. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution
18631877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 557; Unger, Green-
back Era, 275; William A. Clonts, The Political Campaign of 1875
in Ohio, Ohio Archeological and Historical Society Publications 31
(1922): 3897; C.E. Henry to J.A. Garfield, 21 Dec. 1874, Pond,
OH, in Politics and Patronage in the Gilded Age; the Correspondence of
James A. Garfield and Charles E. Henry, ed. James D. Norris and
Arthur H. Shaffer (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
1970).
85. Ross Web, Benjamin Helm Bristow, Border State Politician
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969), 186.
86. Economic conditions had deteriorated in Ohio, with de-
clining wage levels exceeding the general declines in the price lev-
el. Additionally, between 1873 and 1878, half of Ohios blast fur-
naces closed. Wage declines, over 33 percent in some instances,
combined with the return of wage payments in company script, in-
creased economic pressures on workers in iron and steel manu-
facturing. From 1873 to 1875 there was a 20 percent decline in the
wages of common laborers, and a 19 percent decline in the wages
of blacksmiths employed in iron industries. These statistics were
compiled from the United States Census Bureau of the Census, Tenth
Census of the United States: 1880, Report on the Statistics of Wages in
Manufacturing Industries, 12122, 131. Wage rates were computed
from the Struthers Iron Company, the Himrod Furnace Company,
and the Hecla Iron and Mining Company in Struthers, Youngs-
town, and Ironton respectively. See Clonts, Political Campaign of
1875, 4146; Reginald McGrane, Ohio and the Greenback Move-
ment, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 11 (1925): 532.
87. Peter T. Luther to John Stoll, 10 Nov. 1875, John Stoll Pa-
served: We do not understand . . . [how] the Re-
publican party of Ohio was foolish and impolite
enough. . . . to place itself in antagonism to the in-
terests of nine-tenths of the business men of Ohio and
the West.
88
Sherman became convinced that although the Re-
sumption Act would be the primary issue in the
election, the people were not quite prepared for
any measure looking to resumption.
89
Even the
strongest proponents of resumption recognized that
for the majority of the people of the Great West
. . . inflation has no terrors for the people.
90
Mean-
while, Democrats attacked the Republicans for be-
ing beholden to banks . . . gold worshippers and
usurers.
91
It was time for the Democracy of . . .
[Ohio] to hoist the banner of the people and sound
the key note for the campaign of 1876. Given the
popularity of the inflationary policies, in both Penn-
sylvania and Ohio strong and influential Republi-
cans . . . looked upon the financial plank adopted by
their party as a fraud.
92
Economic conditions conspired against the Re-
publicans as well. Many worried that the great de-
struction of the crops and the . . . hard times which
are ahead of us will lose us a great many voters.
93
Public opinion seemed arrayed against contraction,
and many complained that it appeared hard for men
who are in debt to learn in reference to a public ques-
tion except as they suppose it will affect them in their
own business.
94
Democrats reported being sur-
prised to find leading Republicans engaged in the
iron business who pronounced in favor of our plat-
form and ticket.
95
Other observers concluded that
[Governor] Allen may be elected in consequence of
the hard times with the miners.
96
The combination of economic hardship and un-
popular Republican financial policies combined to
prompt large defections among Republican con-
stituencies. Rutherford Hayes wrote of the people
carried off by the cry of hard times to be relieved by
inflation.
97
In certain areas along the lines of Rail
Roads among the working men, there seems to be a
settled determination to vote against [the Republi-
cans].
98
Concerned Republicans reported that the
condition of the laboring men and businesses in the
large manufacturing districts is fearful and will have
more influence at the ballot box than everything else
combined.
99
After their initial optimism regarding the election,
Democrats became concerned once Republicans
started drawing attention to a bill enacted by the most
recent Democratic state legislature. The Geghan Bill,
drafted and named after a Catholic tobacconist who
dabbled in politics, had been endorsed by the infla-
tionist Catholic Democrat Thomas Ewing.
100
The ap-
parently innocuous bill allowed Catholic priests to of-
fer religious services in Ohio jails and asylums, and
even prominent Republicans had readily admitted
that as passed . . . the Geghan law . . . is harm-
less.
101
However, Republicans found a way to use the
act in the campaign by claiming it was the opening
move in a Catholic gambit to secure control over the
public school system and force Catholicism onto
Ohios children. In this way, they hoped to mobilize
public opinion away from economic issues.
102
In an effort to mobilize religious animus, and
hence minimize the effect of economic concerns,
Hayes and other Republicans began claiming that the
Geghan Bill called for diversion of public funds to
support Catholic religious instruction in Ohios pub-
lic school system. Following his nomination, Hayes
noted in his diary that he would pursue an electoral
strategy focused on the claim that,
a division of the school fund is agitated and de-
manded by the same power and upon the same
grounds, by which and on which the passage of
the Geghan Bill was demanded . . . I think the
interesting point is to rebuke the Democracy by a
defeat for subserviency to Roman Catholic de-
mands.
103
Republican assertions that the Geghan Bill would
influence the public schools was an interpretive fic-
tion the bill did not deal with Ohios school system
at all, being strictly limited to religious instruction in
pers, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis; A. Warner to T. Ewing,
Marrietta, OH, 22 Aug. 1875, Ewing Family Papers, Library of Con-
gress.
88. The Ohio Democrat, 19 Aug. 1875.
89. Sherman, Recollections, 435.
90. A.L. Gilstrap to Carl Schurz, Macon, MO, 1874, Carl
Schurz Papers, Library of Congress.
91. A. Campbell to T. Ewing, La Salle, June 14, 1875, Ewing
Family Papers, Library of Congress.
92. Ibid.
93. J. Smith to J. Sherman, Ashland, OH, 6 Aug. 1875, Sher-
man Papers.
94. Ibid.
95. G.W. Morgan to W. Allen, Cleveland, OH, 4 July 1875,
Allen Papers.
96. C.W. Woolley to Manton Marble, Kellys Island, OH, 1
Sept. 1875, Marble Papers.
97. Hayes to Wikoff, Youngstown, OH, 20 Sept. 1875, Hayes
Letters.
98. H. Rawson to R.B. Hayes, Heartland, OH, 5 Sept. 1875,
Hayes Papers.
99. H.S. Bundy to R. Hayes, Wellstow, OH, 2 June 1875, Hayes
Papers.
100. See T. Ewing to Hon Senator Reese, Lancaster, OH, 22
Mar. 1875; T. Ewing to Gen. Charles [?], Lancaster, OH, 21 Mar.
1875; Ewing Family Papers, Library of Congress. I am grateful for
James Gutowski for helpful suggestions regarding Geghan.
101. R.M. Stimson to R. Hayes, Marietta, OH, 14 June 1875,
Hayes Papers. The Steubenville Daily Herald & News noted that
there has been less fault found with the famous Geghan bill it-
self . . . than the means which were used to secure its enactment
into a law. Letters were printed demonstrating that Catholics were
demanding the Democrats pass the bill; see, for example,
Steubenville Daily Herald & News, 14 June 1875.
102. Daniel Porter, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, Ohio His-
tory 77 (1968): 71.
103. Hayes Diary, 4 June, in Diary and Letters of Rutherford Bir-
chard Hayes.
the penal system and public asylums. The accuracy of
Hayess interpretation, however, was irrelevant eco-
nomic recession and the unpopular Specie Resump-
tion Act set the tone for the Ohio election. In this con-
text, the Geghan Bill was a godsend:
The Republicans needed a non-economic is-
sue to overcome the Democrats popular ap-
peal on the money question. An anti-Catholic
crusade met the Republicans needs perfectly.
Not only did the issue divert public attention
away from racial matters but away from eco-
nomic concerns as well.
104
Since its origins as a political organization, the Re-
publican Party had drawn electoral support from
evangelical and pietistic Protestant sects, which gave
the Republican electoral coalition, then as now, a re-
ligious dimension that could be activated during elec-
tions.
105
Given nineteenth-century Protestants ani-
mus toward Catholics, the Geghan Bill provided a
powerful religious issue, and Ohio Republicans
quickly moved to connect the bill with Roman Cath-
olics and, thus, the Democratic Party.
106
Meeting in Columbus on June 2, the Republicans
drafted a platform that included a hard money plank,
but also declared their opposition to any division of
the school-fund.
107
Attacking the Democrats associ-
ation with Catholics, the platform declared that there
should be no connection, direct or indirect, between
Church and state, and we oppose all legislation in the
interest of any particular sect.
108
Although the Re-
publican platform also contained planks concerning
the protection of African American civil rights, tariffs,
military pensions, and presidential term limits, during
the convention the cheering . . . was longest and
loudest, when . . . the opening speech touched on the
school question, [and] the Geghan law.
109
Although Hayes and the Ohio Republicans hoped
focusing on the Geghan Bill would deflect attention
away from economic conditions and policies, they
were essentially manufacturing public opinion from
whole cloth. Their campaign against the Geghan Bill
as a Catholic attempt to take over the public schools
drew on a completely fictitious issue that simply did
not correspond to any underlying reality. But the anti-
Catholic message had resonance, and many were im-
mediately impressed by the public reaction.
110
The Geghan Bill quickly became the central focus
of the Republican campaign. Hayes repeatedly urged
that it was essential to make the subserviency of the
Democratic Party to Catholic designs as the salient
feature of the canvass. It is certainly so in popular es-
timation in this quarter.
111
Reflecting such efforts,
one voter confided in Hayes:
I am as you are awire a true republican; I have
not voted with the party or with eany party for
four years. To vote with the democrt party is
voting the roman catholicks in to power and
the destruction of our public schools is shure
to follow. You can depend on me I will do all in
my power to secure to you a shure election.
112
Pleased with the publics reaction to his interpreta-
tion of the Geghan bill, Hayes happily observed that
128 SAMUEL DECANIO
104. Ward M. McAfee, Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The
Public School in the Politics of the 1870s, (Albany: State University of
New York, 1998), 178.
105. Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebel-
lum America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993); Richard
J. Carwardine, Methodists, Politics, and the Coming of the Amer-
ican Civil War, Church History 69 (2000): 578609; Ronald
Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties, Michigan, 18271861
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); Ronald
Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Par-
ties, 1790s1840s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Lee
Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1961); Michael Holt,
Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh,
18481860 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969);
Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, Social and Political Con-
flict 18881896 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); Paul
Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics
18501900 (New York: Free Press, 1970); Paul Kleppner, The Third
Electoral System, 18531892, Parties, Voters and Political Cultures
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Richard
Oestreicher, Urban Working-Class Political Behavior and Theo-
ries of American Electoral Politics, 18701940, Journal of American
History 74 (1988): 125786; Daniel W. Howe, The Evangelical
Movement and Political Culture in the North During the Second
Party System, Journal of American History 77 (1991): 121639.
106. One newspaper suggested: The only sure way to defeat
those who would destroy our schools, is to defeat the party through
whose servility they expected to gain their point (The Elyria Inde-
pendent Democrat, 19 May 1875). For the role of liked and disliked
groups in the formation of political attitudes, see Arthur Lupia,
Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior
in California Insurance Reform Elections, American Political Sci-
ence Review 88 (1994): 6376; Paul Sniderman, Richard A. Brody,
and Philip E. Tetlock, Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political
Psychology (New York: Cambridge University Press 1991); Samuel
Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presi-
dential Campaigns (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991); John
Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1992).
107. Appletons Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important
Events of the Year 1875 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1875),
606.
108. Ibid.
109. R.M. Stimson to R. Hayes, Marietta, OH, 14 June 1875,
Hayes Papers. If the election centered on religious animosity, the
question arrises as to why these additional planks were included at
all. It is possible that they were intended to attract specific electoral
groups to the Republican Party. However, since most Republican
voters do not appear to have been aware that the election centered
on issues other than the Geghan law, it is possible that these planks
were not intended for popular electoral consumption, but rather
reflect the compromises struck between the elites struggling to
control the Republican Party machinery. Indeed, since party fac-
tions often bolted on the basis of disagreement over economic is-
sues, it is likely that the platform reflects the compromises among
Ohio Republicans necessary for unification among these elites. See
generally Bensel, Political Economy.
110. The Athens Messenger, 30 Sept. 1875.
111. Hayes Diary, 3 June 1875, in Diary and Letters of Rutherford
Birchard Hayes.
112. J. Bickerstaff to R. Hayes, Cincinnati, OH, 6 June 1875,
Hayes Papers.
the Catholic question is . . . interesting the people
very much. This seems to be thus far almost wholly fa-
vorable.
113
Other Republicans echoed this evalua-
tion, claiming that the introduction of the Catholic is-
sue made,
the prospects . . . brighter. The school and
Catholic question are the questions in our
county. We have but 100 Catholic voters, all
Democrats of course, all in one corner and can
afford to work these points up and are doing
our best.
114
Exasperated Democrats tried to counteract the Re-
publicans statements by printing the actual wording
of the bill in newspapers, and repeatedly pointed out
that the Geghan Bill did not deal with funding local
schools.
115
One newspaper stated: Any one who has
ever read the [Geghan] bill knows that it contains no
allusions of that kind [i.e., dealing with the public
schools] . . . the idea that this bill forebodes anything
of the kind is preposterous.
116
Indeed, both the laws
creating the public school system and the Ohio con-
stitution maintained a strict division between church
and state, and had been enacted by a Democratic leg-
islature.
The Democrats tried to counteract the Republican
charges by adopting a resolution in their platform
supporting a strict division between church and state,
and denounced the Republican platform as an insult
to the intelligence of the people of Ohio, and a base
appeal to sectarian prejudices.
117
The Democrats
also attacked the national banking system and the
Specie Resumption Act, as further contraction pro-
posed by it, with a view to the forced resumption of
specie payment, has already brought disaster to the
business of the country, and threatens it with general
bankruptcy and ruin.
118
On the campaign stump, George Pendleton de-
nounced the Republicans for their cruel and wicked
effort to excite the most baleful passions of the hu-
man heart for mere partisan purposes.
119
Recogniz-
ing the severity of the situation, Pendleton fruitlessly
claimed that the Republicans,
fear to risk the fight on these [economic] ques-
tions, they seek to make an issue which is no is-
sue, and to drive you from considerations of in-
terest by appeals to prejudice or bigotry or
honest difference in religion . . . who com-
menced this agitation? asks General Hayes in
his first speech. He did his party did no one
else thought of it.
120
Democrats pointed out that the Republican man-
agers here in Ohio . . . acknowledge their defeat on
the currency issue by endeavoring to stir up a crusade
against the Catholic Church.
121
Republicans who
113. R. Hayes to J. Garfield, Fremont Ohio, 28 June 1875, in
114. J.M. Dalzell to R.B. Hayes, Caldwell OH, 5 Aug. 1875,
Hayes Papers.
115. The actual bill reads:
The Geghan Bill, A Bill to secure liberty of con-
science in matters of religion to persons imprisoned
or detained by authority of law. Sec.1. Be it enacted
by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio. That,
as liberty of conscience is not forfeited by reason of
conviction of crime, or by reason of detention in any
penal, reformatory or eleemosynary institution, or
any House of Refuge, Work-house, jail or public asy-
lum of the State, no person in any such institution
shall be compelled to attend religious worship or in-
struction of a form which is against the dictates of his
or her conscience; and it shall be the duty of every
Director, Trustee, Superintendent or other person
having in charge any such institution to furnish
equal facilities to all such persons for receiving the
ministrations of the authorized clergyman of their
own religious denomination or persuasion, under
such reasonable rules and regulations as the Trust-
ees, Directors, Managers or Superintendents shall
make; but no such rules shall be construed as to pre-
vent the clergyman of any denomination from fully
administering the rights of his denomination to such
inmates, provided such ministrations entail no ex-
pense on the public treasury. Sec. 2. This act shall
take effect from and after its passage. (Qtd. in Apple-
tons Annual 1875, 605. See also The Ohio Democrat, 16
Sept. 1875)
116. The Ohio Democrat, 10 Feb. 1876, The Portsmouth Times, 21
Aug. 1875.
117. Appletons Annual 1875, 607; The Cambridge Jeffersonian, 9
Sept. 1875.
118. Appletons Annual 1875, 607.
119. Qtd. in The Ohio Democrat, 9 Sept. 1875.
120. George Pendleton qtd. in ibid. It is important to note that
I am not assuming that the Democrats efforts to mobilize voters
on economic issues somehow made them more real than the Re-
publican mobilization of religious hostility. The entire origins of
the greenback issue were themselves acts of creative synthesis in-
vented by Democrats trying to mobilize public opinion on the ba-
sis of issues isolated from the Civil War and the bloody shirt, and
did not actually correspond to real changes in the countries mon-
ey supply. Indeed, the Democrats complete policy reversal, from
Jacksonian support of the gold standard to their postbellum en-
dorsement of paper currency, is itself indicative of elite power over
popular desires. While maintaining their claims to represent the
common man, the Democrats could completely reverse the spe-
cific policies which were identified with this goal, switching from
endorsing hard money to identifying inflation with the interests
of the agrarian and laboring classes.
In a very real sense, the Democratic party caused a complete
reversal in the ideas that many voters held regarding what policies
advanced their material interests. Similarly, their efforts to ex-
plain the causes of economic recessions by attacking the Republi-
can policies of currency contraction were exploited for political
gain regardless of their accuracy as actual explainations for eco-
nomic conditions. As is the case with much of postbellum finance
policy, these conflicts, though certainly experienced by voters as
real, and certainly having real material consequences for political
and economic elites, were often not actually rooted in any under-
lying reality that corresponded to economic conditions in a
straightforward way. See generally, Destler, American Radicalism;
Unger, Greenback Era, 47, 49, 6164; Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian
Persuasion, Politics and Belief (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1957); John McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1972); Bray Hammond, Banks and
Politics in America, from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1957).
121. The Ohio Democrat, 16 Sept. 1875.
were shaking and quaking under the corruption in
high places needed some other issue to arouse the
prejudices of the people and thus divert the public
mind.
122
Republican papers countered by claiming that the
Geghan Bill would result in the presence of,
altars, then, wax candles, holy water, incense,
wafers, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of
the Roman Catholic church . . . in our State in-
stitutions . . . [opening] up all our public insti-
tutions to the wrangling of sects and mak[ing]
of them a denominational battle ground.
123
One Republican journalist purporting to have met
our strawberry blonde friend Geghan on a train re-
ported how his face lighted up with glee when dis-
cussing the bill.
124
Republican papers published re-
ports from Cincinnatis Catholic Telegraph claiming to
show Catholic priests had demanded that the Demo-
crats pass the bill, as well as excerpts from one of
Geghans letters claiming that the Catholics homo-
geneous electoral support granted them a prior
claim upon the Democratic Party in Ohio.
125
Republicans also shrewdly used the Geghan Bill to
appeal to Germans who had bolted the Republican
Party in 1872 in favor of the Liberal Republicans.
126
Charles Francis Adams Jr., a prominent Liberal Re-
publican, concluded that the weapon with which to
kill [the Democrats] is the German vote; it is the only
effective weapon at hand.
127
However, Republican
strategists had to walk a fine line between appealing
to Germans with anti-Catholic rhetoric and repelling
them on other issues, like temperance, that usually
went hand-in-hand with such attacks.
128
Initially, it was unclear whether the Germans would
support the Republicans, and many feared that a tem-
perance plank would drive them into the ranks of the
Democrats.
129
Republicans, some of them temper-
ance advocates, exerted considerable effort to sup-
press the temperance issue during the campaign to
secure ethnic Germans support. Temperance orga-
nizers assured Hayes that it was certain that you will
receive the votes of all Germans who are Republicans
if the [temperance] issue is not made.
130
After smothering the temperance issue, the Re-
publicans began to mobilize Germans with anti-
Catholic appeals. Epitomizing the Republican dilem-
ma, William McKinley, Canton lawyer and future
president, noted that his district contained a large
Catholic population which is thoroughly Democratic,
a large protestant German element that hitherto have
been mainly Democratic, they hate the Catholics
their votes we must get.
131
Hayes was similarly ad-
vised that all that will be necessary to make . . . the
Liberal [Germans] . . . support certain will be a
strong avowal by you upon the Catholic question.
132
Republicans printed anti-Catholic speeches in Ger-
man, and used prominent Liberal Republicans, such
as Carl Schurz, as speakers.
133
By July, it appeared
that the legions of ethnic Germans who voted the Lib-
eral Republican ticket in 1872 had returned to the
Republican fold.
134
While economic issues still favored the Democrats,
ethnic and religious appeals began to overpower
them. Expressing surprise that many Democrats
were present on all occasions to hear Republican
speakers, one of Treasury Secretary Bristows confi-
dants, Edward Noyes, reported:
We shall lose some Republican votes in the coal
and iron regions where laborers are out of em-
ployment, but the losses even in such places
will not be heavy and we are gaining every day.
I had splendid meetings at Alliance, Hubbard,
Niles, Youngstown, and Salem, and found mat-
ters in better shape than I expected. Of course
we make the financial discussion prominent
and have the argument on our side, but the
Catholic issue, of a division of the school fund,
is the one which gives us our great gains. The
Western Reserve is alive as to this question.
130 SAMUEL DECANIO
122. The Ohio Democrat, 10 Feb. 1876.
123. Steubenville Daily Herald, 4 Sept. 1875.
124. Geghan reportedly granted the interview only after
forcibly ejecting a tablespoonful of amber colored saliva after
which he remarked: Well, my old boy, my little bill raised hell in
the State, didnt it? (The Athens Messenger, 2 Sept. 1875).
125. The Coshocton Age, 28 May 1875; The Elyria Republican, 25
Sept. 1875.
126. Unlike the American Lutheran movement, which drew
its theological positions from Lutheran pietists such as Franke and
Spener, the Ohio Lutheran Synod was lead by such conservative
theologians as Matthias Loy, who rejected the pietists evangelism.
Many Ohio Lutherans supported slavery and expressed hostility to
the Republican Party, precluding Lutherans in Ohio from homo-
geneously supporting the Republican Party as they did in areas
where the pietistic Lutherans dominated. See Charles William
Heathcote, The Lutheran Church and the Civil War (New York: Flem-
ing H. Revell Company, 1919), 82; C. George Fry, Matthias Loy,
Leader of Ohios Lutherans, Ohio History 76 (1967): 19899; Paul
Kuenning, The Rise and Fall of American Lutheran Pietism (Macon:
Mercer University Press, 1988); 58, 134; Paul Kleppner, The Cross of
Culture a Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics 18501900 (New York:
Free Press), 4351.
127. Qtd. in Frederic Bancroft and William Dunning eds., The
Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 3 vols. (New York: The McClure Com-
pany, 1908), 363.
128. For an interesting discussion of electoral volatility on cul-
tural issues, see John Gerring, Culture versus Economics: An
American Dilemma, Social Science History 23 (1999): 12973.
129. C.E. Henry to J.A. Garfield, Pond, OH, 17 Apr. 1875, in
Politics and Patronage in the Gilded Age. Despite such uncertainty,
Henry noted: the republicans are pretty sure of the German vote
in 76 as matters stand now (ibid.).
130. Thomas Hubbard to R. Hayes, New Vienna, OH, 12 June
1875, Hayes Papers.
131. W. McKinley to R. Hayes, Canton, OH, 8 June 1875,
Hayes Papers.
132. W.C. McFarland to R. Hayes, Cleveland, OH, 25 June
1875, Hayes Papers.
133. R. Hayes to A.T. Wikoff, Fremont, OH, 8 July 1875, in Di-
ary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes.
134. C.E. Henry to J.A. Garfield, Pond, OH, 25 July 1875,
Garfield Henry Correspondence; G.B. Smith to R.B. Hayes, Elkader
Iowa, 12 Aug. 1875, Hayes Papers.
Our vote will all be out and many prominent
Protestant Democrats will remain away from
the polls.
135
Despite the deteriorating economic conditions, pub-
lic reaction to the Republicans lavish interpretation
of the Geghan Bill was enthusiastic. While some vot-
ers were unclear on Hayess position on the currency
question well into the campaign, they were well aware
of his attitude toward Catholics.
136
As the campaign
progressed, the public outpouring of anti-Catholic
sentiment became overwhelming. The Catholic
question became an exciting one among the peo-
ple and especially on the Reserve among the country
people.
137
Others deemed it a powerful engine of
destruction of democratic hopes, and reported that
the Republicans quiet old Quakers [are] worked up
to a white heat.
138
Everywhere Hayes went, he was,
asked for a tract, or pamphlet on the Geghan
and school question so often that I now write
to urge you to have it out as soon as money can
get it. It may be made up of extracts from Lit-
tles omnibus pamphlet, and from the press,
and especially from the Catholic press. A mere
document very little fresh matter short and
to be circulated everywhere. Speak to Nash
about it. Dont delay. Pay for it. In German and
English. I urge you not to allow this to pass
unnoticed. Nothing is so much desired and
needed. All I see is encouraging.
139
After the Geghan issue became prominent in the
campaign, Hayes received a letter from A.J. Wikoff,
the Republican Committee Chairman, giving the
opinions of a local political observer on the course of
the campaign. The letter, reproduced below, details
the issues surrounding the campaign and discusses
the Republicans electoral constituency, and since
the Republican campaign largely adopted its recom-
mendations.
Dear Sir,
Knowing that you are not only a candidate,
but feel great interest in the election, and that
you have access to the Republican Committee,
I will make some suggestions to you, which per-
haps have all occurred to your own mind, but
will do no harm to repeat. I have one advan-
tage over common politicians. I am familiar
with every vote of the state for forty years, and
have all the votes at my hand. In this election
there are two or three elements which have not
appeared in others, and which require some
peculiar rearrangement.
1. The Financial Question. This will not help
the Republicans at all. Here they are very apt
to be under a delusion. The Republican papers
seem to count very largely on this. It is a mis-
take. The N.Y. Post sees this better. The post,
intensely hard money, says it is by no means
certain the inflationists will not succeed in
Ohio. The Greenback is the most popular
thing in Ohio. The Republican speakers ought
to be everywhere careful to say, that while a re-
turn to specie payments is desirable, they mean
no contraction. You must remember that the
Granger element is all for greenbacks and
plenty of them. . . . On the whole, we are not
likely to gain on the financial question. . . .
Dont deceive yourselves with the idea of gain-
ing by the Financial Question.
2. What then are the elements of success? They
are enough to give us 40,000 majority. . . . As to
the Roman Catholic question. I would do this,
I would not discuss it in the papers and by the
speakers, more than is done, but I would pre-
pare a little tract entitled The School Ques-
tion, and I would put in it, nothing but vari-
ous quotations from the Catholic Telegraph
with Geghans declaration, that the Demo-
cratic party owes its success to the Catholics,
and the article showing their threat to the
Democrats to vote right. I would prepare half
a million of these and I would distribute them
in all the school districts. I would not send any
of them to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus,
Dayton or Toledo; but I would see them care-
fully distributed in the rural districts. In the
Eastern part of the state, the Presbyterians and
Congregationalists prevail; in the middle the
Methodists, thousands of them are democrats,
all of them hate the pope. Make one or two
tracts of this sort, and distribute them up the
creeks. This is your strongest string. . . . You
will lose more votes than you gain by the Fi-
nancial Question. But harp on the Romanists;
and bring out the whole vote and you will have
40,000 majority. All you fall short of that will be
want of discretion and want of work. There are
88 counties in Ohio, and only 10 have changed
their politics since 1840!!
140
Hayes immediately forwarded copies of Mansfields
letter to members of the Ohio Republican Commit-
tee, where A.T. Wikoff reported to Hayes that there
appears to be more interest manifested by local com-
mittees than in the last ten years.
141
The centrality of religious animosity and the posi-
tive effects it was likely to have for the Republicans
were obvious to contemporaries. Hayes consistently
135. Edward Noyes to B. Bristow, Cincinnati, OH, 5 Sept. 1875,
Bristow Papers.
136. H.O. Sheldon to R. Hayes, Oberlin, OH, 5 July 1875,
Hayes Papers.
137. Thomas Wildes to R. Hayes, Akron, OH, 8 June 1875,
Hayes Papers.
138. C. H [?] to R. Hayes, Pomeroy, OH, 8 June 1875, Hayes
Papers, J. Smith to J. Sherman, Oakland, OH, 18 Oct. 1875, Sher-
man Papers.
139. R.B. Hayes to A.T. Wikoff, Fremont, OH, 8 July 1875, in
140. E.D. Mansfield to R.B. Hayes, Morrow, 4 Aug. 1875, Hayes
Papers.
141. A.T. Wikoff to R.B. Hayes, Columbus, OH, 6 Aug. 1875,
Hayes Papers.
urged fellow Republicans that they must not let the
Catholic question drop out of sight. If [the Demo-
crats] do not speak of it, we must attack them for their
silence. If they discuss it, or refer to it, they cant help
getting into trouble.
142
Catholic priests added fur-
ther fuel to Republican demagoguery by staging pub-
lic rallies defending the Geghan Bill. The combined
effects were disastrous for Ohio Democrats. Recog-
nizing the deteriorating electoral situation, an advi-
sor to the incumbent Democratic Governor William
Allen pessimistically noted:
I must confess to a good deal of uneasiness for
our success, this fall, owing to the aggressive
prominence the Catholic Church seems dis-
posed to give to itself just now. The Geghan
bill, the letter of Geghan, the editorials of the
Catholic Telegraph in reference to that mea-
sure, the conferring of Archbishop McClosky,
and the demonstration here, yesterday, includ-
ing the speech of Bishop McQuaid, are creat-
ing a feeling that will give the state to the Re-
publicans by an overwhelming majority. As
things now look to me, we shall lose this city,
and you may judge from that, how the state is
likely to go. This is no sudden . . . scare. The
mutterings of the storm that is coming are very
audible. I can breathe in the atmosphere about
me coming defeat. The Republicans are cock
sure of success. They . . . [say they] shall sweep
the state as with a whirlwind. It will be worse
than Know Nothing times. Secret societies are
being formed, and the state will be full of them
before fall. And the idea that animates them
will override all party considerations. Demo-
crats will be as numerous in these societies as
they were in the Know Nothing days. The in-
solence of the Catholic press, the claims put
forth that the Democratic party owes its success
to its Catholic voters, and the charge that few
or no native Americans belong to the Demo-
cratic Party, are driving our American born
into these secret anti-Catholic societies. Be-
lieve me when I tell you there is hell in the near
future. It is long since I have seen such fixed-
ness of . . . opposition to anything, as you may
discern by conversing with American born
Democrats and Republicans, against the pre-
tensions of the Catholic Church. No other sect
parades its strength, nor thrusts itself so before
the public as the Catholic. All of which goes to
convince the persons, who are going into these
secret societies, that the Church is not so much
striving for the cause of Christ and true piety,
as for civil and political power. Now, there is no
use trying to reason this feeling down. You are
too well read not to know that that is impossi-
ble . . . And [the Republicans] have no more
doubt of sweeping the state than they are of the
sun rising on the 2nd Tuesday of October. Re-
member they are out of meat, and this Catholi-
cism is a perfect godsend to them. And the un-
fortunate matter about it is, that the Catholic
Priests and Catholic papers are playing direct-
ly into the hands of the Republican party. They
are furnishing the Republican press and lead-
ers with ammunition with which to overthrow
the Democratic party, not only in Ohio, but in
the United States.
I am sorry this conflict is coming just now. I
was in hopes that it might be deferred until af-
ter the Presidential election of 1876. But the
Catholic leaders will not permit, and the Re-
publican leaders are the most willing souls in
the world, to accommodate them. And so my
dear Governor, you are to be slaughtered, and
with you the Democratic Party of Ohio, and
not unlikely of other states.
The political atmosphere is growing heavy
and oppressive under the [burden] of the
Catholic leaders. I feel it here very sensibly, and
the letters we are getting from the Country tell
us it is felt everywhere. Such is our fix a
damned hard one. To have the cup of victory
dashed from our lips just as we were going to
taste it, is not a subject for tame contemplation.
I dont give it even one half as bad as it is. And
nobody to blame but the Priests!
143
Public opinion had become polarized along reli-
gious lines.
144
Rural voters in particular, who were
most prone to mobilization along economic divi-
sions, appeared particularly interested in the Geghan
issue. In Findlay, Ohio, Hayes reported seeing many
Republicans from the country. Without exception
they were most interested in the [Geghan issue].
145
The Democrats fears regarding the salience of anti-
Catholic electioneering were well-founded. In an
election that drew the largest voter turnout in Ohio
history, Hayes and the Republicans won with a slim
majority of 5,544.
The Democrats failure to win in Ohio, an infla-
tionist state with a large agrarian population, made
the ramifications for finance policy straightforward.
Prior to the Ohio election, public opinion appeared
adamantly opposed to specie resumption. However,
the Republicans electoral strategy overpowered pop-
ular opposition on economic issues. Although the
Republican strategy was itself recognition of the un-
132 SAMUEL DECANIO
142. R. Hayes to W. Bickham, Fremont, OH, 10 July 1875, in
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes; E.E. Henry to R.B.
Hayes, Geanga Lake, OH, Sept. 1875, Hayes Papers.
143. J.J. Barns[?] to William Allen, 18 May 1875, Allen Papers.
144. Hayes himself exhibited considerable paranoia regard-
ing Catholics. When a proposal for appropriating funds for a pub-
lic library was put before Ohio voters, Hayes noted that it is said
the Catholics opposed [the funding of the library] because they
hate libraries [and] it is conjectured that the enemy to be feared is
the Catholic influence (Hayes Diary, 13 Sept. 1873, in Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes). Late in the 1866 election, Hayes
noted the negro prejudice is still very strong among the Irish, and
people of Irish parentage, and the ignorant and unthinking gen-
erally (R. Hayes to S. Birchard, Cincinnati, 6 Oct. 1866, in Diary
and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes).
145. R. Hayes to W. Bickham, Fremont, Ohio, 10 July 1875, in
ibid.
popularity of their financial policies, jubilant conser-
vatives talked as if resumption were assured.
146
De-
spite recognizing inflations popularity, Republicans
concluded that we [are now] thoroughly committed
to specie resumption on the first of January 1879.
147
Worried that the Republican Party could use similar
issues in the upcoming presidential election, eastern
Democrats monitoring the Ohio election concluded:
You can bury the rag baby, it is dead.
148
This point
was hardly lost on Ohio Democrats, who concluded
that their side of the financial issues . . . did not make
a vote, and all we lost, and they were not a few, was on
the church question.
149
Seeking to emulate the Ohio strategy, President
Grant issued a proposal for a constitutional amend-
ment banning support for religious schools. Con-
temporaries recognized this as an attempt to stimu-
late a ground swell of opinion . . . [by forcing] a
discontinuance of state and municipal subsidies to
parochial schools, a practice of particular benefit to
Catholics.
150
And although a large section of the
American press pretended surprise at the Presidents
remarks, it had no trouble in understanding his mo-
tives.
151
The New York Sun concluded that Grant was
attempting to mobilize Protestant prejudice . . . in a
political crusade against the Catholic church, and
thereby carry the presidential election.
152
IV. THE OHIO ELECTION INFLUENCES PRESIDENTIAL
NOMINATIONS IN 1876
Although the Ohio contest secured Hayes as gover-
nor, the election had effects extending beyond
Ohios borders.
153
Some Democrats not privy to the
Republican electoral strategy mistakenly took the
election as indication that public opinion had now
swung against inflation, concluding that the Ohio
election show[s] very clearly how intolerant the
country is of any financial policy contemplating the
further expansion . . . of our present legal tender pa-
per currency.
154
Prior to the Ohio election, many speculated that a
Democratic victory would result in an inflationary
presidential nominee from the Midwest, such as
Thomas Hendricks. However, if the Republicans car-
ried the state, New York Governor Samuel Tilden, a
hard-money advocate, was the predicted Democratic
nominee.
155
These forecasts were uncannily accu-
rate, not because all Democrats misread Ohio as a
negative verdict on inflation, but because those who
had been monitoring the election realized that specie
resumption could be neutralized at the national lev-
el just as it had been in Ohio. The Republicans suc-
cess in the state that was the birthplace of greenback
inflation clearly indicated that the Democrats could
not count on homogeneous Midwestern support in
the approaching presidential contest. If the Midwest
could not be counted on, New Yorks electoral votes
became critical. At the Democratic convention in St.
Louis, New York Lieutenant Governor William Dor-
sheimer, a close Tilden ally, reminded delegates that
if the Democrats won the South and New York, they
could still carry the presidential contest. It was re-
ported that Dorsheimers announcement was like an
electric shock to the convention and sent a thrill
through the entire assemblage . . . From that mo-
ment there was no doubt of the result.
156
Since vic-
tory in New York was now crucial, and since no one
could carry New York on a soft-money platform,
Tilden secured the nomination.
157
This delighted eastern Democrats, who were criti-
cal of the Republican Party for failing to resume the
gold standard fast enough. Manton Marble of the
New York World happily reported that Tilden has had
a large commercial experience, is extremely well-in-
formed in the English part of the literature of eco-
nomic and financial subjects, [and] has an undoubt-
ed faculty of reasoning upon them.
158
Meanwhile,
Southerners were eager to nominate whomever they
thought could remove the Republicans from power,
so Tildens disagreements with their monetary posi-
tion was not deemed important enough to oppose his
nomination.
159
One Southerner claiming to reflect
147. J. Smith to J. Sherman, Oakland, OH, Oct. 18, 1875, Sher-
man Papers. Sherman scrawled across the back of this letter:
please read . . . this letter . . . in which I heartily concur.
148. Halstead to M. Marble, 12 Oct. 1875, Marble Papers.
149. George W. Morgan to William Allen, 16 Oct. 1875, Allen
Papers.
150. Ralph Morrow, Northern Methodism and Reconstruction
(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1956), 2178.
151. Morrow, Northern Methodism, 21718.
152. Ibid., 218; F. Fonton [?] to M. Marble, New York, NY, 8
Dec. 1875, Marble Papers.
153. Republicans aware of the campaigns tactics in the Ohio
election reported persistent public opposition to resumption, con-
cluding: In looking over the results of this fall elections I do not
share in the general belief that the inflation doctrines are over-
thrown. Garfield Diary, 3 Nov. 1875, Garfield Papers.
154. J. Buchanan Henry to S. Tilden, New York, NY, 23[?] Nov.
1875, Samuel Tilden Papers, New York Public Library, New York
(cited hereafter as Tilden Papers).
155. B. Bristow to Judge D.M. Wooldridge, Washington DC, 11
Oct. 1875, Bristow Papers; Amsa Walker to Manton Marble, North
Brookfield, [NY]?, 18 Sept. 1875, Marble Papers.
156. Keith Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia, The Election of 1876
and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni-
versity Press, 1973), 90.
157. Roy Morris, Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes,
Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2003), 11314.
158. Manton Marble to [?] Aug. 1875, Marble Papers.
159. For example, one Southerner noted:
The questions of currency, tariff, navigation and rec-
iprocity laws, cheap transportation are all questions
of the highest import, for they involve the case com-
fort material prosperity of the country but to res-
cue the government from Republican control in-
volves the very salvation of our Republican
Institutions. (Bassett Frech to S. Tilden, Whitley, VA,
21 Nov. 1875, Tilden Papers)
the sentiments of the very large proportion of the
conservatives of Virginia, reported that,
in spite of the differences of views on the cur-
rency question . . . we are willing to put in
abeyance convictions of right to secure a large,
more essential present benefit [i.e., Tildens
election], if we shall be permitted so to do.
160
Subsequently, in opposition to both southern and
midwestern Democrats, Tilden and the eastern Dem-
ocrats forced the 1876 convention to support hard
money.
161
Although the Democrats denounced the
Republicans financial imbecility and immorality,
the platform was a conservative statement that mere-
ly questioned the specific date the Resumption Act
set for specie resumption.
162
Tildens confidants
were divided regarding the attention they should give
financial issues in the campaign. Those urging a pub-
lic statement on finances asked Tilden to use his new
visibility to shift public opinion in favor of hard mon-
ey, urging him to speak, speak as if ex cathedra: for
your position is now one that will cause any thing you
say, that appears to come from conscious power to
handle the subject, to sink deep in the public
mind.
163
But David Wells admitted that it would not
be judicious for us, in our message, to enter in any
degree into the field of economic controversy. The
masses wont comprehend it. . . . Stick to the great
principles and do not connect yourself against con-
traction.
164
Those Democrats who recognized the impact of re-
ligion in Ohio expressed concern that cultural issues
could threaten their chances in the presidential elec-
tion.
165
Noting that the bloody shirt would be promi-
nent in the 1876 contest, one Democrat still con-
cluded:
An important question as to our success . . .
and it is one of the weightiest to wit: the Know
Nothing or School question. The prejudices of
the people are such against Catholicism that
they can be made to believe almost any-
thing. . . . Some say their [districts] would have
been carried but for this.
166
While Democrats recognized that finance policy
would be a major issue after the election, most did not
think it would or should be a major topic in the cam-
paign; given that Tilden was on the unpopular side of
the issue.
Following the Ohio contest, Republicans oscillated
between James G. Blaine and Hayes as their presi-
dential nominee. Some worried Blaines Catholic ed-
ucation would cost Republican votes, and when he was
implicated in a railroad corruption case, the nomi-
nation went to Hayes.
167
Prior to the Ohio campaign,
Hayes had been an undistinguished Civil War officer
with sporadic involvement in national politics, serv-
ing as Ohios governor and as a Representative. Al-
though active in public service, Hayess record was
competent but unspectacular.
168
However, his vic-
tory in the Ohio gubernatorial contest catapulted
him into national prominence.
After Hayes secured the nomination, both partys
candidates were sound on the currency question,
essentially removing financial issues from the subse-
quent campaign and ensuring that voters would have
no real opportunity to register their attitude on the
financial issue.
169
Hard money advocates monitor-
ing the conventions happily reported:
It looks now as though we are already victori-
ous that we have captured the candidates of
both parties and that we are destined to have a
good honest hard money president unless Pe-
134 SAMUEL DECANIO
160. Bassett Frech to S. Tilden, Whitley, VA, Nov. 21, 1875,
Tilden Papers; New York Times, 3 June 1876.
161. The endorsement was opposed by laborers and infla-
tionists in the South and Midwest. See Unger, Greenback Era, 308
10; William Wallace to S. Tilden, Washington DC, 7 July 1876; A.
Hewitt to S. Tilden, Washington, DC, 6 July 1876; L. De La Court
to S. Tilden, Hamilton, OH, 6 July 1876; T.A. Hendricks to S.
Tilden, Indianapolis, IN, 6 July 1874, Tilden Papers. The Demo-
cratic endorsement of resumption was not straightforward, and
the language of the St. Louis platform was so vague that Hendricks
could conclude that the platform actually rejected resumption.
Conversely, one Ohio Democrat claimed the Democrats platform
criticized the Resumption Act for not clearly specifying how to ac-
complish resumption before 1879. See Robert Minturn to S. Tilden,
New Brighton, NY, 3 July 1876, Tilden Papers.
162. Annual Cyclopedia for 1876, 785; Unger, Greenback Era, 309.
163. G. Curtis to S. Tilden, New York, NY, 10 July 1876, Tilden
Papers.
164. David Wells to S. Tilden, 9 Nov. 1875, Tilden Papers.
Tilden fully appreciated the extent of elite influence over public
opinion. Tilden was reportedly attracted to the Democrats specifi-
cally because the opinion of its great masses could be more easily
shaped and molded by the mere force of ideas (Morris, Fraud of
the Century, 86). See also Nancy Cohen, The Reconstruction of Ameri-
can Liberalism, 18651914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Car-
olina Press, 2002).
165. A letter Manton Marble forwarded to Tilden noted:
It is very evident to me, and to you more so I pre-
sume, that the Republicans will not be scrupulous in
the use of means to carry the next Presidential elec-
tion. They will use the school question in every form
they can present it. It has occurred to me that it will
be well for Gov. Tilden in his message to so refer to
the schools and system of this state as to place him
right. ( J.M. to dear Son, Bedford, 21 Nov. 1875,
Tilden Papers)
166. James Madigan to Charles Kimball, Houlton, ME, 11 Nov.
1875, Tilden Papers.
167. Polakoff, Politics of Inertia, 4452. In a letter discussing
the potential Republican nominees for 1876, E.H. Henry noted:
Hayes is looming up far ahead of Blaine for the Pres-
idency. A recent objection to Blain is that he cannot
be trusted on the Catholic question, as he was early
trained in that faith. I have heard this several times
in Penn and Ohio. (E.H. Henry to J.A. Garfield,
Geauga Lake, Ohio, Jan. 22, 1876, Garfield-Henry Cor-
respondence)
168. William Rehnquist, Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election
of 1876 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004), 47.
169. Clifford H. Moore, Ohio in National Politics, 294; Sher-
man, Recollections, 45355.
ter Cooper [the Greenback Party candidate]
shall be elected.
170
Thus Hayess victory in Ohio, itself a product of his
ability to manipulate public opinion and popular de-
mands, effectively rendered the outcome of the pres-
idential election irrelevant for the course of mone-
tary policy.
Although it would be an overstatement to conclude
that the Ohio election guaranteed hard-money pres-
idential candidates in 1876, it is quite likely that such
candidates would not have been possible had the
Democrats won the Ohio gubernatorial race. Indeed,
the outcome of the Ohio campaign convinced Re-
publicans that they could win elections on cultural is-
sues even though their economic positions were un-
popular.
171
The Republican victory in Ohio was a turning
point in postbellum finance policy, after which there
would never again be a serious threat of paper infla-
tion.
172
Although the midterm Congressional elec-
tions of 1878 offered voters an opportunity to influ-
ence financial policy, selection of a new Treasury
Secretary would not occur until the presidential elec-
tion in 1880. After Hayes secured the presidency in
1877, he nominated John Sherman to run Treasury,
and under Shermans guidance the Department of
the Treasury resumed the gold standard in January
1879.
V. CONCLUSION: STATE AUTONOMY
IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES
Although properly placing the state at the forefront
of the study of politics, recent work in American po-
litical development often attributes public policy to
socioeconomic demands and popular electoral pres-
sures rather than to state actors. Given the restricted
size of the federal bureaucracy and the high levels of
electoral involvement during the nineteenth century,
this orientation is intuitively plausible, as well as re-
flecting the widespread assumption that democratic
states reflect public opinion and respond to electoral
demands.
However, determining public opinions influence
upon policy implementation may be possible only by
bringing electoral analysis into studies of elite deci-
sion-making. Yet by doing so, we may reach new con-
clusions about voters role in policy implementation.
For although unprecedented numbers of Americans
took part in nineteenth-century elections, the issues
eliciting such high levels of popular participation
could themselves be manufactured by political elites
in ways that left elected officials free to pursue regu-
latory policies autonomously from societal control.
Thus, although campaigns often generated strong
public reaction and extensive popular involvement,
the issues responsible for such enthusiasm did not
necessarily correspond to any underlying social real-
ity beyond the purely instrumental service they per-
formed for elites seeking to acquire the power to en-
act policies of their choosing.
Far from indicating that democracy places external
barriers upon state power, democratic elections can
provide a forum in which political elites manipulate
public opinion and create popular desires in ways
that enhance their autonomy from society once they
attain state power. In this sense, elections place only
tenuous, permeable boundaries upon state power. In-
stead of assuming that democracy ensures that soci-
ety will direct and constrain the democratic state, the
nature of mass opinion may indicate that democracy
can, under certain circumstances, lead to state au-
tonomy just as readily as can more traditional sources
of power, such as the bureaucracy that was just emerg-
ing at the federal level in the nineteenth century. Al-
though states formal powers are important for their
capacity to conduct regulatory operations, such pow-
ers appear to be a less important determinant of state
autonomy than the pliability of mass opinion, which
may allow the state to act autonomously from society
even when there are formal elections and a partici-
patory democratic culture.
Although focused on a single nineteenth-century
election, it is worth briefly discussing the ramifica-
tions this study can have for our understanding of
contemporary democratic politics. Clearly there are
legitimate concerns regarding the generalizations
derived from a case study. However, such generaliza-
tions are problematic only if the initial conditions
surrounding the case under examination are not ap-
proximated in other settings.
173
Although the con-
temporary United States enjoy neither high levels of
electoral participation nor a restricted bureaucratic
state, these developments may merely enhance con-
temporary officials opportunities for autonomous
action.
Indeed, since the nineteenth century, as electoral
participation has declined, a massive state regulatory
apparatus has been erected alongside an electorate
so ill-informed about politics that the voters who are
allegedly the motive power of democratic politics typ-
ically cannot even recognize the officials who are rul-
ing in their name.
174
The rise of the regulatory state
170. Isaac Sherman to David Wells, Saratoga Springs, 16 July
1876, David Wells Papers, Library of Congress.
171. J. Sherman to A.M. Burns, n.d., n.p., Sherman Papers.
173. F.A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science, Studies in the
Abuse of Reason (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979), 138.
174. The extent of voter ignorance of democratic politics is
simply shocking to those not familiar with this specialized branch
of research. Contemporary studies indicate that the overwhelming
majority of voters are literally completely unaware of the vast ma-
jority of what the democratic state is doing. For example, a full 70
percent of the American public cannot name both their Senators.
When only 10 percent of the electorate can name a single policy
in the midst of an ignorant and pliable electorate may
indicate that focusing on how mass opinion fuels state
autonomy is perhaps even more necessary for the
study of contemporary democratic governments than
for the study of earlier periods in American political
development. For if elites were able to act autono-
mously from social demands when participation was
high and the federal government regulated few as-
pects of American society, it might well be a foregone
conclusion that democratic officials have recourse to
considerable autonomy from popular preferences
when voters are uninformed, mass participation is
low, and the scope of the states regulatory authority
is extensive.
Although few scholars have approached American
politics from such a perspective, focusing on how
mass opinion fuels state autonomy can offer a poten-
tially useful approach for studying the power of the
democratic state. Although modern democratic gov-
ernments possess formally democratic credentials,
the nature of mass opinion indicates that elected of-
ficials have considerable autonomy from society, even
when such officials are subjected to democratic elec-
tions and the vicissitudes of public opinion.
APPENDIX
PRIMARY SOURCES
Allen, William. Papers, Library of Congress.
Bristow, Benjamin. Papers, Library of Congress.
Cooke, Jay. Papers. Pennsylvania Historical Society.
Ewing Family Papers, Library of Congress.
Garfield, James A. Papers, Library of Congress.
Hayes, Rutherford B. Papers, Hayes Memorial Li-
brary, Fremont, Ohio.
Marble, Manton. Papers, Library of Congress.
McCulloch, Hugh. Papers, Library of Congress.
Pratt, Daniel. Papers, Indiana State Library, Indi-
anapolis.
Schurz, Carl. Papers, Library of Congress.
Sherman, John. Papers, Library of Congress.
Tilden, Samuel. Papers, New York Public Library,
New York.
Wade, Benjamin. Papers, Library of Congress.
Wells, David. Papers, Library of Congress.
PRINTED COMPILATIONS OF LETTERS
Norris, James D. and Arthur H. Shaffer, Ed. Politics
and Patronage in the Gilded Age; the Correspondence
of James A. Garfield and Charles E. Henry (Madison:
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1970).
Hinsdale, Mary L., Ed. Garfield-Hinsdale letters, Corre-
spondence between James Abram Garfield and Burke
Aaron Hinsdale (Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
gan Press, 1943).
Williams, Charles, Ed. Diary and Letters of Rutherford
Birchard Hayes, Nineteenth President of the United
States (Columbus: The Ohio State Archaeologi-
cal and Historical Society, 1924).
Thorndike, Rachel S. The Sherman Letters Correspon-
dence between General and Senator Sherman from
1837 to 1891 (New York: Scribners Sons, 1894).
NEWSPAPERS
The New York Times
The Ohio Democrat
The Defiance Democrat
The Cambridge Jeffersonian
The Steubenville Daily Herald & News
The Elyria Independent Democrat
The Elyria Republican
The Portsmouth Times
The Coshocton Age
The Athens Messenger
The Financier
The Commercial and Financial Chronicle
136 SAMUEL DECANIO
implemented by their Congressional representative, and when 70
percent of the American public cannot describe the nature of Roe
vs. Wade, one wonders how even well-meaning elected officials
could represent social demands on regulatory issues that reach a
certain minimal degree of complexity. See Michael Delli Carpini
and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why it Mat-
ters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 71; Barbara
Hinckley, The American Voter in Congressional Elections, Amer-
ican Political Science Review 74 (1980): 644; Larry Bartels, Unin-
formed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections, Amer-
ican Journal of Political Science 40 (1996): 194230.

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In the 1980s, many scholars of both comparative and

American politics argued that states often act au-

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