Greenback Party

“ The “old folks” in New Icaria are still solidly Republican in politics; but Mr. Peron and his friends in the other community have been voting the Greenback ticket for a year or two. They say that it seems to them that the Greenback party represents the laboring classes in their struggle against great corporate and moneyed monopolies; and it is in the spirit of agitators that they support the Greenback party, and not so much because they expect anything definite from that party. ”

“ The effect in Maine has been to defeat the Republican party. I do not believe any party can permanently succeed in the United States that does not believe in and advocate actual money. I want to see the greenback equal with gold the world round. A money below par keeps the people below par. No man can possibly be proud of a country that is not willing to pay its debts. Several of the States this fall may be carried by the Greenback party, but if I have a correct understanding of their views, that party cannot hold any State for any great length of time. ”

“ I think the Greenback movement will injure the Republican party much more than the Democratic party. Whether that injury will reach as far as 1880 depends simply upon one thing. If resumption—in spite of all the resolutions to the contrary— inaugurates an era of prosperity, as I believe and hope it will, then it seems to me that the Republican party will be as strong in the North as in its palmiest days. Of course I regard most of the old issues as settled, and I make this statement simply because I regard the financial issue as the only living one. ”

“ Though the forces of agrarian discontent attained national political organization for the first time in the Greenback party, its leaders were never able to obtain the support of more than a minority of the farmers. The habit of voting the Republican or the Democratic ticket, firmly established by the Civil War and by Reconstruction, was too 98 strong to be lightly broken; and many who favored inflation could not yet bring themselves to the point of supporting the Greenback party. ”

“ Many who could not support the Greenback party in its theory that currency derived value from purchasing power based on the government's credit and authority rather than on convertibility, would, nevertheless, make larger use of paper money; while men who did not assent to the free coinage reasoning opposed the single gold standard as too narrow and too much under the influence of the speculative and banking interests, and would adopt some system of bi-metallism. ”

“ Not content with their achievements in the state legislatures, the agrarians entered national politics in 1876 in the form of the Independent National or Greenback party, designed to "stop the present suicidal and destructive policy of contraction." ”

“ The members of the clubs and their leaders constituted, as a matter of fact, the more radical of the Greenbackers. They usually opposed fusion with the Democrats and often refused to follow the regular leaders of the party.
In the election the Greenback ticket polled only about eighty thousand votes, or less than one per cent of the total. In spite of the activity of former members of the Labor Reform party in the movement, Pennsylvania was the only Eastern State in which the new party made any considerable showing. ”

“ A Greenback party was formed, which called for the repeal of the Specie Payment Act and for the issue of more greenbacks. That the presidential election would be close was certain, and this certainty did much to lead the Democratic and Republican parties to take up some of the demands of the Prohibition, Liberal Republican, and Labor parties. Thus both the Democratic and Republican parties called for no more land grants to corporations, and for the exclusion of the Chinese. ”

“ Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and women who have brains and education, women who are tax-payers, went there and petitioned for the practical application of the fundamental principles of our Government to one-half of the people. Those most ignorant workingmen, the vast mass of them foreigners, went there, and petitioned that that great political party should favor greenbacks. Why did they treat those workingmen with respect, and put a greenback plank in their platform, and only table us, and ignore us? Simply because the workingmen represented the power of the ballot. ”

“ One such movement defeated but makes way for another. Proof, this, that the spirit of true reform is virile and the heart of the nation pure. The progress made, in numbers and organization, before the seeds of decay were sown in the United Labor party, the Union Labor party, the Greenback-Labor party, the People's party of 1884, and various third-party movements, testify to the readiness of earnest thousands to respond, even on the slightest promise of victory, to the call for radical reform. ”

“ Pomeroy, declared: "We will not affiliate in any degree with any of the old parties, but in all cases and localities will organize anew ... and ... vote only for men who entirely abandon old party lines and organizations." This attempt to forestall fusion was to be of no avail, as the sequel will show, but Pomeroy and his followers in the Greenback clubs adhered throughout to their declaration.
In the elections of 1878, the high-water mark of the movement, about a million votes were cast for Greenback candidates. ”

“ As the campaign advanced a resistless tendency to force the older parties into the open made it plain that if the Democrats did not say just what they meant, the Republicans meant more than they said, for their speakers and the press uniformly declared that the greenback, which had carried the country triumphantly through the war, must be made as good as gold. Meantime the Democratic leaders realised that "fiat" money had a strange fascination for many of their party. ”

“ It is not safe or wise to make the finances a party question." [846] As late as July 30, the evening preceding the Maine convention, Blaine objected to the phrase "gold or its equivalent," preferring the word "coin," which subsequently appeared in the platform.
The election in Maine, hailed with joy by every organ of the Greenback movement, showed how profound was the political disturbance. The result made it plain that the chief political issue was one of common honesty, and that an alliance of Democratic and Greenback interests threatened Republican ascendency. ”

“ Seymour ordered my petition to be read, after looking at it in the most scrutinizing manner, when it was referred to the committee on resolutions, where it has slept the sleep of death from that day to this. But before the close of the convention a body of ignorant workingmen sent in a petition clamoring for greenbacks, and you remember that the Democratic party bought those men by putting a solid greenback plank in the platform. ”

“ The year 1874 was one of disaster to the Republican party. The greenback issue, the troubles growing out of reconstruction in the South, the Crédit Mobilier and the “Salary Grab,” disgusted thousands of independent voters and sent a wave of Democracy over the country. Garfield himself was accused of corruption in connexion with the Crédit Mobilier scandal, but the charge was never proved. ”

“ They disappeared without a single enduring and beneficent achievement to their credit. In like manner there have been many similar organizations or so called parties since the civil war, such as: Greenback, Liberal, Silver, Populist, Socialist, Social Labor and Prohibition. ”

“ What will he do to keep the Greenbackers in the party without betraying the principles of the hard-money men? How will he satisfy the Southern element, that claims to have been robbed by an anti-slavery war, and is entitled to restitution in some shape, and at the same time keep the management of the government within the bounds of economy and propitiate the Northern taxpayer? How will he content the Southern men in the distribution of offices, who will claim that they have furnished the majority of votes and are therefore entitled to the lion's share? ”

“ Whenever a Democrat sees a greenback, the greenback says to the Democrat, "I am one of the fellows that whipped you." Whenever a Republican sees a greenback, the greenback says to him, "You and I put down the rebellion and saved the country." ”

“ Then they will not be satisfied, and as it will be impossible to go back, there will be plenty of agitators who will preach that we have not gone far enough; and if a Reformed Parliament does not do all that popular clamour shall demand, it will be treated with very little ceremony. If, however, it be true that the tendency of this Bill will be to throw power into the hands of the landed interest, we shall have a great Tory [128] party, which will be selfish, bigoted, and ignorant, and a Radical party, while the Whig party, who will have carried the measure, will sink into insignificance. ”

“ No one of all these millions of citizens can, without violating this law, 'take any active part' in any campaign for a cause or for a candidate if the cause or candidate is 'specifically identified with any National or State political party.' Since under our common political practices most causes and candidates are espoused by political parties, the result is that, because they are paid out of the public treasury, all these citizens who engage in public work can take no really effective part in campaigns that may bring about changes in their lives, their fortunes, and their happiness. ”

“ The questions of education, saloon regulation, taxation, corporation control, bank guarantee, pure food, or the tariff on foreigners or foreign goods, have now no certain standing and support in the legislature or before the people.
By making an issue and division inside the party lines, of "assembly" or "anti- assembly" for the suggestion of candidates, a political party is "slaughtered in the house of its friends." ”

“ You may punish us for our shortcomings by its success, but you will punish yourselves as well and stay the progress of your country. A party that with seventy majority in the House cannot pass a bill on any subject of party politics, great or small, is not fit to govern the country.
"Every advance, every reform, every improvement, the protection of your labor, the building of your navy, the assertion of your rights as a free man, the maintenance of good money—a good dollar, good in every land, worth a dollar in gold—all these objects of desire must await the movements of the Republican party. ”

“ Neither should you think that I wish to claim any standing in the Republican Party. My way of looking at things will probably never have your approval, but I may, perhaps, succeed in making it intelligible to you. I believe that a party organization is not an end in itself, but merely a means for the attainment of public ends. I, therefore, do not worship a political party as a divinity entitled to my devotion under all circumstances, but regard it simply as an organization of citizens standing together for public objects on which they agree. ”

“ I have said that what are called politics are out of fashion; there is no public man a jot more popular than another; nobody cares about parties, for there is no party distinguished by any peculiar badge of principle, with a distinct colour, and standing in open and defined antagonism to any other; none which has any great object to advance—constitutional, political, or commercial—in opposition to another party ranged against it. ”

“ The beginnings were disappointing; but two years later, in the congressional elections, the Greenbackers swept whole sections of the country. Their candidates polled more than a million votes and fourteen of them were returned to the House of Representatives. To all outward signs a new and formidable party had entered the lists. ”

“ As the Republicans were dispersing, the Greenback convention was assembling. Their strength in the campaign was almost negligible but their platform presaged the future. Money to be issued only by the government, the volume of money increased, ameliorative labor legislation, restriction of Chinese immigration, regulation of interstate commerce, an income tax, government for the people rather than for classes, wider suffrage,—all these were advocated in concise and unmistakable terms. ”

“ And where is the ever faithful party organization in Congress that Mr. Greeley would have at his back? Not the regular Republicans, who now are drilled to the business, for they will be in the opposition, and have violent spasms of virtue. Not the Liberals, for, had they been inclined to submit to corrupt and arbitrary practices, they would not have broken loose from Grant, under whom they had a tempting opportunity to make the submission and whitewashing business profitable. ”

“ Now every political party, that is worthy of the name, is a compound rather than a simple fact, consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single idea. Parties depend upon the people for success, upon the people not of one interest but of many interests and of diversities of views upon public questions. One plank is not broad enough to accommodate their differences and multiplicity of desires. There must be a platform built of many planks to support the number of votes requisite to victory at the polls. ”

“ Every party has its faults and its shortcomings. The dregs fall, and the work of the party is done. Some of the chiefs and leaders of the Republican party became faithless, (Seward,) went over to darkness, but thereby the onward march to the sacred aim was not arrested. The irresistible current of events and of human affairs carried onwards the Republican party. Perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless emphatically, the Republican party in its ensemble was a providential agency; it became the incarnation of the loftiest aspirations of the best among the American people. ”