Folks looking to perceive politics in the USA these days regularly flip to historical past for precedents and viewpoint. Are our present divisions like those that preceded the American Revolution or the Civil Warfare? Did the dramatic occasions of the Nineteen Sixties generate the similar roughly social and political forces noticed these days? Are there courses from the previous that display us how eras of intense political turmoil sooner or later subside?
As a pupil of American politics and the presidency, I consider one American ancient duration is particularly value revisiting on this turbulent second within the U.S.: the 20 tumultuous years between the presidencies of Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley in the second one part of the Nineteenth century.
The twenty years between 1876 and 1896 are typically remembered as a time when the towns within the East grew wealthy and the West was once wild – a “Gilded Age” in New York Town and gunslingers at the frontier.
It was once additionally a time when American citizens struggled with immigration problems, racial injustice, tariff ranges, technological alternate, financial volatility and political violence.
There was once even a president, Grover Cleveland, who served two nonconsecutive phrases within the White Area – the one time that took place prior to Donald Trump.
Within the elections between Grant and McKinley, the country was once carefully divided. No president in the ones years – no longer Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Cleveland or Benjamin Harrison – served for 2 consecutive phrases. No presidential candidate gained greater than 50% of the preferred vote, apart from the Democrat Samuel Tilden. And Tilden, after successful 50.1% of the ballots forged in 1876, misplaced within the Electoral Faculty. That took place once more in 1888 when Cleveland, the primary time he was once in quest of a 2d time period, gained the preferred vote however failed within the Electoral Faculty.
The slim victories that characterised presidential politics within the 1870s and Eighteen Eighties have been matched by way of consistent shifts on Capitol Hill. Within the two decades between Grant and McKinley, there have been most effective six years of unified govt, when one political birthday party managed the White Area, the Senate and the Area of Representatives. In the remainder 14 years, presidents encountered opposition in Congress.
The U.S. has the similar roughly divided politics these days.
Heating up partisanship and elevating stakes
President Invoice Clinton had two years of unified govt; President George W. Bush had lower than that. Barack Obama, Donald Trump in his first time period and Joe Biden all got here into place of work with birthday party majorities within the Area and Senate, after which, like Clinton, their events misplaced the Area two years later.
Divided politics, with shut elections and neither birthday party in energy for terribly lengthy, make partisanship extra intense, campaigns more difficult fought and the stakes sky top every time electorate cross to the polls. That’s a part of what produced instability in the second one part of the Nineteenth century and a part of what produces it these days.
Divided govt is, after all, one of the robust “checks” within the constitutional gadget of assessments and balances. Intense festival between political events can save you the nationwide govt from making rash choices and severe errors. It may possibly on occasion generate compromise.
Citizens and protesters conflict with federal brokers on Chicago’s East Aspect on Oct. 14, 2025.
Joshua Lott/The Washington Publish by way of Getty Pictures
However there’s a price. Political department too can permit essential issues to fester for a long way too lengthy. The dramatic adjustments attributable to the Business Revolution after the Civil Warfare weren’t severely addressed in federal regulation till the Modern Technology early within the twentieth century.
In the second one part of the Nineteenth century, Congress raised or reduced price lists – relying on which birthday party managed the White Area and Capitol Hill. The country debated immigration however most effective as soon as handed significant regulation, the Chinese language Exclusion Act of 1882. A protracted record of problems attached to railroads, banks, forex, civil carrier, corruption and the implementation of the post-Civil Warfare constitutional amendments have been omitted or most effective partly addressed.
When main regulation was once handed in 1883 to create a merit-based civil carrier – reforming the spoils gadget of political appointments – it handed as a result of Garfield’s 1881 assassination by way of a disgruntled federal process seeker briefly driven the problem to the highest of the nationwide time table.
Immigration, pretend information and riots
Political violence accompanied the duration of carefully divided nationwide elections within the 1870s and Eighteen Eighties.
Within the 1880 presidential marketing campaign, each applicants – the Republican, Garfield, and the Democrat, Winfield Hancock – referred to as for restrictions on Chinese language immigration to the USA. Neither supported the whole ban that many Westerners sought after.
There have been extra incidents of political violence: anti-Chinese language riots in Los Angeles in 1871, in San Francisco in 1877 and in Seattle in 1886.
Right through the Eighteen Eighties, anti-immigrant nativists focused immigrants from Italy and on occasion vandalized Catholic church buildings.
Political violence within the South effectively suppressed Black vote casting rights and reestablished white keep an eye on of state and native politics.
Political violence accompanied the duration of carefully divided nationwide elections within the 1870s and Eighteen Eighties, together with the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881.
Glasshouse Antique/Common Historical past Archive/Common Pictures Crew by way of Getty Pictures
Realignment
Political department in the second one part of the Nineteenth century produced extra issues than answers. How and when did it finish, or develop into much less intense?
The straightforward resolution is what political scientists name a “realignment,” a significant shift in nationwide electoral patterns.
In 1893, the primary 12 months of Cleveland’s 2d time period, the country suffered a monetary disaster adopted by way of a critical financial despair. Consequently, McKinley was once ready to win forged victories in 1896 and 1900 and construct a Republican coalition that ruled presidential politics till the election in 1932 of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt.
It’s no longer onerous to believe how an financial crisis, or a disaster of a few sort, may just shake the rustic out of a duration of carefully divided politics. However that’s a painful approach of establishing a better stage of nationwide solidarity.
Can it occur when huge numbers of electorate get totally annoyed by way of languishing problems, swings backward and forward in Washington, nasty elections and emerging political violence?
Possibly.
However both approach – responding to disaster or discovering a public alternate of middle – is a reminder that electorate are without equal arbiters in a functioning democracy. Lately, as in late-Nineteenth-century The us, elections make a distinction. They may be able to mark endured department or they are able to take the country in a brand new, and possibly extra unified, course.
