Martin Meenagh blog

  The period after the American civil war was marked by third parties. From 1870 to 1896, Greenbackers pursuing fiat money, Farmer’s candidates associated with the Granger movement, Union Labour candidates, Liberal Republicans, and People’s Party candidates all contended with the Democratic and Republican parties for election. Though there was a clear evolutionary link between these parties, it is important that they be distinguished from each other. In addition, various reform movements swept across the plains and west, even reaching the developed urban areas of the East. These included religious revivalists, prohibitionists, bimetallists, workplace reformers, anti-corruption campaigners, and pro-democracy activists seeking womens’ suffrage and the direct election of the United States Senate, as well as wider use of referenda. The common theme uniting most of these movements and parties was a reaction against monopolies and cartels, particularly railroad trusts and Banks. Th...

    The Constitution of the United States is a document with seven articles and twenty-seven amendments at the time of writing in 2020. It does not represent a codified body of law, but nor is it the changeable Act of a sovereign parliament, as British constitutional documents are. Instead, the Constitution creates a flexible system of checks and balances which lay out the ‘ground rules’ for the institution, allocation and limitation of government power at the federal level. In itself, it makes any sort of positive governance difficult to begin beyond the core functions of foreign policy and defence, but once capacities and elaborations have been added, they have proven very difficult to reform. It is certainly the case that the original document, ratified in 1788 was both a response to the perceived weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation which preceded it, and a document which was less idealistic and more informed by Hobbesian and tough-minded ideas of power and capa...

    The Spanish American War, conducted across a little under four months in the Summer of 1898, has often been seen as the inauguration of he twentieth-century power of the United States. In this telling, the American media and administration, armed with a growing Navy, overwhelmed a decaying European power and established dominance in the Caribbean, associated itself with democratic movements in Cuba, and colonised the Philippines as the consequence of a form of republican Imperialism. This energised the American economy after the panic of 1893, and helped heal the wounds of the Civil War amongst white Americans. As so often with historical events, the commonly understood narrative is in itself a product of some of the contingent needs of tellers. The War could in fact be contextualised as the culmination of Gilded Age trends which speak as much to the past as the future. For example, both Secretary of State Blaine and President Harrison, in office between 1889 and 1893, wer...

Campaigns against perceived or real corruption have often tended to help conservative, or corporate candidates in American history. For instance, Richard Nixon’s famous ‘K1C2’ formula as vice-presidential nominee in 1952 had been refined over the previous two years. It set Nixon up as a campaigner against ‘Korea, Corruption, and Communism’ and provided a moral justification for his aggression.    Similarly, Senator Charles Sumner broke with the multiracial implications of President Grant’s attempted annexation of Santo Domingo whilst maintaining credibility as Liberal Republican by associating it with perceived corrupt schemes; the association by Liberals and Democrats of Grant’s administration with later allegations of corruption aided this explanation for their opposition.   The elision of catholic Irish immigrants and Tammany corruption in New York—even though Tammany was originally a Protestant enterprise backed by protestant gangs, and the New York Port Authority’s...

  Abraham Lincoln, for most of his career, was a failed politician. He was a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832. He lost. He was a candidate for a Whig nomination for the House of Representatives in 1843. He lost. He attempted to become a Commissioner of the General Land Office under President Taylor, which was a bureaucratic role, but was turned down. He was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1854 but did not take his seat, and in 1858, he lost the United States Senate seat for Illinois to Stephen A. Douglas. He was a compromise candidate for President in 1860, won a four-way election, and was promptly discounted and abused across the United States and Confederacy, as well as abroad, until having to create his own party to run for reelection in 1864, which was unexpected.  All Lincoln could really show in terms of elections between 1832 and 1860 was a single term as a member of the House of Representatives in a failing Whig party between 1846 and 1848. ...

James Garfield was president of the United States for a little less than eight months (or 200 days), which makes him the second-shortest serving president after William Henry Harrison. For almost the whole period he was either comforting his extremely ill wife, or suffering the aftermath of an assassination attempt. It is therefore remarkable that his Administration had any achievements at all. Nevertheless, serious reform of the Post Office, the Civil Service and of the conventions involving presidential deference to the Senate all occurred as a result of Garfield’s initiatives. Garfield managed a reduction of bond payments on the United States debt that saw interest rates cut from 6% to 3.5%, and also promoted African American figures and interests at a time when there was political sense in ignoring that constituency. It is also possible to talk to the circumstances of Garfield’s election in term of two key achievements. Garfield’s ‘dark horse’ nomination effectively preven...