Charles F. Crisp (D-Ga.), the House speaker after the 1890 election.
The 1888 election, one of the closest in American history and one of five in which the loser of the popular vote won, produced the first united government for Republicans since the Grant Administration. The Republicans enjoyed small majorities in both the House and the Senate, although the numbers in the Senate and House would increase with the admittance of new states. The House situation provided a challenge for Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine, but he managed the situation ably and had a remarkably productive Congress, including passing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which was weak), admitting six new states to the union, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, the second Morrill Act for land grants for universities, and the Chace International Copyright Act. Such achievements were made possible in part by eliminating the “disappearing quorum”. Legislators could, until Reed, literally not answer to their names when present and thus be able to stop business on the grounds that there were not enough legislators to conduct business. The 51st Congress was a highly productive one known as the “Billion Dollar Congress” since this was the first time that Congress had appropriated a billion dollars for a budget. This Congress sought to spend the surplus (which was viewed as a problem in that time) that had accumulated under President Cleveland, and this spending included union veterans pension legislation and increased navy spending. However, this spending, including some particular items that were thought of as questionable in their usefulness, came under fire. Critics thought the spending itself to be an excuse to enact the GOP’s signature policy: tariff increases. The GOP in this time was explicitly in favor of the protective tariff, and in 1890 the Republican Congress on a partisan vote passed the McKinley Tariff. This proved quite unpopular and making matters worse was that the economy was in recession. This was the result of The Panic of 1890, an international economic crisis that had begun with the insolvency of Barings Bank in London and spread throughout the world. Thus, while the prices of goods rising could be said to benefit domestic workers, it was a double whammy for those who had lost their jobs in the recession. Other problems arose for the GOP as well, including the foundation of the Populist Party, which harmed them in the Midwest, and that state parties had gotten increasingly aggressive in pushing for “English only” education, nativism, and temperance laws, resulting in voters of German and Irish extraction overwhelmingly moving to the Democrats (Jensen, 122-153).
The results were remarkable for the Democrats and catastrophic for the GOP. The GOP sustained major losses, including in places typically regarded as safe for the party, losing a total of 93 seats, bringing the number of Republican representatives down to 86. Their House numbers would only reach such lows again in 1936. In Illinois, the GOP went from having 13 of 20 representatives to 6, but even more jarring was Wisconsin, in which the GOP delegation fell from 7 out of 9 to 1 out of 9. This presaged Grover Cleveland’s win in those states in 1892. To understand what an achievement that was, Wisconsin hadn’t voted Democratic since 1852 and Illinois since 1856. Even in Massachusetts, at the time a solidly Republican state in which the Democrats only typically ran well in Boston, Republicans had their representation shaved from 10 out of 12 representatives to 5 out of 12. A few notable Republicans lost reelection in 1890, such as Joe Cannon of Illinois (who would serve as House speaker from 1903 to 1911), future President William McKinley of Ohio, and future progressive Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. Some notable figures who won this year included Populist activist Tom Watson of Georgia and future presidential contender William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. The saving grace for the GOP in this election was that although they lost four seats in the Senate, the admission of the new states of Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming, and they held a majority. However, not even this would save them from losing this majority in the 1892 election.
The Issue of Race
Along with being a disaster for the GOP, this election also served as a disaster for black voters in the South trying to exercise some political power. 1890 was the last time until the 1922 that the GOP made a serious effort to pass civil rights legislation, namely the Lodge Federal Elections bill, which was both a voting rights and an anti-corruption measure, as fraud was part of what produced Democratic domination of the South. Democrats were unified against this measure and campaigned heavily against what they called the “Force Bill”, seeing it as a partisan imposition. The new speaker, Charles F. Crisp of Georgia, was the first and only Confederate veteran to serve in this role. After the 1890 and 1892 elections, the Republicans seemed to regard civil rights as a losing issue and de-prioritized it. Democrats would get their walloping only four years later.
References
1890 United States House of Representatives elections. Wikipedia.
Retrieved from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
Jensen, R.J. (1971). The winning of the Midwest: social and political conflict, 1888-1896. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.