Political Corruption in Postbellum America

Podcast: A Journey into Human History · Miranda Casturo

Opublikowano: 2026-06-29

In the years following the Civil War, American politics were disjointed, corrupt, and, at the federal level, largely ineffective in terms of addressing the challenges that Americans faced. Local and regional politics, and the bosses who ran the political machines, dominated through systematic graft and bribery. Americans around the country recognized that solutions to the mounting problems they faced would not come from Washington, DC, but from their local political leaders. Thus, the cycle of federal ineffectiveness and machine politics continued through the remainder of the century relatively unabated. Meanwhile, in the Compromise of 1877, an electoral commission declared Rutherford...