The Greenback Party logo was rather charming.
On November 24, 1874 a new political party was born at at a convention held in Indianapolis, Indiana. They called themselves the Independent Party. In some states they would first appear on the Ballot as the National Party. But within months the new party was widely known as the Greenbacks while they grew at an astonishing rate challenging the entrenched Republican and Democratic Parties.
The party was formed out of frustration with both major parties as the powerful Eastern banking interests demanded that the Federal government stop issuing paper money and return to the issuance of currency to themselves. Federal paper money, popularly called greenbacks, had first been issued under Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase to help finance the Civil War. Inflation had been the inevitable result.
The banks and conservative hard money politicians in both major parties wanted not only to stop the government printing presses, they wanted to require that bills be redeemed in specie--gold. that would create instant deflation. But farmers and others who took out loans in inflated dollars would be required to repay the full face value plus interest in much more expensive new currency gold. This alone would wipe out many farmers and small businesses. It was also a blow to Western mining interests by demonetizing silver coinage. Silver coins would continue to circulate but notes--printed currency--would have to be paid in gold.
The banks got their way with the passage of the Coinage Act of 1873. Facing ruin, borrowers and their soft money supporters in both parties organized to challenge the banking oligarchs of the Gilded Age.
Within months the new party was established and running candidates under various names in most states. Although its greatest strength was in the Midwest and West, it also found support among small farmers in the South and Northeast. In fact, with Democrats and Republicans fracturing mainly along the lines of the Civil War, it looked for a time like the Greenbacks were the only truly national party.
The Species Payment Restoration Act of 1878 completed what the Coinage Act had begun. It limited remaining outstanding greenbacks in circulation to $300 million and the Secretary of the Treasury was directed to "redeem in coin" legal tender notes by January 1, 1879.
In 1876 the new party nominated the distinguished but eccentric 85 year old Peter Cooper for President. Cooper was an industrialist who had built the first practical locomotive in the U.S. He was also a philanthropist who founded Cooper's Union, a college open to students of all economic classes, and religious, racial, or ethnic backgrounds. For decades he had been a leading voice in liberal New York politics. The party knew it had no chance of winning the Presidency, but the prestige of Cooper led to success in getting on the Ballot in most states and helped elect local office holders.
The Greenbacks crested in the off-presidential year 1878 when he elected 13 members of Congress. Thomas Ewing, Jr. of Ohio, a pre-war Kansas Free Soil leader and a post-war soft money Democrat, was the leading spokesman for the party in Congress and the most widely known and influential public figure.
In 1880 the party broadened it base and attracted new support from industrial workers in the Northeast, especially the politically savvy Irish, by adopting a staunchly pro labor platform which advocated a progressive income tax and the eight hour day. It also made a bid for the support of middle class reformers, previously primarily Republican, by endorsing women's suffrage. The rise of the Grange Movement mirrored Greenback popularity with its original Farmer base.
James B, Weaver of Iowa was the Greenback standard bearer in 1880.
The Iowa's James B. Weaver. He received 305,997 popular votes, 3,3% of the total. It was the high water mark for the Greenbacks in presidential election.
Despite the continuing popularity of their core demand--the return to a system of government issued currency detached from gold--in some areas the party began a decline. The middle class reformers never did abandon the Republicans in any significant degree. Southern Democrats gained as Reconstruction ended and their seized state governments from Black Republicans and fusion or pro-Union Whites leading to the Jim Crow Era.
Meanwhile, the Knight of Labor largely collapsed following the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the rising craft union movement was both conservative and actually hostile to mass industrial workers greatly weakening their political power and influence. The Irish returned to being Democratic loyalists in most big cities.
Back in Indianapolis the 1884 party convention nominated Benjamin F. Butler for President. Butler also received the nomination of the even smaller Anti-Monopoly Party. As sitting Governor of Massachusetts, Butler was a polarizing figure in American politics. A pre-war Democrat, Buttleer was a political general famous for his occupation command of New Orleans and his order to treat "disrespectful" ladies as "women of the streets plying their trade." He later commanded the Department of Virginia where he refused to return run away slaves that reached his lines to their masters declaring the refugees were "contraband of war." He was also widely suspected of corruption. Elected to Congress after the War he became a leading Radical Republican and one of the managers of President Andrew Johnson's unsuccessful impeachment prosecution in the Senate.
Butler's presence on the ticket, despite a Mississippi running mate, virtually killed the Greenbacks in the South. As head of the ticket he won only 177.090 popular votes, just 1.7% of the total. The party was also reduced to just two seats in Congress, one of them taken by former presidential candidate Weaver.
By 1888 local party apparatus around the country collapsed. Only eight delegates showed up for a nominating convention. The gave up and went home. The party was essentially dead--but not their ideas.
In the 1890;s a new Populist Part took up most of the core platform. The Populist's first presidential candidate in 1892 was the last Greenback in Congress--Weaver again. In 1896 fiery Nebraska orator William Jennings Bryan got the nomination of both the populists and Democrats, campaigning on the old Greenback demand of the free coinage of silver and an end to the de facto gold stnadard
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