User:Dsimpson92/sandbox

The Greenback idea came about in 1866 when western farmers demanded the retirement of the greenback currency to end. The Greenback Party was founded at a meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, on November 25, 1874. It was originally called the Independent Party or the National Party. In the late 1870s, the party controlled local government in a number of industrial and mining communities and contributed to the election of 21 members in the United States Congress independent of the two major parties.[4] The Gilded Age was an era of political ferment and debate over government’s proper role in regulating the nation’s economy.[5] The Greenback movement began as a protest against the national system of money and banking that had emerged by the mid-1870s. In particular, Greenbackers condemned the National Banking System, created by the National Banking Act of 1863 condemed the de-monetization of silver (Coinage Act of 1873 as "Crime of '73" to Greenback), and protested the Resumption Act of 1875, which mandated that the U.S. Treasury issue specie (coinage or "hard" currency) in exchange for greenback currency upon its presentation for redemption beginning on 1 January 1879, thus returning the nation to the gold standard. Together, these measures created an inflexible currency controlled by banks rather than the federal government. Greenbackers contended that such a system favored creditors and industry to the detriment of farmers and laborers.[6] In hope of gaining more supporters in the upcoming Presidential election in 1880, the Greenback Party broadened its platform to include support for an income tax, an eight hour day, and allowing women the right to vote. The candidate nominated by the Greenback Labor party was James Weaver. Joined with Labor unions, the party would change its name to the Greenback Labor party. Ideological similarities also existed between the Grange (The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry) and the Greenback movement. For example, both the Grange and the GAP favored a national graduated income tax and proposed that public lands be given to settlers rather than sold to land speculators.[7] The town of Greenback, Tennessee was named after the Greenback Party about 1882.[8] According to William D. Barns of West Virginia University, West Virginia's Independent Greenback Party attracted reformists in 1878, from both theDemocrats and Republicans, dwarfing the latter for a short period. Many state delegates were elected to the West Virginia Legislature, but by 1882, nearly all these had returned to their original parties, or had been voted out by conservative politicians Among its national spokesmen, although not the best known, was Thomas Ewing, Jr., a noted Free State advocate in Kansas before the civil war, a controversial major general of Union forces during the war, and a Republican turned Democrat after the Grant Administration. His national debates on Greenback Monetary policy, led the party's growth and influence as spokesmen against the post-war redevelopment of monopolistic gold-based capitalism. Ewing's advice to Andrew Johnson had helped point the Administration towards an anti-gold standard Treasury department.[9] Ewing served in Congress from 1877 to 1881 during the Hayes administration as a leading spokesman for those national politicians who wanted the nation's money supply used to expand commerce and fund westward expansion of the nation, not repay in gold the interest on civil war bonds Eastern bankers had bought to fund much of the civil war effort but whose antebellum lending practices to the South had helped slavery flourish.[10] His 1875 national debates with hard money New York Governor Stewart L. Woodford set the stage for a rapid but brief rise in party national influence