Stalwarts

views updated

STALWARTS

STALWARTS, a term applied to a conservative faction of the Republican Party during the Gilded Age. Led by Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, they supported black male suffrage in the South and opposed the civil-service reform program of Rutherford B. Hayes's administration. Although the Stalwarts were unsuccessful in securing Ulysses S. Grant's nomination for a third presidential term in 1880, the assassination of James Garfield in 1881 elevated to the presidency Chester A. Arthur, the last Stalwart to hold the office. After Conkling's retirement from politics in the 1880s, the designation soon passed out of use.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863– 1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Jordan, David M. Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in the Senate. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971.

Asa E.Martin/t. g.

See alsoCivil Service ; Liberal Republican Party ; Reconstruction .