Saturday, May 01, 2010

1894 midterm election

From Wiki...
U.S. House election, 1894 was a realigning election—a major Republican landslide that set the stage for the decisive Election of 1896. The elections of members of the United States House of Representatives in 1894 came in the middle of President Grover Cleveland's second term. The nation was in its deepest economic depression ever following the Panic of 1893, so economic issues were at the forefront. In the spring, a major coal strike damaged the economy of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. It was accompanied by violence; the miners lost and many moved toward the Populist party. Immediately after the coal strike concluded, Eugene V. Debs led a nationwide railroad strike, called the Pullman Strike. It shut down the nation's transportation system west of Detroit for weeks, until President Cleveland's use of federal troops ended the strike. Debs went to prison (for disobeying a court order). Illinois' Governor John Peter Altgeld, a Democrat, broke bitterly with Cleveland. The fragmented and disoriented Democratic Party was crushed everywhere outside the South, losing more than half its seats to the Republican Party. Even in the South, the Democrats lost seats to Republican-Populist electoral fusion in Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.[1][2] The Democrats lost 125 seats in the election while the Republicans won 130 seats. This makes the 1894 election the largest midterm election victory in the entire history of the United States.
Praying that this coming 2010 midterm election will mirror 1894! President Grover Cleveland was a Democrat too. 1896 presidential election of President McKinley is significant to the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico.
[ht: hillbuzz.org commenter#6, bkm]