The American political system was probably the most open and free-wheeling congregation of voters and parties on the face of the globe in the late nineteenth century. Eligible voters, under manhood suffrage almost all of them male, turned out in phenomenal numbers to cast their ballots. Competing for their affections, ambitious politicians constantly formed new party organizations, broke up old ones into factions, and led both into cross-party fusion agreements or coalitions. In the struggle for supremacy within the states and within the nation, almost all these parties, factions, and cross-party combinations presented official platforms to the electorate that conferred both identity and purpose on their sometimes ephemeral organizations. These platforms were complex political tracts, demanding from the voter a relatively high degree of sophistication in both politics and economics. Intended, on the one hand, to attract voters to their cause and, on the other, to shape public opinion with reference to actual legislation, party platforms translated popular sentiment into fairly clear public policy alternatives that unambiguously traced out the lines of class and sectional conflict.

The major purpose of this chapter is to present a descriptive analysis of state party platforms in the United States between the end of Reconstruction and the turn of the century. Given the importance of federal legislation as structuring context for industrialization, issues related to economic development dominated national party platforms in the late nineteenth century.