- Historic Sites The Gilded Age For years it was seen as the
worst of times: bloated, crass, witlessly extravagant. But now
scholars are beginning to find some of the era’s unexpected
virtues. August/september 1984 | Volume 35, Issue 5 No era ever
debated partisan questions more fervently. The issues now seem
remote, but they fascinated and moved voters at the time. By the
1960s some historians had begun to argue that scholars in the
1930s, who revered a powerful Executive and an interventionist
federal government, had read their biases into the study of the
Gilded Age. Congress had remained more powerful than the
Presidency during the period, and as often as not, one or both
houses had not been of the President’s party; this explained the
partisan deadlocks and compromises of the time. The national
political scene had been one long struggle to build a new
majority, a battle the Republicans finally won in 1894 and 1896.
The highest rate of voter participation in American history
occurred in the 188Os and 189O