Sixth Grand Council

Herbert Clemens.

The Sixth Grand Council of the Confederation of North America was elected to a five-year term on 14 February 1868. The partisan makeup of the Sixth Grand Council was 85 Conservative Party and 65 Liberal Party. The Conservative majority elected party leader Herbert Clemens of Indiana to the office of Governor-General. It is not known who the Conservatives chose as Majority Leader or the Liberals as Minority Leader.

The Conservatives had been out of power for ten years while the Liberals under Governor-General Kenneth Parkes had lined their pockets at the public expense. Clemens had run as a reformer, but he also knew that the Conservatives expected him to distribute the spoils of their victory to them. Where the Liberals had been in the pockets of large corporations, railroads and banks that were usually based in the Northern Confederation, the Conservatives were supported by small businessmen and farmers that were mostly based in the Southern Confederation and Indiana. As a result, businessmen who had accepted favors and been awarded government contracts by the Liberals were punished by the Conservatives, while their opponents were expected to show their gratitude for any largesse they received from the national government.

Clemens' reforms tended to be self-serving. The Bank of North America's position as the country's central bank was revoked, but this meant that Clemens' Minister of Finance was able to transfer Treasury funds from the B.N.A. to smaller local banks owned by loyal Conservatives. The Reform Bill of 1869 widened the franchise beyond landholders to include middle-class shopkeepers and skilled laborers, but since these classes were expected to vote Conservative, Clemens was simply expanding his own voter base. Likewise, the Reform Bill of 1870 reapportioned Grand Council seats for the first time since the original lines had been drawn in 1842 under the Second Britannic Design. Since the population of the N.C. had grown, its share of the seats rose from 44 to 45. However, the new districts were drawn to give Conservative majorities to more of them. The same was true in Indiana, where the number of seats rose from 24 to 29. Confederations that lost seats such as Manitoba and Quebec also saw their districts redrawn to favor the Conservatives.

What the Conservatives had not expected was that the expansion of the franchise in 1869 would spark the creation of a new political party, the People's Party of the Southern Confederation. The newly enfranchised small farmers of the S.C. had seen their interests ignored by both major parties for decades, and now that they had the vote they intended to create a party that would give them what they wanted. At a convention held in Norfolk, Virginia, S.C., the small farmers drafted a document called the Norfolk Resolves outlining their goals: to raise taxes on large businesses and use the money to support agriculture; to support the price of cotton; to create government-run banks that would offer low-interest loans to farmers; and to create a government agency that would regulate transportation costs.

As word of the formation of the People's Party and the Norfolk Resolves spread to the rest of the C.N.A., disaffected groups in other confederations formed their own People's Parties: in the Northern Confederation by William Richter of the newly-formed Consolidated Laborers Federation, who was soon joined by small businessmen who were being squeezed by the new industrial giants and the railroads; in Indiana by wealthy wheat farmers who felt that they were being abused by N.C.-based banks and railroads; in Manitoba by radical intellectuals; and in Vandalia by struggling pioneers. By the time of the 1873 Grand Council elections the various confederation-level parties had joined together to form a national party called the People's Coalition.

Dissatisfaction with the status quo took other forms at this time. In the growing cities of the eastern confederations, slums filled with recent European immigrants, and gangs arose among the slums, usually based on ethnic origin or race. In 1869, a predominantly Irish gang in New York called the Merry Walkers seized control of City Hall and occupied it for two weeks. Although the Merry Walkers were eventually dislodged by provincial militia, gangs in other cities followed their example, and life in the cities of the C.N.A. grew increasingly hazardous.

Both the Conservatives and the Liberals renominated their party leaders, Herbert Clemens and Victor Astor, respectively. However, the Conservatives were shocked when election day came and they learned that their self-serving electoral reforms had only served to boost the fortunes of the upstart People's Coalition. The Liberals lost two seats, and the Conservatives eight, to the P.C. The Conservatives were able to retain their majority in the Seventh Grand Council, but their reforms would ultimately prove their undoing.