A Study Of Ignatius Donnelly’s Populism(1850-1900)

The social and political thoughts and movements of American farmers protesting the social injustice brought about by laissez-faire capitalism in the late 19 th century were collectively referred to as "populism".This populist trend of thought and movement has a far-reaching impact on American history.The Populist Party represents the interests of the vast number of small-scale peasant producers.By uniting the urban working class,they extensively absorb the vulnerable groups in American society,and under the guidance of the elite leaders of the old middle class,launched a political movement to improve their social status.This study selects Ignatius Donnelly,a famous populist in Minnesota and one of the founders of the American populist Party,as the research object,and examines the development of his populist political practice in the context of history through his personal experience.The first chapter mainly introduces his own life and examines his family,study and early life experience in the process of personal growth.Explore how he moved into Minnesota to become a politician.He changed from an early Democrat to a Republican,during which his political activities were biased with changes in his thinking.He became a veritable farmer and helped set up an agricultural association.The second chapter deeply explores how Donnelly embarked on the road of resorting to power for populism step by step in the background of American Civil War and reconstruction,and his own populist thoughts gradually tended to mature,guiding him to carry out practical activities.Since the Civil War,he has focused on the railway industry,trying to fight for the opportunity to develop large railroads for Minnesota.During the Civil War,he fought for the rights of soldiers and supported the abolition of black slavery.During the Green money period of the 1870 s after the end of the Civil War,the goal of his populist political activities became more and more clear.here he describes how he supported agricultural tariff reform,promoted the establishment of peasant unions,antitrust parties and led the Grange movement.The third chapter takes the American gilded era as the background.the first aspect is from the populist masterpiece Caesar’s Column published by Donnelly in 1890,which has caused great repercussions since its publication and has been evaluated as Donnelly’s populist masterpiece.I would like to explore the writing background of Caesar’s Column,the populist connotation expressed by the author and the true intention of writing.And the influence of the work itself on Donnelly’s political life.The second aspect is to start with the great event of the founding of the Populist Party in 1892,describing in detail the process of the founding of the Populist Party and the specific content of the program of the Populist Party.This paper focuses on Donnelly’s great contribution to the founding of the Populist Party and how he led the establishment of the Minnesota populist Party after the founding of the Populist Party,including Donnelly’s political activities in the later process of the integration of the Populist Party and the Democratic Party.