Okay, got the part of this update minus the 1884 election done. Will put the poll up now.
Part Seventy-Six: Money and Power
The Gold Standard:
With the victory of the Democrats in the 1880 election, one of the new Democratic administration's priorities was to bring the United States onto the gold standard as almost all of Europe had done. In 1881, the House of Representatives passed the Cleveland-Gibson Act, which would demonetize silver and phase out silver currency in favor of gold currency and place the United States completely on the gold standard. However, the act faced much opposition from politicians in the western United States and from businesses such as mining and railroad companies with interests in the silver coming from the Rocky Mountains. The opposition was powerful enough in the Senate that the Cleveland-Gibson Act only received 36 votes for and was voted down with 48 votes against.
However, the Democratic Party would not be deterred and sought to restrict the use of silver currency once again two years later in 1883. A recession in 1882 had presented another opportunity to decry the bimetallic standard. Congressman Grover Cleveland, one of the authors of the failed act two years prior, brought another bill to the House of Representatives that was less harsh than the earlier bill but still made restrictions on the use of silver as a currency. The new Coinage Act of 1883 reduced the size of silver coinage and transferred much of the silver coin production to trade dollars. The news silver trade dollars were minted mainly in Ferroplano and Tacoma and were mostly used in trade with California, Mexico, and East Asia. While the Fifth Coinage Act did satisfy some in the gold standard movement, it angered miners in the Rockies and did little to shelter the country from the drastic fall in silver prices as the European Monetary Standard solidified that continent's movement to the gold standard. Immediately after the passage of the act, a slight recession hit the United States that lasted into early 1884 as bankers and monetary speculators reacted to the act.
Election of 1884:
The 1884 election was a watershed election for the United States. The Democratic victory in 1880 had upset the long-running Republican dominance of the presidency and forced the Republicans to realign themselves. With the Democrats taking a solid hold of many former Confederate states and gaining popularity with business interests in the Northeast, the 1884 Republican National Convention had a slight air of desperation. James G. Blaine, a divisive figure in the 1880 convention, was quickly dismissed on the ballot as many in the party blamed him for the loss to Winfield Scott Hancock. After five ballots, Vermont senator George Edmunds won the nomination for the Republican presidential candidate. Edmunds was chosen for his reputation in Congress among industrial workers. John Sherman, former Treasury Secretary under President Burnside, won the nomination for the vice presidential candidacy[1].
In most of the country, the general campaign was centered around the debate over the gold standard. In the summer of 1884, Hancock made several speeches in the Northeast regarding the benefits of the gold standard and how the United States was one of the few countries to not adopt the practice. The Democrats blamed the 1883 recession on the bimetallic system as well as the economic uncertainty created by the attempts to block the legislation in Congress. However, Edmunds and the Republicans retorted that the recession was the result of anticipation of a move toward the gold standard and the potential reduction in the supply of currency. Edmunds also blamed the low tariffs were hurting the production of American goods. Edmunds especially mentioned the declining price of agricultural products in a speech in Decatur, Demoine to help gain the farmers' votes. The Republicans' targetting of Hancock's administration worked and the Republicans won decisively. Much of the South remained Democratic, however, and Hancock only lost Maryland and his home state of Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point. Had Hancock won those two states, the electoral vote would have been a tie and the election would have gone to the House.
Here is a link to the poll that decided the election result.
[1] George Edmunds and John Sherman were in OTL the main authors of the Sherman Antitrust Act.