However, though Cleveland had shown his friendliness to their section, the Southern politicians, usually intensely partisan, could not appreciate the President's attitude toward the civil service and other questions, and his bluntness offended many of them.

They followed him on the tariff but opposed him on most other questions, for his theory of Democracy and theirs diverged, and his kindly attitude was later repaid with ingratitude.
During the period in which the "rebel brigadiers" had controlled their States a new generation had arisen which began to make itself felt between 1885 and 1890.

The Grange had tried to teach the farmers to think of themselves as a class, and the skilled workmen in a few occupations, in the border States particularly, had been organized.

The Greenback craze had created a distrust of the capitalists of the East.
The fear of negro domination was no longer so overmastering, and the natural ambition of the younger men began to show itself in factional contests.

Younger men were coveting the places held by the old war-horses and were beginning to talk of cliques and rings.