Political developments in the late 1880s and early 1890s unbalanced American finances. The Republicans won the 1888 elections, and under President Benjamin Harrison, they sharply raised tariffs on imports, expanded spending on pensions for veterans of the Civil War, and—to mollify the partisans of silver—authorized the government to purchase huge quantities of silver with “Treasury notes,” a new form of currency. Together, these actions created a budget deficit that robbed the U.S. government of the resources to respond to financial crises. Meanwhile, a financial crisis in London largely cut off the flow of investment from Europe to North America. Meanwhile, farmers of wheat and cotton who wanted radical change organized the Farmers’ Alliance, while the partisans of silver coinage, less radical but more numerous, coalesced into a coherent movement as well. Maneuvers in Congress around the currency did little but scuttle the last substantial federal civil rights initiative for decades, while international negotiations to expand the use of silver as money failed as well.