The most likely explanation is that towns, states, and voting districts in the South had <em>much </em>higher numbers of African American voters whereas there were far fewer African Americans in the North. Remember that while African Americans were elected almost immediately in the South, Jim Crow and voting laws instituted soon thereafter boxed them out completely (because white Southerners knew the number of African American voters would vastly outnumber white voters in many areas).
The income divide and excesses of the rich during the Gilded Age caused "widespread corruption" and a rise of a "counter culture" in the arts that challenged the status quo.
