Something I've thought about recently is that contrary to a common misconception that the Democrats and Republicans have "switched sides" there's always been some continuity within each. Republicans have always tended to be the more nationalistic party and accused Democrats of being traitors/soft on the rebs/reds/terrorists, and included in their coalition Protestant zealots (in the north) and small business owners. To some extent current trends are causing the parties to revert to coalitions resembling those in the third party system as well with Democrats as the party of more recent immigrants, finance capital and free trade (DLC type Democrats are actually sort of similar ideologically to the Bourbon Democrats) and Republicans as the party of the native born working class and protectionism. The difference is that now it's as if their had been a nineteenth century coalition that had included the northern conservative Republicans and southern ex-slaveholders.
You can extent it back to the Federalists with rebs/red/terrorists. Daniel Shays played a role in triggering the Constitutional Convention. There is also the whiskey rebellion, and the Dorr Rebellion.
Its one aspect of the Conservative versus Liberal that has remained relatively constant for 200 years and is a good indicator of which side is a Conservative versus which is a Liberal. Ironically, one of the few times this comes up with a contrary example is the Wilson administration, though it should be noted that Wilson came from elitist circles, was very anglophile and was part of a melting of traditional conservative aspects (including elements from Burke) into Liberalism. This is not a flip though, it is an academic absorption to compensate for the embrace of government for egalitarian ends that the left was doing in this period on both sides of the pond. In the UK, the Liberal Party was doing the same things, taking it from largely the same sources, and just like in the US the end result was electoral disaster in the 1920's. The difference is that the Democrats had a rotten borough of a whole region to fall back on for a decade, while the Liberals went bye bye.
Probably a bridge too far and too many butterflies, but from this do you think that if the South won the Civil War (ie no South for the Dems to fall back on), that the Democrats would have collapsed as a national party and been replaced by something else entirely?
If so, what replaces them?
The obvious answer looking at other countries seems to be a socialist party not unlike say, the British Labour party; probably getting elected nationally for the first time in 1932?
