Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

^You've made some good points in this thread Yankee, and have somewhat convinced me of your "continuously conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats" theory. However, I think that once you start calling plantation owners "liberals", the term basically loses all meaning. Owning other human beings as property is antithetical to all of liberalism's principles and everything it stands for. But since you don't seem to view the racial issues of the 19th century in a liberal/conservative lens, I'll get away from the obviously illiberal racial stuff to focus on other things. Namely, that plantation owners were fabulously wealthy individuals who believed in all sorts of hierarchies, not just for blacks but also for poor whites. If wealthy and privileged individuals who strongly believed in hierarchy and keeping the poor and and oppressed classes down aren't conservatives, then I don't know who is.

Oh, but I guess that's not "what defined conservative values at the time on the national scale." It doesn't matter if you're a rich and powerful landowner who despised the working poor; to be a conservative you have to be a Northern Republican nativist or a New England banker, because Yankee says so! Why? Because Republicans are always more conservative, Democrats always more liberal, that's just the way it is. It doesn't matter what the members of the party actually believe, as a Democrat is by definition a liberal, and a Republican a conservative. Besides, trying to apply modern ideological definitions onto 19th century political parties isn't historically accurate, even if there are certain principles, like the defense of hierarchy and order, that are definitionally conservative. No matter if Democrats were often at least as strong believers in hierarchy as Republicans; the only 19th century issues that can truly be viewed through a liberal/conservative prism are ones that Democrats and Republicans disagreed on, like immigration and free trade. Because the Democrats were liberals on all the issues and the Republicans conservatives, obviously.

I have talked about race many times but the reason why I don't use it to divide liberals versus conservatism, is because few back then cared enough to do anything with a few exceptions, especially after 1876, which is again what most of the last few posts had been focused on 1876 to 1896, as the period where continuity is most challenged. Plantations still existed post 1876 and while conservatives in intraparty squabbles, while conservatives within their societal dynamic, they aligned with the Democrats for 3 main reasons, race consciousness, economic and anti puritanism. Nothing I said here, or previously is wrong factually.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Can we all agree that “Democrats are still the party of the KKK. They trick blacks into voting for them by promising them welfare” is a nonsensical claim?

I don't believe anyone in this thread has every suggested otherwise —and yes, obviously, this is an absurdly stupid claim, fundamentally just as ignorant as the "party switch" theory if not more so. Dinesh D'souza is a propagandist, not a historian.

Its a modern political hot take. "Democrats as party of dependency" etc etc.

The whole point of several of my posts is not to rely on modern politically biased historical interpretations from the same people who would be prone to roll out the "Louis XIV was a Socialist" or more frequently, "Hitler was a Socialist".

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Seeing as the Civil War/Slavery were non-ideological issues, did the early Republican Party have many or a lot of people who were former Democrats and who were on other issues Jeffersonians/Jacksonians? I know Fremont and Hamlin were former Democrats (and I'm assuming that they had been typical Democrats when they had been Democrats) but were former Democrats like them common in the early Republican party, and to the extent that they existed, were they noticeably different to the former Whigs? Like, was Fremont noticeably more Jeffersonian/liberal in philosophy from his co-partisan Lincoln, with significant divergences outside of the national question? Or was there not much difference?

Fremont ran as more hardcore on slavery with little focus on anything else. Lincoln ran as a traditional Whig on economics and more moderate on opposition to slavery. That was the big difference and arguably played a role in his victory.

Republicans largely kept the voters they acquired (ME, NH WI and MI), which is part civil war legacy and part generational probably, but it is worth noting that the Whigs had the upper hand on policy and kept it for decades after the war. Also the economic benefits shifted as industrialism spread to more states in the North like Michigan and Wisconsin, which would make protectionism more popular.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The way I view it, America had little in the way of a political left before the 1890s (obviously it existed before then, but it wasn't very powerful).  Before that, America had two parties that were mostly conservative.  As much as the American Civil War was a defining moment in US history, the divisions of that war seem to have very little bearing on modern politics.  It was right-wing infighting.

This sounds right

Well, no. To be fair, it is not entirely clear to me what Celticempire means by the "political left." His analysis may have some value strictly in reference to the period immediately following the end of the American Civil War, provided one takes the view that liberalism is an essentially capitalist ideology and therefore inherently conservative. Defense of that thesis largely depends upon a Marxist reading of history —which is not without merit, but carried with it obvious insufficiencies if not augmented with pre-capitalist understandings of class and social obligation. It is difficult to argue this is an accurate summary of American society and politics prior to 1850 at the very earliest, however. Jeffersonian and Jacksonian dogma may have lacked a socialist motive, but both were essentially hostile to the emergence of capital as the organizing interest in society and sought to disrupt the traditional class structure inherited from feudalism. This is not compatible with a classical understanding of conservatism. Alternately, one can take a Cathconesque view of the issue and arrange the politics of the era along a spectrum of traditional to progressive, with Jackson and his adherents defending the traditional rights of the lower classes against the disruptive intrusion of nascent liberal capitalism. That interpretation probably has more merit, but ignores the radical undercurrents present in Jacksonianism, especially during the 1830s and 40s.

Yea, he is using a defined later definition of left to label all previous things as Conservative, which is very misleading way to view that period historically.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Midwest is the main difference between the two maps, as it was slightly more Republican in 1876. However, one could attribute this to the fact that in the 19th century the Midwest was less of its own distinct region, and more an extension of the Western states (hence the west part of the name).

Aside from the points that Truman made about the "midwest" being the "West" at the time, there is another important point that has to be made here that is overlooked at the state and superficial level.

Yes Democrats won New York because of the strength of their candidate there and the power of immigrant voting (which was becoming a problem for republicans over the next several years in many states). However, to treat the Midwest as a distinct entity, glosses over the important point that, the Republicans won Pennsylvania in 1876 first off. Beyond that, the point that economically the Midwest was tied in with the cities of Boston, Philly and New York because of the railroads and canals. Furthermore, they were demographically linked to New England, which had seeded the Republican base in many of the Midwestern States (MI, Northern Parts of OH,IN, and ILL; and of course Kansas/Nebraska).

Viewing this as an extension of the practically non-existent west, is extremely problematic as this is a region dominated by the economics of the NE and a region that was dominated by people who were from the NE (with pockets that were exceptions and thus those pockets were heavily Democratic: Southern ILL, IN, etc).

If anything, the period of the early 1800's, should be viewed as the economic and demographic wrestling of the Midwest from its New Orleans orientation (River trade) and re-aiming it as an extension of the NE (Canal and river trade) leading to the creation of the conceptualization of the "North" an entity stemming from Maine to MN and thus included the Midwest together with the Northeast, as a single single unit that would in terms of economic and population dominate the country, unify to elect Lincoln and possess the resources to win the Civil War. This still existed in 1876 in large parts.

Tilden's Mid-Atlantic strength can be explained in two parts.

1. NJ/DE/MD: These states are settled differently and they were largely Democratic leaning during this period because of this "non-Yankee/non-Quaker/non-RightsortofGerman settlement pattern that thus made them ill suited to the Republican Party. Lincoln lost DE and NJ in 1864 for instance.

2. Immigrant hotbeds: The fact that the economic core cities themselves voted Democratic doesn't detract from the leanings of the region as a whole, anymore than Charlotte, Atlanta and Austin voting Dem in 2004 in does. Republicans did win Philly though, and New York and Boston were centers of Democratic machines with plenty of immigrants to power them. Were it not 3:00 AM and if I didn't have to work tomorrow, I could go into a lengthy discussion about how the "growth" region and its dominate political/economic order, creates the seeds of its own elimination. In a long view of the situation that is ultimately what happened and why The NE really went from being Republican to Democratic leaning by 1976 as these working class and immigrant voters obtained the economic power to out vote the bourgeoisie Republicans across the region. However that was not the case in 1876, New York was very much like Florida of today, a swing state with a lot of immigrant voters but with the one big exception that the NY Democratic Party was actually effective with a popular home town Governor leading the Presidential ticket.
  

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am going to try and hammer this one out, but this is really pushing it time wise for me.


Woman's Suffrage

Motivations- The thing to remember is that as was said earlier, people support things for different reasons. If you look at anti-slavery and abolitionism, a number of people supported that because they wanted to "civilize" the "heathens" and they viewed slavery as a hindrance to being able to spread the gospel to them, especially after several black codes were past out of fear of a slave revolt on a massive scale (like Haiti or Nat Turner's Rebellion). It is worth noting that the concept of the Jefferson Davis, "Slavery as a civilizing force" was developed in all its infamy and ridiculum in large part as a rhetorical reaction to the moralistic cultural imperialism of pious Northern protestant abolitionists referenced above.  The latter Jeff Davis bs line is far more remembered, then the any kind of deep dive into the motivations of abolitionists, but we can certainly look past the cultural imperialism today, since the end goal of abolitionism was justifiable for other means. That point is the important take away.

When it comes to women versus male dynamic in this time, there is a distinct traditional conservative versus classically liberal divide. This is further emphasized by the point that "married women" tended to be conservative leaning as late as the 2000s and thus when you account for the higher marriage/lower divorce rates you begin to paint a picture that leads one to some interesting observations. For instance, drunkenness was primarily a problem caused by men, along with prostitution and guess who the people running the prostitutes out often were? Married women. Who were the ones smashing up the saloons? Married women. A generalized but effective analogy I often look to and gives an interesting take on western settlement is that men often went first and brought with them saloons and brothels, and then married women came and forced the closure of the saloons and brothels and the opening up of schools and churches.

Therefore, women were a force for societal stability and the family, against the libertine urges of male virility and appetites. This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious. Women strongly backed Harding and Eisenhower for President as well. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think I will sleep walk my way through one more. Enjoy parenthesis hell.

Progressivism is a meaningless label that could mean absolutely anything almost like moderate today in that what it means to be a moderate is something different for everyone you talk to. The same was true for progressive, as you could talk to a social darwinist and a communist and get a different view of what constituted "progress" towards their "ideal society". It is thus very problematic to create a fictitious, unified group of "progressives" to latch onto in this period since the very concept itself was a subjective endorsement towards the ultimate end objective of achieving their predispositions towards pre-existing ideological and political ends.

Most examples of "social reform" and "social progress" were done either in the name of societal stability, familial stability, or religious motivated objectives, with overlap among the three, and this fits in as a definition of a traditional conservatism distilled through a Burkean lense (either via incrementalism or in the form of pursuing the reform to preserve the overall societal structure, both are Burkean concepts). This is why it is the "Conservative" Party (I conceded nothing on this point. I said "people didn't feel the need to emphasize their ideology aside from their party like Mike Pence today because people saw their parties as vehicles for their objectives". That is not a concession of anything. The Democrats were founded to expand access to democracy beyond wealth and land limitations and Republicans were founded to conserve the Republic from the corrupting influence of slave power. These are liberal and conservative objectives respectively and informed their latter actions or at the least they tried to couch their latter actions in these traditions with varying degrees of success. There was a firm embrace of Jefferson/Jackson for Dems, such as the dinners named after them to raise money. Dissident factions don't discount this point, nor the presence of the 'conservative' southern elite) supporting abolition, Prohibition (and yes, Republicans were the leaders on this btw 1865 and 1896 hence Rum, Romanism and Rebellion. It is no accident that by 1920 this had become muddled, which was after Bryan had cast adrift the Catholic middle class to the Republicans and thus no longer constrained by them many Democrats felt free to back it, while likewise many Republicans didn't feel comfortable doing so. But this wasn't the case prior to Bryan. Republicans certainly became its champion again in the 1920s and it was Democrats to who ended it. So muddled or not, it began and ended the same way, the middle period be damned) and suffrage movement (though even that wasn't clear cut as Truman noted).  

Most of the examples of economic "progress" came from radicals who desired changes to the existing system because they were left behind by it, populists to catered to the same impulse and finally Conservatives trying to head the revolution off at the pass (see my post in the Hawley thread on the trends board. The latter is exactly the play book that Otto Von Bismarck used to avert such a problem in Germany at least until the end of World War One, but hell war can do that).

There is no unified conceptualization of "progressivism" on either social or economic side during most of this time period. It is a collection of unrelated political movements that are pushed for disparate motivations ranging from left to right in origin and upon whose success, a broad generalized label is swept onto it and the era in which it occurred. We want heroes and villains in history, but this period is very much like a spaghetti western where the "Good" guy is literally defrauding cities of bandit reward money as part of a scam. Racists pursuing economic populism and debt relief, and cultural imperialists trying to civilize the world in God's image while keeping the Plebs with their pitchforks from storming the gates.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am going to try and hammer this one out, but this is really pushing it time wise for me.


Woman's Suffrage

Motivations- The thing to remember is that as was said earlier, people support things for different reasons. If you look at anti-slavery and abolitionism, a number of people supported that because they wanted to "civilize" the "heathens" and they viewed slavery as a hindrance to being able to spread the gospel to them, especially after several black codes were past out of fear of a slave revolt on a massive scale (like Haiti or Nat Turner's Rebellion). It is worth noting that the concept of the Jefferson Davis, "Slavery as a civilizing force" was developed in all its infamy and ridiculum in large part as a rhetorical reaction to the moralistic cultural imperialism of pious Northern protestant abolitionists referenced above.  The latter Jeff Davis bs line is far more remembered, then the any kind of deep dive into the motivations of abolitionists, but we can certainly look past the cultural imperialism today, since the end goal of abolitionism was justifiable for other means. That point is the important take away.

When it comes to women versus male dynamic in this time, there is a distinct traditional conservative versus classically liberal divide. This is further emphasized by the point that "married women" tended to be conservative leaning as late as the 2000s and thus when you account for the higher marriage/lower divorce rates you begin to paint a picture that leads one to some interesting observations. For instance, drunkenness was primarily a problem caused by men, along with prostitution and guess who the people running the prostitutes out often were? Married women. Who were the ones smashing up the saloons? Married women. A generalized but effective analogy I often look to and gives an interesting take on western settlement is that men often went first and brought with them saloons and brothels, and then married women came and forced the closure of the saloons and brothels and the opening up of schools and churches.

Therefore, women were a force for societal stability and the family, against the libertine urges of male virility and appetites. This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious. Women strongly backed Harding and Eisenhower for President as well.  

Even if women were temperamentally or politically conservative at the time, that doesn't change the fact that expanding the franchise is a fundamentally liberal principle that throughout history has always been pushed for by liberals and opposed by conservatives. It also doesn't change the fact that the suffragettes were viewed as dangerous radicals by the establishment and the ruling class.

Doesn't that happen all the time though in politics? Co-opting the other sides tactics or even policies for political gain or victory on another objective? 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

With regards to that discussion about Progressivism, I found this section in the 1916 Republican that I think is relevant:

The Republican party has long believed in the rigid supervision and strict regulation of the transportation and of the great corporations of the country. It has put its creed into its deeds, and all really effective laws regulating the railroads and the great industrial corporations are the work of Republican Congresses and Presidents. For this policy of regulation and supervision the Democrats, in a stumbling and piecemeal way, are within the sphere of private enterprise and in direct competition with its own citizens, a policy which is sure to result in waste, great expense to the taxpayer and in an inferior product.

The Republican party firmly believes that all who violate the laws in regulation of business, should be individually punished. But prosecution is very different from persecution, and business success, no matter how honestly attained, is apparently regarded by the Democratic party as in itself a crime. Such doctrines and beliefs choke enterprise and stifle prosperity. The Republican party believes in encouraging American business as it believes in and will seek to advance all American interests.

You gotta love how the two paragraphs together make for some serious double talk.

Its like the first one is written to appeal to the Bullmoose types and the second to the conservatives.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

^You've made some good points in this thread Yankee, and have somewhat convinced me of your "continuously conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats" theory. However, I think that once you start calling plantation owners "liberals", the term basically loses all meaning.

TIL Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, and investor in the slave trade who helped draft the (obviously pro-slavery) colonial Constitution of the Carolinas John Locke weren't liberals (or rather, Liberals, to be crystal clear).

They may have been perceived as or thought themselves to be liberals, but their actions didn't match their rhetoric. The owning of other humans as property is clearly inconsistent with core liberal principles like individual liberty and personal freedom, unless one takes an extreme propertarian stance to justify their actions (like Locke and others did).

Are you saying liberals cannot be blinded by prejudice? They are liberals because on a variety of topics they advanced or helped formulate the liberal side of thinking. They were not perfectionists and they weren't saints tough, that is what you guys need to grasp since you are used to conceiving of liberals as being perfect and thus cannot contemplate how a liberal in a previous context would be unable to apply said values to another group of people.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don’t think the parties switched, but I also hate when people on Atlas say, “If you’re a Democrat and you think Woodrow Wilson is an HP, you’re uninformed”.

Depends on who is saying that. There are people who want to rehabilitate Wilson, but for the most part that is basically one side lobbing a distasteful figure at the other as one would lob a hand grenade.

That being said, Wilson was still by no means a Conservative though he certainly drew on some of the broader principles of traditional conservatism owing to this background and thus is no accident that Wilson is doing the same things as John Adams. The fact that he does these things does not put John Adams on the left, or Wilson on right, but what it does illustrate is that intellectual and academic influence is not siloed behind rigid walls and elements can jump from one side to the other simply because an important figure was exposed to that at one point or another.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don’t think the parties switched, but I also hate when people on Atlas say, “If you’re a Democrat and you think Woodrow Wilson is an HP, you’re uninformed”.

Depends on who is saying that. There are people who want to rehabilitate Wilson, but for the most part that is basically one side lobbing a distasteful figure at the other as one would lob a hand grenade.

That being said, Wilson was still by no means a Conservative though he certainly drew on some of the broader principles of traditional conservatism owing to this background and thus is no accident that Wilson is doing the same things as John Adams. The fact that he does these things does not put John Adams on the left, or Wilson on right, but what it does illustrate is that intellectual and academic influence is not siloed behind rigid walls and elements can jump from one side to the other simply because an important figure was exposed to that at one point or another.

Is anyone actually saying liberals can't criticize Wilson? I should think we're all capable of acknowledging that someone from our ideological heredity was not a good man or a good president, if that is your contention. Tracing my political philosophy to Jefferson doesn't mean I have to believe going to war with Britain in 1798 would have been a good idea. There's ideology, and then there's application and pragmatism. Two people can agree on the first and divide over the second and third; indeed, such has been a recurring theme throughout history (looking across the pond, the Sinn Féin split of 1922 comes to mind).

Not sure what you are responding to, nothing I said implied anything of the sort. What I am referring to is the desire of partisans at both sides to throw historical figures at the other side as if they were hand grenades, something we have all criticized at one time or another. It is similar to the "Hitler is a Socialist" meme but slightly different. In this case, it is taking an actual liberal and then highlighting the moral failings to damage the other side.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious.

What examples do you have in mind from the 2000s?

The big ones would be LGBT issues but their is also stem cells and depending on your perspective abortion. There was also the whole Terri Schiavo case in Florida.

At the same time Democrats were going for the secular suburban Authoritarian vote by embracing Gun Control and going after things like say video games and movies, which IIRC you mention frequently. This was building off what Clinton had started with his triangulation on crime and culture in 1992 but taking it up to eleven with Gore.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This kind of controlling behavior social conservatism was present as recent as the 2000s and had strong support from the same group largely, married women who were highly religious.

What examples do you have in mind from the 2000s?

The big ones would be LGBT issues but their is also stem cells and depending on your perspective abortion. There was also the whole Terri Schiavo case in Florida.

At the same time Democrats were going for the secular suburban Authoritarian vote by embracing Gun Control and going after things like say video games and movies, which IIRC you mention frequently. This was building off what Clinton had started with his triangulation on crime and culture in 1992 but taking it up to eleven with Gore.

Describing new well-off Democrats as "the secular suburban authoritarian vote" (which I doubt is a term of endearment) is one of those things that create an unholy alliance between the far-left and "RINO's" and I find that fascinating.

It was mainly a quick short hand I threw out there to differentiate between secular and Evangelical suburbanites who both sought to in some way control certain behaviors. Both parties were trying to cater to this mindset at the time with the primary dividing line being religious affiliation.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Viewing the Puritans as prudes and censorious was very common even in the 17th century in England. They banned Christmas for instance as well as the heavy handed actions under Cromwell. It was illegal for a number of years in Massachusetts and you were even penalized for skipping work as late as the 19th century in Boston for it.

It is also worth remembering that many people fled Massachusetts because of religious intolerance leading to the formation of Rhode Island for instance. Then there is the fact that MA had executed some Quakers at one point.

Yes they were dissenters from the Church of the England and yes they pioneered some anti-monarchical thought which contributed importantly to the growth of liberalism, but in the context of America they were perceived as being intolerant and authoritarian even in neighboring parts of New England, not to mention Quaker heavy Pennsylvania.

For all the talk of innate egalitarianism, it has to be strongly caveated that this was equal in the eyes of God, not equal under the law. Thus it only applied if you shared the same "ONE TRUE" faith, otherwise it was off to the gallows. In action, they formed their own oppressive and discriminatory establishment a large part of America's early political life hinged around opposition to this establishment and American Liberalism cut its teeth by dismantling the established region championed by this same group of "egalitarians". Obviously, something got lost in the pond on the boat ride over.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would like to echo the opinion that this thread has been full of excellent and informed posts.

I agree that the divisions which arose in the English Civil War were the foundation for English political divisions ever since, and that influence was obviously felt across the Anglosphere. The Tories are the heirs of the Royalists and the Liberals/Lib Dems (and arguably Labour) of the Parliamentarians. Thus Anglo-Saxon liberalism as we know it would probably not exist without the Puritans.

Whether this extends to the US is more debatable. The two main problems with trying to map English Civil War divisions onto American politics are:

a) Different religious composition: the US never had an established Church, and whereas in England Anglicans and Nonconformists were in direct opposition, they were allied in the US against Southerners and Catholics.

b) Only one major political tradition: In Europe, political parties tend to be heirs of traditions representing different groups in 19th century society with radically different views of society: conservatives of monarchists/aristocrats, socialists of the working classes, liberals of the bourgeoisie etc.  In America there was only one tradition: republican liberalism, which all groups in society largely accepted. No competing monarchism, Christian democracy or socialism. This is arguably why America has never developed a major social democratic party. An older, but still important, work on this is Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America.

For this reason, I often find it most helpful to think of the pre-1932 parties as fairly non-ideological (not to say they didn’t have ideology, but it was the same (classical liberalism) so it didn’t really matter), and more culturally aligned big tent parties, a little like Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in Ireland. What policy differences did exist (e.g. tariffs) were more expressions of cultural and sectional divisions than ideological statements.

As for trying to compare British 19th century parties to American ones, I have always seen a certain similarity between the Democrats and the Liberals: representing religious and cultural minorities against the dominant establishment and both were staunch free-traders. But then the American equivalent of the nonconformist conscience, inextricably linked to the British Liberals, was largely found within the Republican Party, perhaps showing that such comparisons are messy and mostly futile.

It gets less messy if you consider it terms of dominant religion versus the dissident religious views as opposed to zoning in on a particular faith. As you said America didn't have an established Anglican church, but it did have a dominant religious culture that was heavily influenced by more Calvinist and non-conformist sects and thus they became the religious establishment in the context of America. Faith as it governs politics often comes down to an equation of what it is their influence and dominance compared to what is seen as the dominant religious influence and are they part of that or are they at odds with it. This is why Catholics were on the liberal side in the US because they were on the outs.

It is also why Cavaliers would be on the liberal side in the US because Calvinism is inconvenient for their party life style. One thing that came about in the Restoration period in England was Charles II and the abundance of sex, booze and parties. These are all things that many puritans banned or at least considered horrific. This even goes down to the some of the voting patterns in 1928 and one of the reasons that Smith held up with some Plantation society elites because they wanted their booze back (emphasis one of the reasons).

So while political and anti-monarchical liberalism has origins from nonconformists, it must be stated the the "libertine" lifestyle of "Party boy aristocrats" the love for wine, women and song etc was very much Cavalier in origin and thus a level of disdain or scorn for traditional morals, religious restrictions and such forth. In the 19th century mindset because radicalism and revolutionary upheaval, we assume that because they were both targeted, that the church and the nobility were always allies but prior to such upheavals you often found a dynamic of strict religious fervor at odds with the dare I say "cavalier attitude towards responsible and pious behavior", among young and even old aristocrats with far too much money on their hands.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Same with the Cavaliers; in both countries they advocated for a reactionary and hierarchical social system. For that reason they were definitely not “liberal”.

If the politics does not question the hierarchy as it exists but instead operates on other concerns like say morality, then yes it is very possible for the elites to be liberal.

There is also going back to the in versus out group, if a group of elites locally can deflect blame to an opposed group of national elites then they can in effect operate as allies of the liberal side of politics. For instance you see this with tech companies today and many other rich business types that do in fact support the left. Does the fact that they are rich, make their positions on issues like abortion, gay rights, immigration any less liberal?

Does the fact that Jefferson was a plantation owner make his views on speculation, religious tolerance, egalitarian democracy (relative to the Federalists) any less liberal?

This is how you prove the inaccuracy of a simplistic narrative. Slave owners/rich people/elites cannot be liberals because they want to maintain the hierarchy. That is only true if the hierarchy is in doubt or in question. No one questioned the slave hierarchy prior to the 1840s in a substantial way and after reconstruction, no one challenged power structure in the South dominated by plantation elites using share croppers. Likewise after the English Civil War there were aristocrats on both sides of the Glorious Revolution and in both the Tory and Whig Parties. The political wheels keep turning and the politics finds its own natural divide and thus it is very possible for a group of elites depending their interests and values on other areas to be allied with or even be liberals.

That doesn't even get into the fact of the mistake of presuming consistency of monolithic purity of any given ideology by anyone, as such is very rare because someone will always have some pet issue that doesn't align perfectly. So why should we presume such about historical figures when we wouldn't dream of it today?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Here's an excellent blog post (from 2012!) with analysis that inevitably leads to historical disruption of Democrats and (more importantly) Republicans for you, brought to you by modern American conservatism:

Where in ’57 (William F. Buckley, Jr.) had asserted a right even of a minority of whites to impose racial segregation by literally any means necessary, including breaking federal law, in ’04 Buckley expressed regret for having supposedly believed only that segregation would wither away without federal intervention. Stupid the man was not. He gets credited today both with honesty about his past and with having, in his own way, “evolved up.” Modern conservatives, more importantly, get to ignore the realities of their movement’s origins.

If conservatives today really mean to mark out an American conservative ethos with no remaining ties to racism, wouldn’t they need to reckon, far more seriously and realistically than they seem prepared to do, with the painful legacy of the postwar right when it comes to what was then called racial integration? With the Cold War, integration was the hot issue of the day, precisely at the time when the right wing was in the process of taking over the Republican Party. (Nelson Rockefeller, for example, was a fire-and-brimstone Cold Warrior but hyperliberal on race; he was the type the Buckleyites were trying to knock out.) Ties between conservatism and — no, not just theories of small government and “community standards” — but straight-up, hardcore racism were once so tight that for some of us with long enough memories, it can be bleakly comic to see racism on the part of TNR writers hopefully dismissed as some unhappy anomaly.

In 1952, William Rehnquist wrote a now-famous memo on “Brown vs. Board of Education.” The Times recently revived discussion of it, and of Rehnquist’s never, to me, credible denial that it reflected his own opinion. That memo put forth an idea related in interesting ways to Buckley’s ’57 “advanced race” essay.

In the memo, Rehnquist deemed the Supreme Court a poor place for ruling on individual rights, suggesting that the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment can’t be enforced by judicial review in communities where those rights are opposed by a majority. That is, they can’t be enforced. “In the long run,” Rehnquist wrote, “majorities will decide what the constitutional rights of minorities are.” And that’s at first what Buckley seemed to mean, too, when he said in the ’57 essay that the question of the white right to prevail could not be “answered by merely consulting a catalogue of the rights of American citizens, born Equal.”

But Buckley’s ’57 essay turns that already startling idea upside down. It says that even a minority of whites has a right — nay, a duty — to take measures necessary to prevail against a majority of blacks. That kind of romantic, questing elitism did not fit the Rehnquist-Goldwater populist argument on behalf of majority and states rights in resisting federal enforcement of racial integration. Really, Buckley’s view revealed too much of what “states rights” was so often code for: white supremacy.

https://williamhogeland.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/the-national-review-racist-writing-and-the-legacy-of-william-f-buckley-jr/

Can anyone honestly say that the Republican Party of the past half-century - and specifically, the modern conservative movement that has defined it for this period  - has more in common with the Party of Lincoln than it does with the Southern Democracy?

(Answer: No.)

Its more complicated than that.

You have to remember that the "Party of Lincoln" supported Lincoln because he was not a raving abolitionist. He was nominated precisely because he was seen as someone who would restrict slavery's spread and was not a radical abolitionist.

Furthermore, after the reconstruction period the Republicans tacitly accept the state of affairs as it is and even begin to succumb to it themselves. You have the move by state level parties in the South around 1900 to go white's only and this is then taken nationally in 1928 by Hoover.

The problem with your paradigm is that it rests too heavily on this presumption that the Republicans prior to the "takeover by the right" were some paragon of civil rights when their record was inconsistent at best and most often then not dictated by expediency. The Republican Party since at least the end of reconstruction and you can debate before that as well, has been the primary vehicle for industrialist interests, and thus most other things relating to Civil War legacy, and even vein attempts at civil rights were done so for the sake of expediency, to wave the bloody shirt or in some way advance/rally the base.

The other presumption is that the right was some alien force in the GOP. There has been a conservative wing of the GOP going back to 1854, and there had long been prior to WWII, large numbers of Germans, Catholics and other non-Yankee groups for whom the Civil War Legacy and cultural tropes didn't really have much sway. People like Joseph McCarthy didn't come out of nowhere, nor did William Jenner, and certainly not people like Ralph Owen Brewster hailing from a long nativist tradition (hence the KKK support). The Republicans had long been operating as a vehicle for business and conservative interests, what changes is by this point expediency dictates cozying up to and finding common cause with the alienated Democrats in the North and Dixiecrats of the South to formulate a grand Conservative alliance against the New Deal dominated elite and their WASP Republican enablers.

The only reason this is even possible is because there is already conservative wing of the GOP present to make that pitch to Irish and German Democrats and later on to Southern Democrats to come on over and join their fellow conservatives against their common foe.

Generally speaking civil rights has not been a dominate defining political issue for our political divisions. It has flare ups, you see some action and then people move onto other things. It is a sad reality, but it is true and the very proof of that is the fact that we still have so many problems today is precisely because people have short attention spans for what quickly become for many "side issues". It is like when the economy is bad, and politicians are talking about abortion or what have you, and they go too far and the other side says they are distracting from the economy being bad. When the economic situation is bad, people shift their focus to number one and this is what really sowed the seeds for the end of reconstruction. The economic panic of 1873 put Democrats in control of the House in 1874 and created the impetus in the GOP in 1876 to shift gears towards a more business-economic nationalist focused paradigm.

Don't kid yourself, the Republican Party has been bought and paid for since it was founded almost, any changes or evolution of the GOP on race or views towards the South were dictated precisely because of that impetus. The Rockefellers existed as a bridge to stay afloat in hostile terrain and once an alternative and much more enticing opportunity came along, they tossed them to side in favor of the Sunbelt Right ascendancy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Pinckney was a Federalist, most of the plantation elite in the South were Whigs through the 1840s. The exceptions to this were in places like Virginia as Truman has mentioned.

Yes, the South hated New England Moralism and the puritanical influence that stemmed from it, but as Truman has pointed out and has been stated previously, Fitzhugh is not representative of planter much less Southern opinions in this period. "Talk of rolling back the reformation" just emphasizes the point in a region where Baptism and Presbyterian were the dominant faith. Only in Maryland and LA would you find Catholic planters in any big number.

But more to the point, the thread here is not even about the liberalness of the planter class, it is about the liberalness of the Democratic Party and the conservatism of the Republican Party in this time period. It is not going to be exactly like the politics of Britain because the dominant religions in the US are more Calvinistic and furthermore you had a revolution, have a Republic and have as a fundamental basis a more egalitarian basis for that. There would have been people who rejected this concept of egalitarian politics among the planter,s but this is not all planters and furthermore, their alignment with the Democrats is as has been repeatedly stressed a marriage of convenience by people who are well known to place expediency above principle. The relevance of British politics comes in understanding how period ideologies were defined and thus it is important to account for the demographic and historical differences between the two while applying the concepts. Thus instead of being pro-Anglican (or in the case of anti-reformists, Catholicism) as a marker of conservatism, it has to be pulled back to pro-dominant religious faction(s) and the Republican Party was definitely the vanguard of Protestant moral panic at the Catholic peril at the gates.



The primary base of the Democratic party remains in this period immigrant and/or urban laborers and small farmers. A few planters tacked onto this out of convenience doesn't alter the trajectory, anymore then Never Trumpers becoming Democrats will turn that party into a conservative one today. The racism and opposition to equality stems not from planter theology/ideology (even if Fitzhugh was right and he is not), it is a pass through prejudice from their natural base because their natural base was racist. Majoritarianism against a backdrop of prejudice will yield prejudiced views and policies and Democrats were defined by Majoritarianism in this period even after the 1850's realignment (Lewis Cass and Stephen Douglas, and their Popular Sovereignty argument comes to mind).

This natural racism of the Democrats working and laboring base, made the marriage of convenience easier, but it is important to remember who is and has frankly always been in the driver's seat in the Democratic Party.

This is a great thread and very educational to read. NC Yankee and others have made a strong case for the ideological continuity of the Republican and Democratic Parties from its founding to the present. However, I would note that the most radical elements from Europe-the German '48ers and even Karl Marx himself (who I would argue were far more egalitarian and democratic than almost any native American political figure)-strongly favoured the Republican Party as the instrument with which to destroy slave power. The influence of Forty-Eighters such as Franz Siegel and Carl Schurz on the early Republican Party is well known. Friedrich Hecker has a famous revolutionary song named after him and he ended up a Brigadier General in the Union Army. I'm pretty certain the Forty-Eighters would have favoured the Jeffersonian Republicans in the Early Republic, given their outgrowth from French Revolutionary/Jacobin influence. It is noted earlier in the thread that the bulk of the Liberal voters in Britain favoured the North despite the Southern sympathies of some Liberal politicians (IIRC even Gladstone gave a speech favouring the South though John Bright was pro-Union). There are some parallels here to the division of the old Whig Party into the Cotton and Conscience Whig elements.

Thus I think we can see the very early Republican Party of 1854 to the early 1880s as a big-tent party composed of Northern industrial interests, Yankee Protestant social reformers (which could be conservative or liberal), and the radical democrats represented by the Forty-Eighters. Of course, the old pro-business and Yankee Whig element eventually gained pre-eminence but I don't think that should detract from the radical elements of the early Republican Party. I think one can argue that the Republican Party of 1885 was more directly comparable to (at least the Northern wing) of the Whig Party in 1845 then the Republican Party of 1865 would have been due to the eventual marginalization of the more radical wing. One can see this in the political trajectory of someone like Benjamin Butler who claimed Jeffersonian principles but believed it had to be achieved through Hamiltonian means. It's at best a coincidence but its amusing to note that the "Wide Awakes" of 1860 has a parallel today in the term "woke" used to describe awareness of oppression and privilege in contemporary times.

When it comes to the Republicans, yes a big tent is a given here but there is a difference between a big tent where no one is decidedly in a dominant position and a big tent where there is someone in the driver's seat calling the tune and the others are on board because their interest just happen to align.

The Republican party was founded by Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats in WI and MI (the Yankee belt), but as Eastern Parties formed, the Whigs and their business backers quickly become the dominant force in the party. Furthermore, the very nomination of Lincoln as a moderate on the issue of slavery, as someone who had been a business attorney and as someone who supported the traditional Clay economic agenda, was in my view the point at which the Republicans become dominated by business interests as the successor party to the Whigs at least in the North. In 1856 they had run on opposing slave power as the sole focus and on lost, in 1860, Lincoln diversified the platform. Yes, Lincoln was not controlled by these people and he had his own views that often ran contrary to their desires, and these thus allowed for the building of a broad coalition around the opposition to slavery, but in terms of actual policies they almost universally benefited the business interests and set the stage for the gilded age to occur alongside of the Second Industrial Revolution. The embrace of these policies and the spread of industrialism westward, essentially made it economically dependent on these policies and thus regions like WI and MI that had been Jacksonian in terms of economic policy, were now fully on board with the protectionist system.

People over emphasize the importance of 1876 as if their had been some takeover of the GOP, the first of three dates latched onto as a magic flip date. If you really dig into it though, it was more of a calculated desire to get back in touch with voters weary of Southern intervention, recession and corruption. Nominating an outsider was a means by which to get back into the good graces, selling equality down the river was a means to shift the debate back to bread and butter issues and replacing Grant was a means to have a clean slate. It is worth nothing that 1876 is one of only times that an incumbent Party has held the White House in spite of an economic recession in the previous President's term of the same party. While we can lament what this meant for civil rights, it is worth admiring the skill at which the GOP was able to refocus and win in such horrendous political conditions for them.

The key dates for when the GOP became a "pro-business nationalist conservative" party are 1860 when they embraced the business backed economic agenda and were able to enact that into law, thus dominating the political economy of the coming decades (just like the New Deal did for the decades that followed it) and 1872.

The historiography of the GOP's magic flip dates always fall apart on close scrutiny especially when you consider the business relationships and benefit from both Grant and Hayes and thus realize that 1876 rather than being of consequence to the underlying nature of the party, was merely those driving forces re-calibrating to stay in power and maintain the gravy train. Already under Grant you see the incestuous relationship with speculators, the blind eye to business excess, the condoning of monopolies, the move towards hard money that would so damage debtors in the coming decades and the first time the Republicans faced a hard midterm defeat driven by an economic downturn that saw harsh swings in industrial districts as workers abandoned the party of industrialism in favor of the party of the working and laboring classes (the Democrats). Even before you get to that point, you had a rebellion by the likes of those very same radical elements in the form of Horace Greeley and many others, who ended up aligning with the Democrats against Grant only to fail in that election. While they failed then, they undoubtedly set the stage for the wins in 1874 and later on in 1884.

If the historiography of the Democrats as being the "conservatives" is to be believed, the political dynamics of the 1870s and 1880's make absolutely no sense. Likewise, if the Republicans were this radical and liberal party, why was a their a "Liberal" rebellion, that then allied with the Democrats, who are allegedly "conservative" in this period? It also doesn't make sense.

At every stage of the dynamic, 95% of the American spectrum would be "liberals" under a previous context. Most 1860's Republicans would have supported Jefferson over Hamilton/Adams and a majority certainly would have backed Jackson over Clay. Even today, what percentage of Republicans would favor overturning Social Security? 30%, 40%. Whenever a paradigm successfully establishes itself, the board is redivided along new lines. Burke would have supported Locke and the Orangists against the Jacobites. Hamilton supported the Revolutionary War and served in Army. Most Whigs would have supported Jefferson against Hamilton and most Republicans would have probably supported Jackson against Clay.

Also on the matter of abolition always being a liberal idea:

Another important point is that opposition to slavery and advocacy for racial justice has always been and was always perceived as a liberal rather than conservative priority, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. In the UK the abolition movement was led by William Wilberforce and his Quakers, and in Parliament it was taken up by Charles James Fox and the radical Whigs.

Fun Fact: Not Quite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pitt_the_Younger#Legacy

Some of Pitt's domestic plans were not successful; he failed to secure parliamentary reform, emancipation, or the abolition of the slave trade although this last took place with the Slave Trade Act 1807, the year after his death. Biographer William Hague considers the unfinished abolition of the slave trade to be Pitt's greatest failure.[96] He notes that by the end of Pitt's career, conditions were in place that would have allowed a skillful attempt to pass an abolition bill to succeed, partly because of the long campaigning Pitt had encouraged with his friend William Wilberforce. Hague goes on to note that the failure was likely due to Pitt being a "spent force" by the time favourable conditions had arisen. In Hague's opinion, Pitt's long premiership, "tested the natural limits of how long it is possible to be at the top. From 1783 to 1792, he faced each fresh challenge with brilliance; from 1793 he showed determination but sometimes faltered; and from 1804 he was worn down by ... the combination of a narrow majority and war".[97]

Conservatives do "liberal things" all the time for the sake of a variety of reasons. Reagan supported immigration reform, a liberal idea in most contexts, because business wanted it and he believed it would allow for Republicans to gain among Hispanic voters. Bush did No Child Left Behind likewise. David Cameron legalized Gay Marriage in the UK.

There was a vested interest by business types in the North to want the destruction of the slave power, its political influence and thus allow them to dominate the country and pursue the policies that would enrich them and also enable the country to become the dominant economic super power (Thats where the nationalist aspect comes back into play).

Beyond that, for a constitutionalist, the type that would say we are a Republic, not a Democracy, they would look to the promises of the Declaration and the founders intent and say the Majoritarianism that overrides natural liberty (Popular Sovereignty) is an excess of Democracy and corruption of the balanced system that constitutes the Republic. This emphasis on the Declaration was fairly common and while the whole system is built around liberal concepts of liberty, the concept of restraining democratic will or checking democratic will is a conservative one (see my signature).

Beyond that you have morality and while the Southern churches were corrupted and split off because of the desire to defend and promote the slave powers, the Northern churches were increasingly being defined by moralistic arguments against slavery and this would thus transcend ideological lines creating a desire to embrace reform in this instance even among someone who would be conservative on most other things.

Then there is the expediency and calculating aspect whereby embracing this cause will thus enable the ability to obtain power and thus proceed with enacting the long sought after nationalist economic agenda and other beneficial policies and thus while more callous, and related in part to the first one, this one is a key factor that has to be considered but it should be noted there are motivations far more negative then this for opposing slave power.

And of course on that note we get to the fear that was thus created after the Fugitive Slave Act and then with the Dred Scott ruling that the South was preaching state's rights while depriving it to those of the North. This would thus induce Northerners concerned about this issue to oppose the South and its political influence for fear that they would be sold down the river and this also feeds into the notion about corrupting the Republic and the courts etc.

Lastly, it must be noted that there were more darker still motivations for opposing slave power, that of economic and job competition, a motivation that had induced voters to be pro-slavery for years but now post Dred Scott, the fear that slavery's continued existence risked that this would thus spread Northward and take away jobs from white people. Thus there is a one racist motivation for opposing slave power and to ignore that would be to paint an incomplete picture, but of course there is thus one more still.

Perhaps some of the more positive elements desiring the end to slavery for moral reasons, also desired to "civilize" what they considered to be third world primitives and it was their quest to do this that was hampered by Southerners in the aftermath of slave revolts who clamped down on religious instruction for fear it would induce slave revolts. This would thus mean their mission to civilize from God was being obstructed by the Plantation Owners, and this cultural Imperialist motivation would have been very prominent among the more fire and brimstone preachers in the pious sects.


Having thus laid to rest the point of how Conservatives could find themselves thus supporting abolition or at least opposing Slave Power, it must be remembered to step back to the underlying points about the role and dominance by 48ers, socialists, and German Revolutionaries among the Republicans while they did have some prominence to say that they were in a dominant position would be a mistake considering that the polices as I have thus already stated were pretty much predetermined and then from there the fact they thus found themselves disappointed and especially once these same moralists began to go after the German's beer, it became increasingly apparent, that the Republicans would not be a consistent advocate for them.

Democrats did amazingly well with Germans in 1874 and this would not have been possible if all their was to the Democrats was simply the carrying of planter class water. No of course not and just with the point about the Liberals revolting in the 1872 election, so to did the Germans find themselves dissatisfied upon realizing that the GOP was dominated by two groups, business cartels who enriched themselves while everyone else went down the tubes, and Protestant moralists who wanted to regulate people's behaviors to comport with their view of the world. Needless to say these were not popular concepts and the Democratic Party as a party more welcoming of immigrants, tolerant on religion and much more in tune with the interests of the working and laboring classes would certainly provide a political home for a large percentage of the German vote and Republicans would not reverse this decline until after WJB nuked the Democrats with various groups of Catholics and other immigrants because of his own Protestant zealousness.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I wasn't saying that the South hated New England moralism, but that they hated New England liberalism, as I have provided evidence for. So you are implying that the two are connected then, no? I would agree that they are.

We have to be careful of what we are talking about when we say the "south"? Certainly we are not talking about the slaves themselves. I would guess you are not talking about the poor whites that had tended to dominate the Democratic Party (think Andrew Johnson) and would continue to be a dominant force going forward.

Therefore we are talking about the planters, and as really doesn't need to be stated, the planters were despise Yankee Moralism, because they had "meddled" in their affairs and destroyed their power base and relegated them to a backwater as the country surged ahead and they sat on their wrecked plantations jealous and resentful of the wealth being accumulated on Wall Street, in Philly, Chicago, San Francisco and so on. This is cultural and regional animousity, it is not defined by ideology but it will come to define ideology itself especially in the 20th century realignments. I am always concerned about taking Southern slanted views of things at face value, because in so many things they are trying to plant their cultural disappointments where they do not belong. This gets back to the previous posts where you said Fitzhugh and the Planters would reject McKinley as a conservative" And guess what, they don't get to decide that, the politics of the time does.

Moralism is not inherently conservative and it never has been, despite what the religious right would have you think. In many cases liberal views have stemmed from strong religious beliefs, like among abolitionists or Social Gospelers who believed that the inequality in the world was deeply wrong on a moral level.

Is nobless oblige a liberal concept? What if it is being done for the sake of preserving said nobility?

I am going to regret pulling that example out because it is you I am dealing with here, but whatever.

Here is the thing, America doesn't have aristocracy, royalty or a state church as a European country does. What it does have is power bastions that function similarly and thus create around the preservation of said power bastions a conservatism similar to that of Europe in terms of its actual policies and strategy, but different because the interest it serves are different as a result of the fact that it is in America as opposed to being in Britain or France or Germany.

Religion as it functions in terms of policy influence is not something that occurs in a vacuum and while reformism is a discernible measure in this period, it is worth point out that reformism is not contrary to most forms of Conservatism, from Burke to the 1990s, Conservatives sought to control the language of reform but do it within constitutional means if that makes sense.

You do see a lot of push for social reforms, you do see some compromising with the other side on business regulation, but aside from TR (and most from him is after he left the GOP), you don't see much widespread support for leveler sentiment in the Republican Party, despite wracking up Evangelical equivalent margins with pious Yankees (70% to 75%) during this time period.

I would also argue that Yankees were not the dominant faction in the United States.

They became the dominant faction with the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s and remained so through the Great Depression, when their numbers started to dwindled through intermarrying with Germans and Irish, and vast increases in the number of Catholic voters in places like MA essentially sidelined them both nationally and later on in terms of their ability to control the Republican Party.

The Slave Power and what succeeded it was.

What? By the Civil War and after, the plantation owners were not able to dictate economic policy, and they were not able to exert power beyond their own region. They were able to protect their region from outsider influence via the Senate, but they were not able to project power except for when the Democrats got control and thus via seniority they dominated the committee system.

The planters controlled the United States economy and political system to such a degree that they were able to silence critics of slavery via the gag rule and dictate US foreign policy during the westward expansion period.

The Planter class was divided in the Jacksonian era though.

That the planters chose to ally themselves with the Irish and other Catholic immigrants was, as you said, a marriage of convenience. The immigrants were enemies of the Yankees, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Their mutual racism just made it easier as they both despised the efforts of the liberalizing Yankees to improve the lot of the worst off in society, the slaves.

You are oversimplifying and forgetting a key part of this alliance.

Basically, what I am trying to argue here is that the Southern planters defined the Democratic party just as much as the Northern immigrants did. You can't argue that the latter defined the party and the former just "tacked along" when they in fact wielded effective control over it. Furthermore, if you are defining the Democrats by the urban immigrants, then why not define the Republicans by their Black supporters? Why not say the Northern Yankees just "tacked along"? Is it because the Yankees in the North were the base of the party and far outnumbered Black Republicans? That is a reasonable point, but I would still argue as I have that many of those Yankees were in fact liberals.

Its not just Planters and Irish Henry and for the love of God I made sure to mention them every time just so you wouldn't get confused on this point but you are as always hopeless predictable.

I said, immigrants and/or working class laborers and small farmers. This included a range of people from Irish immigrants in NYC, to the small farmers in central Tennessee. This was undoubtedly the natural base of the Democratic Party and as for them controlling them, it is because of ambivalence or outright hostility towards blacks among these immigrants, laborers and small farmers, that they essentially were willing to condone the planters racial policies and it is also worth noting that the Civil War rhetoric by the South was precisely structured with this in mind and yet even with this their was opposition to secession in poorer parts of the South, though more so in Whig Mountain areas then upcounty Democratic Farmers.

They were not the dominant group in American society - the Slave Power was. They fought against that power, just as their English Puritan ancestors had fought against the power of the King.

This is borderline embracing Lost Cause mythology at this point, Henry. The war was not what put the Yankees in the dominance position in the country. The Yankee exodus as I call it place them in a range of states in enough numbers that when combined with them voting 75% enabled them dominate these states ranging from Maine to Minnesota, and compete in more diverse places like Indiana and New York.

The North already had 25 million people, while the South had 9 Million of which 3 million were slaves. That is 74% of the population. Of this, Yankees were probably a majority in the Six New England states, MI, WI, MN and substantial minorities in OH, NY, PA, IN and ILL. It is very possible depending on who you count as Yankee, that there were more Yankees in the North then there were people in the South (including the Slaves). They could be as low as 37% of the North's population and account for more than 9 million people. They were probably in the mid 40s range though.

The North dominated the House of Representatives, Free States were by the 1850s obtaining the majority in the Senate, and it was only a matter of time before the North would dominate the Presidency and by extension Supreme Court. This demographic reality was already clear before the South seceded and it is why they took that step once Lincoln was elected.

To further belabor the point, the North had 82% of the bank deposits, and anywhere from 2/3rds to 3/4rds of the Factories and railroads. Even while dominating the manufacturing sector, the fact that the South grew so much cash crops, meant that the North grew more wheat, oats, rye and I think they might have tied the South on Corn. This is because while only I think 40% of the North worked on farming compared to I believe 80% of the South, the larger base of people means more people worked on farms in the North. 40% of 25 million is 10 million. 80% of 9 million is 7.2 million. So the North had a 3 million edge in Agricultural employment and when you throw in cash crop versus food stuffs, early mechanized farming and better infrastructure, the North was dominating production of food stuffs and they were exporting that to Britain (always forgotten in the talk of British lust for cotton, was their dependence on the North for imports as well).

And for all the Lost Cause Southern bs about paying all the taxes. The South paid 8% to 25% of the tariffs, while New York alone paid 2/3rds.

Southern Planters were on the verge of being completely left behind and irrelevant in a country completely defined by different values. This means that the right versus left divide is not going to be determined by them and they are by definition going to be hanger on, not a driving force.

When a paradigm ends, a new paradigm is created.  

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Additionally, this economic nationalism as you call it is not just a conservative thing. Friedrich List, the German nationalist economist of the early 19th century, was a political liberal who was greatly inspired by the economic thought of Alexander Hamilton. My father is actually reading a book right now called Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder, which just came out this year. Going back further, you'll find that the Whigs, not the Tories, supported protectionism. In the 17th and 18th centuries the Whigs backed protectionist policies primarily for anti-French/national security  reasons and developed an economic theory to go along with it, while the Tories advocated free trade. It's just not true that classical liberalism and laissez-faire have always gone together, or vice versa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_industry_argument

http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm (I disavow the paragraph about Lincoln and the Civil War)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whigs_(British_political_party)#Protectionism

I am very much familiar with the changes of the Whigs and Tories on economic policy in the 17th and 18th century, but it is necessary to remember two important things. These were motivated by perceived benefits to set interest groups.

Second of all it should be well known obviously that the Tory Party of the pre-1740 period is not the same as the Tory Party of William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s and afterwards, who spent decades acclaiming themselves as Whigs, and denying the Tory label. This goes back to what I said before about new paradigms being created when an old one is settled (with one side rejected), and that is what happened in this case. Furthermore, there was a free trade wing of the Tory Party and later the Conservatives, hence the origination of the Peelite wing of the Party and those Peelites joined the Whigs in the formation of the Liberal Party in the 1850's, leaving a protectionist Conservative Party that was vastly out numbered at the polls by the pro-Free Trade Liberal Party.

It should also be noted that not all Federalists in the US were protectionists, though Hamilton gets the attention. It really must be remembered that the Federalists were a party of merchants and so they backed things that benefited their merchant base and opposed things that harmed it, this informs its opposition to the embargo Act of 1807, the opposition to the War of 1812, support for attempts at secession and also the fact that a small section of Federalists ended up joining the Jacksonians, if memory serves me this was James Buchanan and Roger Taney along with a few others. Its hilarious that a party that defined itself in the 1790s on a strong federal gov't, economic nationalism and uniting the US economically, went out defined by secession, separatism, treason and free trade. Special interests are a hell of a drug.

List is a complicated figure, for instance he opposed protectionism on agricultural products, whereas as applied, such protectionism was much more concerned with the interests that promoted it then philosophically backed selective application thereof and there were and are many instances of protectionism being used to benefit farmers throughout this period and even today on things like sugar. Furthermore there certainly is a decided left conceptualization here that comes about particularly in later phases of the German Historical School of economics, especially when it comes to unions and such forth. That being said, economic nationalism can suit the interests of laborers (protecting labor from foreign labor) and it can suit business (protecting capital invested domestically from foreign competition), this means an alliance of convenience can often be formed between capital and labor, but at the same time it is important to remember who is in the driver's seat in these arrangements as they often determined whether economic nationalism is operating as a left or right context.

For the most part, variable by local interest economically, protectionism was operating on the right in 19th century politics and while this often led to political marriages that seem irrational today, we have well established the strong influence of business on the Republican Party in this thread already and many American industrialists got rich by redirecting commerce to American firms in this fashion. This is much different from the 1970's-2000s situation where labor was the driving force behind protectionism or opposition to free trade, meanwhile capital was leaving them in the dust for foreign markets and cheaper production.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Ok, but even if the North was in the dominant position relative to the South, that doesn't make their position any less liberal. It's not how much money you have that determines your ideology, but what ideas you are fighting for. In the case of the Civil War the North was fighting for liberal ones and the South for conservative ones, as defined by the political theorists on both sides. Look at the English Civil War for instance. Read this passage from the speech I linked comparing the American and English Civil Wars:

In very many respects the position of the Parliament resembled that of the Federal government. Both began the war with great advantages. The Parliament, like the North, held the seat of the national government, and controlled whatever central machinery existed. But the possession of London meant much more than the possession of Washington; it was Washington, New York and Boston in one the headquarters of the administration, the money market, and the intellectual centre united and it had comparatively a larger population than those three cities put together. Oxford, the seat of the royal government, situated almost on the frontier of the territory which the King held, furnishes a sort of analogy to Richmond; year after year the forces of the Parliament marched against it and failed to take it and its fall marked the end of the war.

These are superficial resemblances. It is more important to remember that the Parliament, like the Federal government, possessed far greater financial resources than its adversary. It held the richest part of the country, most of the capitalists lived in its quarters, the taxes it levied were more productive, and it could raise loans with greater facility. In the American Civil War the possession of mines and foundries and factories was one of the elements in the superiority of the North; in our Civil War the simpler economic organisation of the time made the control of the manufacturing districts less vital.

In other words the Roundheads controlled the richer parts of England - the South and East - where Puritanism was strong among the prosperous mercantile bourgeoisie in the coastal cities. By contrast the Royalists received the bulk of their support from the North and West - the poorer sections of the country with stronger remnants of ancestral Catholicism. The Parliamentarians were clearly in a dominant position relative to the Royalists, but you wouldn't say they were the more conservative side, would you?

Also, if you say that "Southern Planters were on the verge of being completely left behind and irrelevant in a country completely defined by different values", doesn't that basically make them reactionaries by definition since they were trying to preserve their feudalistic society in a rapidly changing world?

It is not their position of dominance that determines their ideology, it is that relative position of dominance politically and economically speaking as well as the continued existence of the political divide in that area completely absent the South, which had seceded and than afterwards was largely outnumbered, that puts the North in a position to dictate the terms of the political divide.

That is to say a Northern Conservatism, yes committed ostensibly to the American things, the Declaration and so forth but at the same time very much in tune with both the dominant economic power structure (the robber barons and their economic desires) and also the dominant religious and cultural structure (the Protestant Moral Panic as I heard it term).

This is how you end up with McKinley as the Conservative in 1896 even though the people you cited would have loath to call him a conservative and my response was "they don't get to determined that". The reason they don't get to determine that is because 75% of the country lived in the North.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This is a YouTube video which just came out today that makes a lot of really good points related to our discussion. Have a look at this article as well, comprised of direct quotes from the 19th century:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/abolitionism-socialism-slavery/

In the 1960s, Southern politicians blamed the Civil Rights movement on communist influence? Does that mean that every civil rights supporter from conservative supporters like Everett Dirksen and Robert Taft to more liberal supporters like Harry Truman, LBJ and JFK, were all communists?

Likewise in the 1850s, the Southern politicians threw all kinds of crap towards the supporters of abolition. Does that mean that every opponent of the slave power from Francis P. Blair, to more labor populisty Nathaniel P. Banks were Marxist? No of course not.

The South always wants to define things with an us versus them mindset, with everyone that opposes them on anything, being radical communists who want to eat your babies for lunch.

It makes sense that the Left would facilitate and enable this Southern revisionist history, because it stands to benefit them in terms of the narrative. I can think of no bigger match made in hell then this academic shot gun wedding between Lost Cause Neoconfederates and marxist revisionists.

Here is the problem with this argument and painting of the Civil in this manner. There were a range of motivations for people to support the Republican Party and furthermore, when it was just about opposing slave power in 1856, the GOP lost. It was only when they adopted the pro-business Whig platform and moderated their position to containment that the GOP actually won under Lincoln. Process this, it would have never happened were it not for the fact that business in the North was on side with the Republicans. That is what made the political power to win 1860, to win the Civil War and so on, possible.

Also when it comes to WEB Dubois, just who do you think he is talking about when he says "Conservative Businessmen" who worked with the slaveowners? He means pro-business Northern Republicans who realized that that continuing reconstruction was bad for business and bad politics after 1873 and sold black civil rights down the river in 1876 to hold onto power. And as I have already established, these were not newcomers taking over the GOP, they had been there since the beginning practically and had come to a position of such dominance already by 1872, much less 1876.

There is a reason why the Democrats cross endorsed the Liberal Republicans in 1872, which was led by one of the more leftist abolitionists, even in spite of the fact that they were running on an equality plank. It is because Democrats priority at this time was defined those of its poor farmer/poor immigrant/city laboring and artisan base against the business dominated Republican Party of Grant. Its racism arises from this base's innate racist tendencies.

A while ago you dropped a bunch of quotes from Douglass. It is worth noting that Douglass was pining for a GOP that had long ago abandoned the legacy he celebrated while pleading with black voters to stay loyal to the GOP. By the time of WEB Dubois, that ship has long sailed and he is acknowledging the fact with his comments "slave owners and conservative businessmen", and it is worth noting that Dubois paved the way for large scale shift of black voters to the Democratic Party, though that would come some years later.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm just going to leave this here:

OP if forced to choose major-party candidates?

Explanation: Democrat, anti-racist, anti-papist.

Actually I think I'd be a Hughes-Harding-Coolidge-Smith voter (Debs in 1920 and LaFollette in 1924 if third-parties allowed). Since anti-Catholicism in the 1920s came mostly from the Klan rather than Northeasterners, I would've firmly opposed it.

Actually I had no doubts your voting preferences would be exactly like that, but you know I like to trigger you.

By the way, what kind of voter would have feared Al Smith's Catholicism only because of possible ties to Mussolini and Primo de Rivera? It sounds absurd.

A liberal intellectual voter, as I said, who paid close attention to international affairs. It may sound absurd, but at that point the Catholic Church was still a profoundly illiberal institution in bed with reactionaries and dictators across the world. It wasn't just bigoted Southerners or the Klan who feared that a Catholic in power would bring in theocracy or take orders from the Pope, but secular Northern liberals too. In that spirit the National Liberal League had supported the Blaine Amendment some 50 years earlier. Here's a passage from The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism on just that:

The membership of this movement, largely well-to-do and well educated, came from the old Puritan regions in New England and from the areas of the Puritan diaspora in the upper Middle West, and they had important friends in Congress and even the White House. (President Ulysses S. Grant had made separation part of the Republican agenda.) The Liberals, or "total separationists," as I will call them to distinguish them from the earlier anti-Catholics, were in some respects heterogeneous. Some were atheists, some were Jews, others called themselves agnostics, and still others experimented with various forms of non-Christian "spiritualism" in vogue at the time. None of them saw any reason the United States should have any connection with Christianity, and they girded themselves to battle for "the absolute separation of church and state."

Liberals, then, rejected Christianity--but not Protestant religiosity.

[...]

At first glance, it is startling to see an unapolgetically anti-Christian movement flourish in a nation whose traditions and public institutions were steeped in Protestant Christianity. Yet a closer look would show that the Liberals were really located at the far end of a Protestant continuum [...] Even the Liberals, who disliked all forms of Christianity, could easily agree with the often-voiced Protestant view that Catholics did not think for themselves but took orders from a foreign power. In the campaign to pass the Blaine Amendment, Liberals formed a close working relationship with many pious Protestants. They were able to achieve this kind of working ecumenism because there was a broad Protestant consensus, at least in the North.

Also, somewhat tangentially I remember reading that in 1896 Mark Hanna courted Catholic voters as a winnable bloc for McKinley against the pietist Bryan because he saw the Catholic Church as a global force for conservatism. Furthermore that greatest of classical liberals, William Ewart Gladstone, strongly opposed Catholicism because of its innate conservatism.

I'd also like to address NC Yankee's point regarding the "Liberal Republicans." I get the sense that they called themselves "liberals" in order to distinguish themselves from the Radical Republicans then in charge ("radical" had an almost exclusively left-wing connotation at the time, by the way). In other words, they weren't trying to differentiate themselves from some sort of Republican "conservatism", but rather the radicalism that was then dominant in the party. You could say that their version of "liberal" meant moderate or compromising, a willingness to work with the other side. And yes, the other side was conservative.

There were numerous radical Republicans in the ranks of the Liberal Republicans, though. This includes of course Horace Greeley himself, which you have cited in the past as indicative of far left radicalism of the early Republican Party. There was also a radical equality plank in the platform of the Liberal Republicans.

You are right about their being a divide between Liberal Republicans on the one hand and Radical Republicans on the other in certain situations. I have even cited in the past the relationship that Nathaniel P. Banks had with Radical Republicans in the MA political scene. The ironic thing about this dynamic is the selective radicalism I have described before, whereby Banks being rather pro-labor, found himself opposed by a number of "radical" Republicans who were bought and paid for by business interests. There were a number of these in Massachusetts by this point in time in the late 1860's. This is a common dynamic where a set of social issues is hijacked with the pro-business side taking more extreme positions to one up their tribal opponents. The same way Southern business types often "out-segged" more populist and Progressive Democrats through the mid 20th century, Northern business types would have been inclined to out radical and "out wave the bloody shirt", relative to their populist and pro-labor rivals on race within the GOP in the 1860's and early 1870s. Bank's support for the Liberal Republicans was stated to be because of the drift of the GOP towards a more pro-business footing.

As for the Democrats, I have explained this repeatedly. The vast majority of the Democratic party was immigrants and small rural farmers. They were opposed to equality, because their base was racist and prejudiced from the draft riots to fighting for the South in the Civil War, thus making for an alliance of convenience with Conservative Planters (now shut out of the dominant political power structure) easy. The fact that a bunch of planters and their politicians, some of whom were led by former Whigs even like here in NC with Zebulon Vance, called themselves "Conservatives" and allied with the Democratic Party does not change the nature of the Democratic Party's long standing political base, or its orientation on issues both in terms of economics and religion towards the other party.

Furthermore, the Democrats overlooked the Radical Republicans equality plank to endorse a radical abolitionist with Marxist Sympathies as you have noted yourself in 1872. The reason being is that by this point in time the Republican Party was completely owned and dominated by robber barons and speculators, long the enemies of the Democratic Party's traditional base, as they were often the ones steeling their land for railroads or taking it via banks foreclosing on their loans.

There is a desire here it seems to paint a broad brush whereby every Radical Republican is a marxist and every Democrat is a Conservative plantation owner. I think therein lies the problem here, one of over generalization as well as discounting other political issues which by the 1870s were beginning to rise to the forefront again as the Civil War receded to the background and especially so with the Panic of 73 a year later.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Found this down a rabbit hole while researching the 1836 election: a very interesting source on the 1840s Democratic party in New Hampshire. The author summarizes the Whig program as "Let government take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor" and describes the Democrats as the party of the laborer. He notes that many Whigs have accused the Democrats of "radicalism" and "agrarianism" —Webster's 1864 dictionary defines socialism as "a new name for agrarianism."

While the source is obviously heavily biased toward the Democratic worldview, I thought it was illustrative of what that worldview was.

The mindset was certainly a trickle down one but instead of gov't cutting taxes and it would trickle down, the gov't would subsidize and spend money on things beneficial to business and it would trickle down.