Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

In my view, the political spectrum for the 1872 election was something like this:

Left-wing<--(Radical) Republicans--Liberal Republicans|Democrats--Straight-out Democrats-->Right-wing

President Grant and the Radical Republicans ran the most radical and uncompromising campaign on Reconstruction, with the potential to completely uproot Southern society and redistribute land and wealth, while the Liberal Republicans - though still on the left side of the spectrum -  were more willing to compromise with the Democrats on the issue. Likewise most Democrats were willing to put their differences aside and field a joint candidate with the Liberal Republicans, but for the hardline conservatives in the Straight-Out faction Greeley was way too radical.

A linear spectrum has limitations thus precisely because it is necessarily myopically focused on a single issue and thus loses sight of the forest for the trees.

The whole story of the 1870's was one of the country moving beyond the Civil War and Reconstruction and refocusing on issues that directly affected them and their daily lives. Republican "radicalism" on the South occurred simultaneously with the growth in power and blind eye to corruption on Wall Street, the ties between Grant's own family and robber barons like Jay Gould as well as the vast disparity in wealth inequality that would come to define the Gilded Age.

For all the radicalism on land reform and crippling the old elite in the economic back water of the south, there was a hell of a lot money being accumulated under Republican policies by a select few in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, just one of these cities probably had more rich people then all eleven of the ex-Confederate States combined.  And all of these people were just fine with destroying the Plantation owners who had prevented their rise to political and economic dominance and as long as at no point was this "radicalism" turned on them. Fun Fact: It wasn't! Grant was the best friend they ever had. When you consider the attempts by Northern business types to cash in on this situation during reconstruction itself, this looks far more like right wing crony capitalism then any kind of principled leftism. And remember "Progress" is subjective, for these types this was Progress in a Socially Darwinian sense, one set of elites giving way to another.

Now don't get me wrong, Abolition was a great thing and it should have happened, but the only reason it actually happened was because rich business types in the North saw it as a road to profit and signed off on the project. Some were on board from the beginning, others were concerned about the disruption of a potential conflict that the abolitionists threatened. They also realized after 1857, that as concerning as the abolitionists might be, the Democrats risked nuking the whole economy (as happened after Dred Scott with collapse in railroad stocks) to please the South's radicalism and they became the bigger threat to their power and wealth. Lincoln and his embrace of Clay Economic Nationalism represented not just a compromise candidate on slavery (stopping the spread as opposed to outright abolition as the pitch in 1860), but a compromise candidate that brought traditionally pro-Whig Northern business onside.

As I have stressed numerous times, it is fully possible and historically present the world over for a Conservative elite to sign off on a "liberal" or "radical" policy to facilitate success on the larger scheme of things. We even see examples of this today on a smaller scale and I have stated some in the past such as NCLB under Bush, Cameron and LGBT Rights.

Also never underestimate the craven willingness of wealthy elites to sell out on a particular issue or sell out another group of rich people, to keep their own money on hand and/or keep their heads firmly affixed in the proper place. Even down to throwing Southern Planters to the red wolves, and Southern Planters were fully willing to damage their northern counterparts as demonstrated by Southern policy efforts in the 1850s.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/22/us/the-candidates-debate-transcript-of-the-reagan-mondale-debate-on-foreign-policy.html

MODERATOR: Miss Geyer, your question to Mr. Mondale. IMMIGRATION REFORM

Q: Mr. Mondale, many analysts are now saying that actually our No. 1 foreign policy problem today is one that remains almost totally unrecognized. Massive illegal immigration from economically collapsing countries. They are saying that it is the only real territorial threat to the American nation-state. You yourself said in the 1970's that we had a ''hemorrhage on our borders'' yet today you have backed off any immigration reform such as the balanced and highly- crafted Simpson-Mazzoli Bill. Why? What would you do instead today if anything? MONDALE: Ah, this is a very serious problem in our country and it has to be dealt with. I object to that part of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill which I think is very unfair and would prove to be so. That is the part that requires employers to determine the citizenship of an employee before they're hired. I am convinced that the result of this would be that people who are Hispanic, people who have different languages or speak with an accent would find it difficult to be employed. I think that's wrong. We've never had citizenship tests in our country before. And I don't think we should have a citizenship card today. That is counterproductive. I do support the other aspects of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill that strengthens enforcement at the border, strengthens other ways of dealing with undocumented workers in this difficult area and dealing with the problem of settling people who have lived here for many many years and do not have an established status. I further strongly recommend that this Administration do something it has not done. And that is to strengthen enforcement at the border, strengthen the officials in this Government that deal with undocumented workers and to do so in a way that's responsible and within the Constitution of the United States. We need an answer to this problem. But it must be an American answer that is consistent with justice and due process. Everyone in this room, practically, here tonight, is an immigrant. We came here loving this nation, serving it and it has served all of our most bountiful dreams. And one of those dreams is justice. And we need a measure, and I will support a measure that brings about those objectives, but avoids that one aspect that I think is very serious. The second part is to maintain and improve relations with our friends to the south. We cannot solve this problem all on our own. And that's why the failure of this administration to deal in an effective and good-faith way with Mexico, with Costa Rica, with the other nations in trying to find a peaceful settlement to the dispute in Central America has undermined our capacity to effectively to deal diplomatic in this, diplomatically in this area as well.

Q: Sir, people as well-balanced and just as Father Theodore Hesburgh at Notre Dame, who headed the Select Commission on Immigration, have pointed out repeatedly that there will be no immigration reform without employer sanctions because it would be an unbalanced bill and there would be simply no way to enforce it. However, putting that aside for the moment, your critics have also said repeatedly that you have not gone along with the bill, or with any immigration reform, because of the Hispanic groups - or Hispanic leadership groups, who actually do not represent what the Hispanic Americans want because polls show that they overwhelmingly want some kind of immigration reform. Can you say, or how can you justify your position on this, and how do you respond to the criticism that this is another, or that this is an example of your flip-flopping and giving in to special interest groups at the expense of the American nation?

MONDALE: I think you're right that the polls show that the majority of Hispanics want that bill, so I'm not doing it for political reasons. I'm doing it because all my life I've fought for a system of justice in this country, a system in which every American has a chance to achieve the fullness of life without discrimination. This bill imposes upon employers the responsibility of determining whether somebody who applies for a job is an American or not, and just inevitably they're going to be reluctant to hire Hispanics or people with a different accent. If I were dealing with politics here, the polls show the American people want this. I am for reform in this area, for tough enforcement at the border, and for many other aspects of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill , but all my life I've fought for a fair nation and, despite the politics of it, I stand where I stand, and I think I'm right. And before this fight is over, we're going to come up with a better bill, a more effective bill, that does not undermine the liberties of our people. Q: Mr. President, you too have said that our borders are out of control. Yet this fall, you allowed the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill, which would at least have minimally protected our borders and the rights of citizenship because of a relatively unimportant issue of reimbursement to the states for legalized aliens. Given that, may I ask what priority can we expect you to give this forgotten national security element; how sincere are you in your efforts to control, in effect, the nation's states, that is, the United States.

REAGAN: Georgie, and we, believe me, supported the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill strongly, and the bill that came out of the Senate. However, there were things added in in the House side that we felt made it less of a good bill; as a matter of fact, made it a bad bill. And in conference, we stayed with them in conference all the way to where even Senator Simpson did not want the bill in the manner in which it would come out of the conference committee. There were a number of things in there that weakened that bill - I can't go into detail about them here. But it is true our borders are out of control, it is also true that this has been a situation on our borders back through a number of Administrations. And I supported this bill, I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally. With regard to the employer sanctions, we must have that - not only to ensure that we can identify the illegal aliens but also, while some keep protesting about what it would do to employers, there is another employer that we shouldn't be so concerned about, and these are employers down through the years who have encouraged the illegal entry into this country because they then hire these individuals and hire them at starvation wages and with none of the benefits that we think are normal and natural for workers in our country. And the individuals can't complain because of their illegal status. We don't think that those people should be allowed to continue operating free, and this was why the provisions that we had in with regard to sanctions and so forth. And I'm going to do everything I can, and all of us in the Administration are, to join in again when Congress is back at it to get an immigration bill that will give us once again control of our borders. And with regard to friendship below the border with the countries down there, yes, no Administration that I know has established the relationship that we have with our Latin friends. But as long as they have an economy that leaves so many people in dire poverty and unemployment, they are going to seek that employment across our borders. And we work with those other countries. Q: Mr. President, the experts also say that the situation today is terribly different - quantitatively, qualitatively different - from what it has been in the past because of the gigantic population growth. For instance, Mexico's population will go from about 60 million today to 120 million at the turn of the century. Many of these people will be coming into the United States not as citizens but as illegal workers. You have repeatedly said recently that you believe that Armageddon, the destruction of the world, may be imminent in our times. Do you ever feel that we are in for an Armageddon or a situation, a time of anarchy, regarding the population explosion in the world?

REAGAN: No, as a matter of fact the population explosion, if you look at the actual figures, has been vastly exaggerated - over-exaggerated. As a matter of fact, there are some pretty scientific and solid figures about how much space there still is in the world and how many more people can have. It's almost like going back to the Malthusian theory, when even then they were saying that everyone would starve with the limited population they had then. But the problem of population growth is one here with regard to our immigration. And we have been the safety valve, whether we wanted to or not, with the illegal entry here; in Mexico, where their population is increasing and they don't have an economy that can absorb them and provide the jobs. And this is what we're trying to work out, not only to protect our own borders but to have some kind of fairness and recognition of that problem.

MODERATOR: Mr. Mondale, your rebuttal.

MONDALE: One of the biggest problems today is that the coutries to our south are so desparately poor that these people who will almost lose their lives if they don't come north, come north despite all the risks. And if we're going to find a permanent, fundamental answer to this, it goes to American economic and trade policies that permit these nations to have a chance to get on their own two feet and to get prosperity so that they can have jobs for themselves and their people.

And that's why this enormous national bebt, enigneered by this Administration, is harming these countries and fueling this immigration.

These high interest rates, real rates, that have doubled under this Administration, have had the same effect on Mexico and so on, and the cost of repaying those debts is so enormous that it results in massive unemployment, hardship and heartache. And that drives our friends to the north - to the south - up into our region, and we need to end those defiecits as well.

MODERATOR: Mr. President, your rebuttal.

REAGAN: Well, my rebuttal is I've heard the national debt blamed for a lot of things, but not for illegal immigration across our border, and it has nothing to do with it.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/09/us/reagan-raises-new-obstacle-to-house-bill-on-immigration.html

The Reagan Administration has raised a new objection to the House version of a comprehensive immigration bill, saying it goes too far in protecting the rights of legal aliens and Hispanic workers.

That last point by Mondale is rather weak in terms of tying it back to Reagan though he is not entirely wrong on the root problem.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/22/us/the-candidates-debate-transcript-of-the-reagan-mondale-debate-on-foreign-policy.html

MODERATOR: Miss Geyer, your question to Mr. Mondale. IMMIGRATION REFORM

Q: Mr. Mondale, many analysts are now saying that actually our No. 1 foreign policy problem today is one that remains almost totally unrecognized. Massive illegal immigration from economically collapsing countries. They are saying that it is the only real territorial threat to the American nation-state. You yourself said in the 1970's that we had a ''hemorrhage on our borders'' yet today you have backed off any immigration reform such as the balanced and highly- crafted Simpson-Mazzoli Bill. Why? What would you do instead today if anything? MONDALE: Ah, this is a very serious problem in our country and it has to be dealt with. I object to that part of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill which I think is very unfair and would prove to be so. That is the part that requires employers to determine the citizenship of an employee before they're hired. I am convinced that the result of this would be that people who are Hispanic, people who have different languages or speak with an accent would find it difficult to be employed. I think that's wrong. We've never had citizenship tests in our country before. And I don't think we should have a citizenship card today. That is counterproductive. I do support the other aspects of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill that strengthens enforcement at the border, strengthens other ways of dealing with undocumented workers in this difficult area and dealing with the problem of settling people who have lived here for many many years and do not have an established status. I further strongly recommend that this Administration do something it has not done. And that is to strengthen enforcement at the border, strengthen the officials in this Government that deal with undocumented workers and to do so in a way that's responsible and within the Constitution of the United States. We need an answer to this problem. But it must be an American answer that is consistent with justice and due process. Everyone in this room, practically, here tonight, is an immigrant. We came here loving this nation, serving it and it has served all of our most bountiful dreams. And one of those dreams is justice. And we need a measure, and I will support a measure that brings about those objectives, but avoids that one aspect that I think is very serious. The second part is to maintain and improve relations with our friends to the south. We cannot solve this problem all on our own. And that's why the failure of this administration to deal in an effective and good-faith way with Mexico, with Costa Rica, with the other nations in trying to find a peaceful settlement to the dispute in Central America has undermined our capacity to effectively to deal diplomatic in this, diplomatically in this area as well.

Q: Sir, people as well-balanced and just as Father Theodore Hesburgh at Notre Dame, who headed the Select Commission on Immigration, have pointed out repeatedly that there will be no immigration reform without employer sanctions because it would be an unbalanced bill and there would be simply no way to enforce it. However, putting that aside for the moment, your critics have also said repeatedly that you have not gone along with the bill, or with any immigration reform, because of the Hispanic groups - or Hispanic leadership groups, who actually do not represent what the Hispanic Americans want because polls show that they overwhelmingly want some kind of immigration reform. Can you say, or how can you justify your position on this, and how do you respond to the criticism that this is another, or that this is an example of your flip-flopping and giving in to special interest groups at the expense of the American nation?

MONDALE: I think you're right that the polls show that the majority of Hispanics want that bill, so I'm not doing it for political reasons. I'm doing it because all my life I've fought for a system of justice in this country, a system in which every American has a chance to achieve the fullness of life without discrimination. This bill imposes upon employers the responsibility of determining whether somebody who applies for a job is an American or not, and just inevitably they're going to be reluctant to hire Hispanics or people with a different accent. If I were dealing with politics here, the polls show the American people want this. I am for reform in this area, for tough enforcement at the border, and for many other aspects of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill , but all my life I've fought for a fair nation and, despite the politics of it, I stand where I stand, and I think I'm right. And before this fight is over, we're going to come up with a better bill, a more effective bill, that does not undermine the liberties of our people. Q: Mr. President, you too have said that our borders are out of control. Yet this fall, you allowed the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill, which would at least have minimally protected our borders and the rights of citizenship because of a relatively unimportant issue of reimbursement to the states for legalized aliens. Given that, may I ask what priority can we expect you to give this forgotten national security element; how sincere are you in your efforts to control, in effect, the nation's states, that is, the United States.

REAGAN: Georgie, and we, believe me, supported the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill strongly, and the bill that came out of the Senate. However, there were things added in in the House side that we felt made it less of a good bill; as a matter of fact, made it a bad bill. And in conference, we stayed with them in conference all the way to where even Senator Simpson did not want the bill in the manner in which it would come out of the conference committee. There were a number of things in there that weakened that bill - I can't go into detail about them here. But it is true our borders are out of control, it is also true that this has been a situation on our borders back through a number of Administrations. And I supported this bill, I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally. With regard to the employer sanctions, we must have that - not only to ensure that we can identify the illegal aliens but also, while some keep protesting about what it would do to employers, there is another employer that we shouldn't be so concerned about, and these are employers down through the years who have encouraged the illegal entry into this country because they then hire these individuals and hire them at starvation wages and with none of the benefits that we think are normal and natural for workers in our country. And the individuals can't complain because of their illegal status. We don't think that those people should be allowed to continue operating free, and this was why the provisions that we had in with regard to sanctions and so forth. And I'm going to do everything I can, and all of us in the Administration are, to join in again when Congress is back at it to get an immigration bill that will give us once again control of our borders. And with regard to friendship below the border with the countries down there, yes, no Administration that I know has established the relationship that we have with our Latin friends. But as long as they have an economy that leaves so many people in dire poverty and unemployment, they are going to seek that employment across our borders. And we work with those other countries. Q: Mr. President, the experts also say that the situation today is terribly different - quantitatively, qualitatively different - from what it has been in the past because of the gigantic population growth. For instance, Mexico's population will go from about 60 million today to 120 million at the turn of the century. Many of these people will be coming into the United States not as citizens but as illegal workers. You have repeatedly said recently that you believe that Armageddon, the destruction of the world, may be imminent in our times. Do you ever feel that we are in for an Armageddon or a situation, a time of anarchy, regarding the population explosion in the world?

REAGAN: No, as a matter of fact the population explosion, if you look at the actual figures, has been vastly exaggerated - over-exaggerated. As a matter of fact, there are some pretty scientific and solid figures about how much space there still is in the world and how many more people can have. It's almost like going back to the Malthusian theory, when even then they were saying that everyone would starve with the limited population they had then. But the problem of population growth is one here with regard to our immigration. And we have been the safety valve, whether we wanted to or not, with the illegal entry here; in Mexico, where their population is increasing and they don't have an economy that can absorb them and provide the jobs. And this is what we're trying to work out, not only to protect our own borders but to have some kind of fairness and recognition of that problem.

MODERATOR: Mr. Mondale, your rebuttal.

MONDALE: One of the biggest problems today is that the coutries to our south are so desparately poor that these people who will almost lose their lives if they don't come north, come north despite all the risks. And if we're going to find a permanent, fundamental answer to this, it goes to American economic and trade policies that permit these nations to have a chance to get on their own two feet and to get prosperity so that they can have jobs for themselves and their people.

And that's why this enormous national bebt, enigneered by this Administration, is harming these countries and fueling this immigration.

These high interest rates, real rates, that have doubled under this Administration, have had the same effect on Mexico and so on, and the cost of repaying those debts is so enormous that it results in massive unemployment, hardship and heartache. And that drives our friends to the north - to the south - up into our region, and we need to end those defiecits as well.

MODERATOR: Mr. President, your rebuttal.

REAGAN: Well, my rebuttal is I've heard the national debt blamed for a lot of things, but not for illegal immigration across our border, and it has nothing to do with it.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/09/us/reagan-raises-new-obstacle-to-house-bill-on-immigration.html

The Reagan Administration has raised a new objection to the House version of a comprehensive immigration bill, saying it goes too far in protecting the rights of legal aliens and Hispanic workers.

That last point by Mondale is rather weak in terms of tying it back to Reagan though he is not entirely wrong on the root problem.

My point was to show that Democrats have always been for more leniant immigration laws and Republicans for more restrictive immigration laws.

OF course though naturally it should be noted that during the 1980s, it was the height of Republican Moderation on immigration for the simple fact that the politics of the sunbelt at least for the time lent itself to such because of the heavy interest by many monied interests in having cheap labor imported to keep costs down.

That being said during the Bush years, this was not uniform even and people talk of "Republicans use to sound like this on immigration citing Reagan or Bush", need to account for the fact that the House Republican Caucus throughout this period was almost uniformly hawkish on the border and somewhat restriction favored, the 2005 enforcement only bill comes to mind. This is especially so because of demographic pressure and suburban crime fears by many Representatives in the sunbelt.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/22/us/the-candidates-debate-transcript-of-the-reagan-mondale-debate-on-foreign-policy.html

MODERATOR: Miss Geyer, your question to Mr. Mondale. IMMIGRATION REFORM

Q: Mr. Mondale, many analysts are now saying that actually our No. 1 foreign policy problem today is one that remains almost totally unrecognized. Massive illegal immigration from economically collapsing countries. They are saying that it is the only real territorial threat to the American nation-state. You yourself said in the 1970's that we had a ''hemorrhage on our borders'' yet today you have backed off any immigration reform such as the balanced and highly- crafted Simpson-Mazzoli Bill. Why? What would you do instead today if anything? MONDALE: Ah, this is a very serious problem in our country and it has to be dealt with. I object to that part of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill which I think is very unfair and would prove to be so. That is the part that requires employers to determine the citizenship of an employee before they're hired. I am convinced that the result of this would be that people who are Hispanic, people who have different languages or speak with an accent would find it difficult to be employed. I think that's wrong. We've never had citizenship tests in our country before. And I don't think we should have a citizenship card today. That is counterproductive. I do support the other aspects of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill that strengthens enforcement at the border, strengthens other ways of dealing with undocumented workers in this difficult area and dealing with the problem of settling people who have lived here for many many years and do not have an established status. I further strongly recommend that this Administration do something it has not done. And that is to strengthen enforcement at the border, strengthen the officials in this Government that deal with undocumented workers and to do so in a way that's responsible and within the Constitution of the United States. We need an answer to this problem. But it must be an American answer that is consistent with justice and due process. Everyone in this room, practically, here tonight, is an immigrant. We came here loving this nation, serving it and it has served all of our most bountiful dreams. And one of those dreams is justice. And we need a measure, and I will support a measure that brings about those objectives, but avoids that one aspect that I think is very serious. The second part is to maintain and improve relations with our friends to the south. We cannot solve this problem all on our own. And that's why the failure of this administration to deal in an effective and good-faith way with Mexico, with Costa Rica, with the other nations in trying to find a peaceful settlement to the dispute in Central America has undermined our capacity to effectively to deal diplomatic in this, diplomatically in this area as well.

Q: Sir, people as well-balanced and just as Father Theodore Hesburgh at Notre Dame, who headed the Select Commission on Immigration, have pointed out repeatedly that there will be no immigration reform without employer sanctions because it would be an unbalanced bill and there would be simply no way to enforce it. However, putting that aside for the moment, your critics have also said repeatedly that you have not gone along with the bill, or with any immigration reform, because of the Hispanic groups - or Hispanic leadership groups, who actually do not represent what the Hispanic Americans want because polls show that they overwhelmingly want some kind of immigration reform. Can you say, or how can you justify your position on this, and how do you respond to the criticism that this is another, or that this is an example of your flip-flopping and giving in to special interest groups at the expense of the American nation?

MONDALE: I think you're right that the polls show that the majority of Hispanics want that bill, so I'm not doing it for political reasons. I'm doing it because all my life I've fought for a system of justice in this country, a system in which every American has a chance to achieve the fullness of life without discrimination. This bill imposes upon employers the responsibility of determining whether somebody who applies for a job is an American or not, and just inevitably they're going to be reluctant to hire Hispanics or people with a different accent. If I were dealing with politics here, the polls show the American people want this. I am for reform in this area, for tough enforcement at the border, and for many other aspects of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill , but all my life I've fought for a fair nation and, despite the politics of it, I stand where I stand, and I think I'm right. And before this fight is over, we're going to come up with a better bill, a more effective bill, that does not undermine the liberties of our people. Q: Mr. President, you too have said that our borders are out of control. Yet this fall, you allowed the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill, which would at least have minimally protected our borders and the rights of citizenship because of a relatively unimportant issue of reimbursement to the states for legalized aliens. Given that, may I ask what priority can we expect you to give this forgotten national security element; how sincere are you in your efforts to control, in effect, the nation's states, that is, the United States.

REAGAN: Georgie, and we, believe me, supported the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill strongly, and the bill that came out of the Senate. However, there were things added in in the House side that we felt made it less of a good bill; as a matter of fact, made it a bad bill. And in conference, we stayed with them in conference all the way to where even Senator Simpson did not want the bill in the manner in which it would come out of the conference committee. There were a number of things in there that weakened that bill - I can't go into detail about them here. But it is true our borders are out of control, it is also true that this has been a situation on our borders back through a number of Administrations. And I supported this bill, I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally. With regard to the employer sanctions, we must have that - not only to ensure that we can identify the illegal aliens but also, while some keep protesting about what it would do to employers, there is another employer that we shouldn't be so concerned about, and these are employers down through the years who have encouraged the illegal entry into this country because they then hire these individuals and hire them at starvation wages and with none of the benefits that we think are normal and natural for workers in our country. And the individuals can't complain because of their illegal status. We don't think that those people should be allowed to continue operating free, and this was why the provisions that we had in with regard to sanctions and so forth. And I'm going to do everything I can, and all of us in the Administration are, to join in again when Congress is back at it to get an immigration bill that will give us once again control of our borders. And with regard to friendship below the border with the countries down there, yes, no Administration that I know has established the relationship that we have with our Latin friends. But as long as they have an economy that leaves so many people in dire poverty and unemployment, they are going to seek that employment across our borders. And we work with those other countries. Q: Mr. President, the experts also say that the situation today is terribly different - quantitatively, qualitatively different - from what it has been in the past because of the gigantic population growth. For instance, Mexico's population will go from about 60 million today to 120 million at the turn of the century. Many of these people will be coming into the United States not as citizens but as illegal workers. You have repeatedly said recently that you believe that Armageddon, the destruction of the world, may be imminent in our times. Do you ever feel that we are in for an Armageddon or a situation, a time of anarchy, regarding the population explosion in the world?

REAGAN: No, as a matter of fact the population explosion, if you look at the actual figures, has been vastly exaggerated - over-exaggerated. As a matter of fact, there are some pretty scientific and solid figures about how much space there still is in the world and how many more people can have. It's almost like going back to the Malthusian theory, when even then they were saying that everyone would starve with the limited population they had then. But the problem of population growth is one here with regard to our immigration. And we have been the safety valve, whether we wanted to or not, with the illegal entry here; in Mexico, where their population is increasing and they don't have an economy that can absorb them and provide the jobs. And this is what we're trying to work out, not only to protect our own borders but to have some kind of fairness and recognition of that problem.

MODERATOR: Mr. Mondale, your rebuttal.

MONDALE: One of the biggest problems today is that the coutries to our south are so desparately poor that these people who will almost lose their lives if they don't come north, come north despite all the risks. And if we're going to find a permanent, fundamental answer to this, it goes to American economic and trade policies that permit these nations to have a chance to get on their own two feet and to get prosperity so that they can have jobs for themselves and their people.

And that's why this enormous national bebt, enigneered by this Administration, is harming these countries and fueling this immigration.

These high interest rates, real rates, that have doubled under this Administration, have had the same effect on Mexico and so on, and the cost of repaying those debts is so enormous that it results in massive unemployment, hardship and heartache. And that drives our friends to the north - to the south - up into our region, and we need to end those defiecits as well.

MODERATOR: Mr. President, your rebuttal.

REAGAN: Well, my rebuttal is I've heard the national debt blamed for a lot of things, but not for illegal immigration across our border, and it has nothing to do with it.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/09/us/reagan-raises-new-obstacle-to-house-bill-on-immigration.html

The Reagan Administration has raised a new objection to the House version of a comprehensive immigration bill, saying it goes too far in protecting the rights of legal aliens and Hispanic workers.

That last point by Mondale is rather weak in terms of tying it back to Reagan though he is not entirely wrong on the root problem.

My point was to show that Democrats have always been for more leniant immigration laws and Republicans for more restrictive immigration laws.

OF course though naturally it should be noted that during the 1980s, it was the height of Republican Moderation on immigration for the simple fact that the politics of the sunbelt at least for the time lent itself to such because of the heavy interest by many monied interests in having cheap labor imported to keep costs down.

That being said during the Bush years, this was not uniform even and people talk of "Republicans use to sound like this on immigration citing Reagan or Bush", need to account for the fact that the House Republican Caucus throughout this period was almost uniformly hawkish on the border and somewhat restriction favored, the 2005 enforcement only bill comes to mind. This is especially so because of demographic pressure and suburban crime fears by many Representatives in the sunbelt.

Even so, I bet some of the OC crazies took a pretty hard line on immigration during the 80s (Bob Dornan blamed his defeat to Loretta Sanchez in 1996 on illegal immigrants voting).

Certainly, its a dynamic I have given some analysis towards when you have an area whose politics is being transformed by demographic change

1. Resist
2. Compromise
3. Succumb

Sometimes stage two is skipped, a lot of immigration restrictions in Socal were replaced by Democrats with no in between.

The interesting dynamic know is that Republicans are doing better in the diverse areas then the more heavily white ones because of the education divide. Go back to 2012, people would have said that CA-39 is on borrowed time but the seat held formerly by Walters was viewed as being safer long term.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I have not the energy to time tonight to dive head first into these matters, besides Truman is doing a great job on most fronts.

The thing about Douglass is that he is committed to the politics of the era in which he became prominent and for him, the Republicans were the messiah who delivered his people from bondage. However, after the 1870s, it is brutally clear who the Republicans were looking out for and that is industrial tycoons and whatever their interests were. I would bet you that Douglas was not fond of what happened in 1876, but guess who was just fine with it. 

For later generations, Republicans were basically seen as taking them for granted and doing nothing in the here and now, grateful for actions of Republicans in the past they may be.

A good exemplar of this attitude and why blacks shifted toward the Democrats is illustrated by the words of W.E.B. Dubois:

In 1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected. In 1928, Negroes faced absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South. In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt's attitude toward workers most realistic.

This is a story of slow building disenchantment. Douglass would be resistant to this mindset and seek to re-emphasize that Democrats as the party of Jim Crow, the south and and backwards ideals to put a damper on building discontentment and feelings of being taken for a ride.

Dubois was not an idiot either. He didn't back the Democrats because they were the party of Jim Crow, and "Regressive Southern politics", he backed Wilson and later FDR because he saw in the Democrats an egalitarian party economically speaking that was willing to take assertive actions on issues of poverty and labor that Republicans just would not and could not have done even in the 1860s and much less in the 1900s-1930s. He was certainly disappointed in Wilson, but he was still disillusioned with Republican priorities.

So the question becomes when did Republicans start to prioritize business uber alles? It wasn't 1896 though that was a very transformative year for Democrats. It was 1860-1876. In 1860, Lincoln got elected while backing the traditional Whig economic agenda, and by 1876, the business tycoons this attracted were calling the shots enough to sell reconstruction down the river.

Democrats were most always a party dominated by poor small farmers, and immigrant laboring concerns. Republicans were able to crack this labor vote with the protectionist issue, but the Democrats were most always the less pro-business party, and the one more likely to challenge monopolists and the policies they pushed, through the Republican Party. The Democrats have at points lost sight of this and had a base revolt that pulled it back to its roots, this is what Jackson did with Jefferson's Party and it is what WJB did with Jackson's Party. This party was very racist, and "reactionary" on race issues bc poor whites were bloody fing racist at the time. Small farmers in the South and West, Irish immigrants in NYC, and so forth are well known for their racist views and this is why the party took the stances it did in the 1860's and 1870s on those issues and why Redeemers/Conservatives/Plantation Southerns slid into the Party regardless of pre-war allegiance, with relative ease.

It also just so happens that the economic policies that benefited industrialists in the North were seen as hostile to their economic interests. It is not like post New Deal where you could make a country-wide pro-rich economic platform.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Also a quick point on this whole "Southern Catholic thing", in Holt's book on the Whig Party when talking about Maryland, he mentions that Catholics in the state tended to be Whigs and this continued until the Whigs began to tie themselves in with the Nativists and the Know-Nothings. Once this happened, the Catholics shifted wholesale towards the Democrats while non-Catholics shifted towards the Know-Nothings/American Party and some later towards the Republicans.

However, this happened in the mid 1850s and previously their was strong associations between Catholics including Catholic Planters and the Whig Party both in Maryland but also in Louisiana if memory serves me though I am less familiar with that.

The problem here should be obvious, that is these "Conservative" catholics were aligned with the "conservative" party until the realignments provoked by the Civil War and its run-up. Their opposition to the Calvinist Yankees and the invocation of historical parallels makes sense from a political expedience standpoint since Yankees destroyed the power and wealth, and took away their slaves.

However, the important thing to remember here is that you cannot take for granted everything a given person in a set period says, just like what Douglass said has to be put into a particular context of self association, likewise these Catholics need to be viewed in the same light. They are seeking to paint themselves in a positive light and cast their tribal political opponents and also the people seeking policies hostile to their interests in a particular light.

The other important thing is that these are not the only rich elites and nor do they speak for rich elites across the country. They are sectional elites, whose interests class with those in the North and with the Republican ascension and afterwards those elites are calling the shots.

Throughout this thread I have stated that the Republicans started off as a "Grand Coalition" opposed to slavery and Lincolns selection was that of a moderate that could bridge this coalition, get elected and then keep it together to fight and win the war as well a to abolish slavery. Also, I have stated that this would not succeed without the support of Northern elites who would benefit from the crippling of the planter class as it would open the door to the country becoming an industrial powerhouse and here is the key point with them controlling the helm of the ship. Based on what we know from the gilded era, can you honestly say that is not what ended up happening? Of course it is.

The inevitable outcome of this, especially with all of their opponents accrued to the Democratic Party (from immigrant labors, to small farmers and now the Conservative Planter class), is that they would manifest via the Republican Party and over time come to dominate it to the exclusion of other forces and influences, yielding the notions that have been taken for granted as largely true for time immemorial, that Republicans are the party of "business and the rich", it is just that during this period it was sectional to business and the rich in the North. The understanding of the Southern Strategy as being an attempt to evolve this into a more national pro-business basis is therefore the proper way to interpret it as opposed being some manifested flip of ideology.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How did we go from Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover supporting Prohibition and Al Smith and FDR opposing it to Frank Lautenberg writing the National Minimum Drinking Age Act and Reagan having to be talked into it?

After the failure of Prohibition both parties backed away from it obviously though you had state level holdouts in the South and parts of other states.

In the 1980s, suburban parents fearful of their kids hanging out with the wrong crowd was a big thing and both parties coveted this vote.  

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The institutional Catholic Church was not only opposed to organized labor and socialist movements, but liberal democracy itself, which as you later note were indeed different things. I can only say I'm a bit surprised that the Labour party were advocates for Catholics, since in the early 18th century they were mostly Tories, but I guess things had changed a little since then .

You know at the risk of being disrespectful, I would almost surmise that you view ones politics as genetic or hereditary. All Catholics have to be reactionaries because of the Pope, All Yankees have to be liberals because of Cromwell and even the poorest of Southern dirt farming Johnny Cash type has to be a far right reactionary.

This is not how the world works. People's political outlook is at once idiosyncratic and is derived from their socio-economic status, their surroundings, and their treatment by the dominant forces economic, religious, societal, racial and ethnically speaking.

Catholics in Britain were an oppressed minority, many occupied down market laboring jobs and were exploited by the wealthy classes, and you find it surprising that a "Socialist/Social Democratic" party would oppose religious discrimination and support workers rights?

Indeed, and I have never conflated the two (socialism and liberalism). I have merely stated that the Republicans combined liberals and socialists under one tent against the conservative Southerners and Catholics in the Democratic party. I have also pointed out that abolitionists had strong ties to European socialists, just as Whig and Know-Nothing nativists did to liberals and radicals in Europe. I think it is foolhardy to ignore these across the sea ideological connections, as they bring much light onto the true ideologies of American political parties.

For a party that combined two such things together, they did a pretty piss poor job in advocating for them and their interests aside from one single issue, which I think illustrates several points that you missed.

1. The Whigs were divided much more than just North and South, failing to account for that can lead to problems and there were reactionary elites in the North, in the Whig Party. Also the Free Soilers drew heavily from the Democrats in the North.

2. Connections, communication and personal delusions aside, religions intolerance and bigotry is still religious intolerance and bigotry even if one's personal anti-Catholicism deludes one into thinking otherwise Upholding the established demographics against an immigrant tide is the epitome of  a "conservative" action. And no amount of fear mongering about the Pope will change this reality that it is religious/ethnic/racial supremacy at work.

3. Since there were such reactionary elites in the North, who magically don't exist in your world where every Charles Emerson Winchester (the far right WASP in later seasons of MASH) is at least a liberal if not a socialist, you fail to consider that the Republicans were formed as broad coalition that incorporated a broad group of ideologies drawing from all existing parties in the North and spanning the ideological spectrum from socialist to conservative. 

The fact that Republicans at no point trained their fire on Northern business magnates during or just after the Civil War, when these "radicals" and "socialists" were arguably at their height with the most political power should and must illustrate the failure to account for a vast number of conservative business types.

3) Fair enough, but look at the electoral maps of the Gilded Age. It's not like the sectional divide went away; to the contrary, it remained as present as it had during the Civil War. The United States did not return to the antebellum, more class-based system where men voted their class regardless of region, but remained deeply divided between North and South. Looking at those late 19th century maps, I know which side I'm on, and so does Frederick Douglass.

I might respond to the rest later, but I'm too tired now.

This is so superficial of an analysis.

It is called cracking. Republicans cracked the working class vote via protectionism and used fear to say basically "vote for us, or Democrats will destroy your jobs". Republicans do this very same thing with the Coal miners today, so it shouldn't be too hard to contemplate in a past scenario where intimidation was more rampant, unions were very weak and Republicans held all of the cards.

This combined with the expansion of the industrial revolution through the Midwest gave Republicans a stranglehold on the region that the Democrats were shut out of except for when Republicans alienated religions minorities and/or immigrants or were split.

Southern elites still saw Republicans with disdain for nuking their political power and the Democrats were the vehicle for preserving Southern influence enough to protect Jim Crow. Even so, they would over the decades find themselves increasingly diverging from the rest of the party economically, and this is why you had the Dixiecrat revolt, only after people with direct memories of the Civil War, were dead and Democrats increasingly were looking to more appealing turf post-New Deal.

To summarize, the civil war map continued because of the following factors:
1. Economic policy preferences differing between the two regions, and at the same time uniting workers and elites together within each region for a period of time (Tariffs v. Free Trade).
2. Lingering memories of the conflict and hatred for each other derived from said conflict and its after effects both in terms of racial considerations and power relative to the nation as a whole.
3. Inability of Democrats to bridge the divide of the working class until time had past for Civil War generation to die off and Republican economic policies had crashed and burned (Smoot-Hawley). Worth noting that it was at this point that blacks flipped and never really looked back.
4. Inability of Republicans lure back Southern elites until the economic policies shifted, the Civil War generation died and Democrats were ever more discernibly leaving them to shift in the wind.

Things don't happen over night, especially with all the complicating factors.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I will also say, that while I have my own prejudices and favorite figures of this era, and enjoy the the subjective debates we have in the "who would you have voted for" threads and interactive TLs over on Individual Politics, when we are trying here to conduct a more-or-less objective analysis of the period, I do not think it helpful to approach these discussions from the point of view of arguing for your "side," and I somewhat resent the implication that I am somehow on the side of 'not Frederick Douglass.' I hope I am mistaken in my impression of this your last comment.

To hear him tell the tale, the real Harry S Truman might as well be Jefferson Davis. Which becomes even more hilarious when you consider his display name, something I thought off at work the other day when thinking of you two going at it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The institutional Catholic Church was not only opposed to organized labor and socialist movements, but liberal democracy itself, which as you later note were indeed different things. I can only say I'm a bit surprised that the Labour party were advocates for Catholics, since in the early 18th century they were mostly Tories, but I guess things had changed a little since then .

You know at the risk of being disrespectful, I would almost surmise that you view ones politics as genetic or hereditary. All Catholics have to be reactionaries because of the Pope, All Yankees have to be liberals because of Cromwell and even the poorest of Southern dirt farming Johnny Cash type has to be a far right reactionary.

This is not how the world works. People's political outlook is at once idiosyncratic and is derived from their socio-economic status, their surroundings, and their treatment by the dominant forces economic, religious, societal, racial and ethnically speaking.

Catholics in Britain were an oppressed minority, many occupied down market laboring jobs and were exploited by the wealthy classes, and you find it surprising that a "Socialist/Social Democratic" party would oppose religious discrimination and support workers rights?

Because Catholics are evil, Yankee. Bloody Mary burned heretics at the stake and the Stuart monarchy waged war against parliament. Ergo every Catholic is a reactionary and every anti-Catholic bigot is a liberal crusader!

Did you just OCize Henry Wallace?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It is telling that in no one's response was mentioned the main thrust of my post, the (rather fitting, I thought) parallel between the politics around Catholics in 19th century America and 18th century Britain. I must assume then that according to NC Yankee, the Algernon Sidney and Richard Price Whigs were the epitome of "conservative", men whose religious intolerance deluded them into thinking they were fighting for liberty. These bigots were doing the work of upholding the established Protestant church, and no amount of fear mongering about the Pope (which they certainly did) can change the reality that they were engaging in religious/ethnic/racial supremacy.

I was not the one saying all members of a particular religious group must be exponents of a particular political view irrelevant of the context in which they live and exist in their time period simply because they adhere to that religion.

You concern yourself with avowed statements, I am more concerned with the practical consequences and impacts in a given power structure. People can claim to be fighting for whatever and do whatever to justify their actions, but at the end of the day, it is just as important to consider who is getting screwed over in the power dynamic in which they hold power and why.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

5) Indeed, but I'm reminded of something Yankee once said in another thread (or perhaps earlier in this one). It was about how sometimes in history there have been ideological alignments which pitted conservatives and leftists/labor together against liberals.

Yep, here we go

His claim was that the Republican Party at its founding included both conservative businessmen and socialists drawn together against Democratic liberals

Yes I did

but I'm increasingly getting the sense that the opposite was true, if you replace "businessmen" with "slave owners" and "socialists" with "labor".

Yes you would naturally.

Even if socialist thinkers like Marx who understood the importance of the slavery battle supported the Republicans, most workingmen in the 1850s continued to vote Democratic based on the old economic issues and racist demagogic appeals.

Old economic issues drawn heavily from a classical liberal policy base, combined with an opposition to monopolies, yes.

Even so, working voters were divided as I have repeatedly said since 1) Slavery was beginning to be seen as a threat to working people in the north as opposed to a salvation, post Dred Scott. 2) Republican Economic Nationalism was more befitting their economic interest then the Democrats agrarian+period liberal economic policy (which threatened deindustrialization in the eyes of many workers).

They were joined in the party by slave owners, of course, desperate to preserve their favored economic and political position from abolitionism.

Glad you finally acknowledge they were joining an egalitarian party out of mutual interest.

On the other side, in the Republican Party, we see Northern liberals and the bourgeois middle class, determined to liberate the oppressed slaves of the South.

And Northern Socialists, Northern Aristocrats, Northern Capitalists, Northern Speculators and Northern Landed Elites and everyone else who for a multitude of reasons listed below came to regard slave power as a threat to their situation or values.

1. Genuine moral outrage
2. Corruption of the Constitution and the courts
3. Violation of Northern State's with Fugitive Slave law
4. Fear of Slavery being spread north by the courts and out competing paid labor (Dred Scott and Bleeding KS before that)
5. Hindrance to the economic development of the country, getting in the way of desired policy outcomes (economic nationalism).
6. Hindrance to the spreading of the gospel to the unwashed

The problem with emphasizing the nature of "The Northern Middle Class" here is that it fails to account for the economic dynamic by which this middle class existed and the resulting altered policy orientation to which they existed towards the establishment. This is the same problem with failing to account for the relative dominance of more calvinistic sects in America and expecting the political relationship of dissenters in Britain and Calvinists/Pius Sects in the US  to be exactly the same. Power dynamics matter.

The Northern Middle Class, or at least that portion of which that was connected to and depended upon the Industrial Revolution, would be thus depended on a set of economically nationalist policies that would put it in contrast to say the middle class in Britain that depended on a trading empire and a free trade policy for its wealth. The effect of this in reality means this portion of the middle class is going to adhere to and behave similarly to the elites, in the US, more so then elsewhere and especially in Britain.

Also before we go further, there was strong middle class support from the Jacksonian era for the Democratic Party. Of course in your view every Catholic is a right wing reactionary Monarchist, but that would be one group of middle class support. Aside from them there would be middle class and likewise even elements of he Wall Street Class that supported Democratic policies precisely because they were engaged in industries that were harmed or at least not benefited directly by the economic policies of the Republican Protective System. Also anti-monopoly politics had a strong middle class appeal in an era where large portions of the middle class were getting screwed by monopolists, just like anti-speculation politics had a strong appeal to the small and poor farmers getting screwed by the speculators.

When you dig into this, you find a clear cleavage on an economic nationalist vs. "liberal" (mostly classical but also with some compromises in terms of opposing speculators/monopolists and trying to regulate that). This would cleave a minority of the Northern Wealthy into opposing the Republicans and an even larger group (though likely not a majority or even close) of the middle class and a significant group, perhaps even a majority of working class voters (variably by era), that would be supporting the Democrats.

Now I know you have repeatedly said you don't give a crap about economic and class dynamics, but just because you don't like it, doesn't mean that these dynamics don't exist.

Examining the most extreme ends of both sides in the slavery debate, this reversal of Yankee's position bears out at an individual level too. While George Fitzhugh decried Northern capitalism and modernity and argued for his form of "Tory socialism", William Lloyd Garrison championed Lockean natural rights and the cause of individual liberty in his war against the slave power.

For the millionth time, 95% of Americans would be considered "Liberals" in terms of international politics in the 19th century precisely because of the Revolution, and the Republic and the culture celebrating such. This would have been true outside of some extreme planters and New England blue bloods. These liberals were united for all of about 15 minutes once the revolution ended and then divided between along a new political fault line. Examining the extreme ends misses the mark because it presumes that everyone is polarized on the those extremes with everyone moderating out from those. That is not how this worked and the disparate motivations listed above, means that a large number of people would have supported the Republicans for reasons much different from Garrison and would have supported the South, while decrying Fitzhugh's conceptualization.

What you are trying to do here is fabricate a linear demonstration of anti-slavery politics with Fitzhugh on the right and Garrison on the left and trying force everyone onto that line graph. As someone who despises political matrices, I find this rather misguided and unnecessarily simplistic.

You can make a linear scale that makes you look 100% right, I can make one that makes me look 100% right. The key thing to understand here is that these matters are far too complex to be subject to this kind of superficial generality and reductionism.

The Jacksonians may have been democrats, as their name implies, but I don't see them as liberals. It is the constitutional rhetoric of the Whigs, moreover, which bears much closer resemblance to how liberals in Europe spoke at the time in their battles with monarchists.

Do you know where the name federalist comes from originally? It was originally the used by those who opposed a new constitution and favored the Articles of Confederation. It was hijacked by Nationalists to describe the compromises of the US Constitution, and thus forced their opponents to use the name Anti-Federalists. This was a remarkable case of defining yourself and your opponents first and it worked.

Fast forward 50 years, is it really surprising that the same group of wealthy elites is again stealing their name from the other side?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

That was true in England, but as I said previously there are significant differences between the U.S. and the U.K. during this period that make a direct comparison problematic, significantly the absence of universal manhood suffrage and the existence of a feudal class order prior to the nineteenth century.

I scratched some of the surface of this UK versus US difference in terms of economic relationships on the previous page, you might want to check that out out.

hence why slaveholders loved the Whig party and Hamilton kept trying to elect Pinckneys over the more troublesome Adams.

But a play told me that Hamilton was a liberal, abolitionist, hero...

I forgot the details of Hamilton pushing Pinckneys over Adams, this is going on the Youtube comments sections going forward.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don't know why it would seem strange. Populism is a rhetorical devise; liberalism is an ideology. The two are not inherently incompatible.

Populism is a natural reaction to an out of touch elite. If the elite is pro-business and conservative, then its populist opposition would be very likely to be egalitarian and liberal in response to it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As for the Federalists, I tend to take a somewhat more generous view of someone like John Jay (who as governor signed the 1799 law to abolish slavery in New York) or even Washington than I do of Clay, given they actually took steps (however small) to dismantle the institution. I will point out, however, that Jefferson pursued much the same plan in Virginia as Jay successfully lobbied for in New York, and arguably did more to weaken slavery in the long term than any other founding father by keeping slavery out of the Northwest and trying unsuccessfully to outlaw it in all federal territory with his 1784 land bill. (He was still a filthy racist of course.) Anti-slavery sentiment was simply more popular with the founding generation than with the generation that came of age after the War of 1812, but with few exceptions not much was accomplished on the slavery front after the 1780s. So I would not characterize the Federalists as an anti-slavery party, merely a party that had some nominally anti-slavery members.

I agree with this analysis.

This bold line was true across the board, though there were some who were militantly pro-slavery, especially the Pinckneys, Hamilton's allies. It was because of one of them (I cannot remember which one off hand) stirring up trouble in the convention that we got the 3/5ths compromise.

Prior to the Cotton Gin and the turning of Cotton into a cash commodity there was a different mindset where people hated slavery, but be it Jefferson's personal debt or just sheer inertia felt incapable of escaping but presumed down the road that would change.

The rise of King Cotton is what produces the radicalized Southern fire eater over the course of the ensuing decades, from the likes of John C. Calhoun to Jefferson Davis, by which point you get people trying spin slavery as a positive "civilizing force", which was not present to my knowledge in the 1780s.

This is one of three great sea changes that would effect American and especially Southern politics substantially for the next century and beyond. The other two have been touched on here and thus I will peel them out as well.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

the Jacksonians accordingly were appealing to an electorate made up of men of every class and background, while the European liberals were mostly middle-class men appealing to other middle-class men. I find it significant that during the early republic, when the electorate was (somewhat) more restricted than during the Jacksonian period, the Jeffersonians employed much the same rhetorical strategies and appeals to constitutionalism that you describe: and in that line let us not forget that John Adams was the first president to be called a tyrant recklessly concentrating power in the executive, if we are going to be taking propagandists at their word.

There are two reasons why the Whigs took a different line on executive power and both tie back to the expanded voting.

1. The Whigs had to be more expansive than just Federalists and included Nationalist Republicans, hence the name, who would have supported large segments of the Jeffersonian view but took issue with Jackson's new take on it. Kind of like how "Tory" politicians early in the 19th century UK said "The gov't of the last century is and could have only been a Whig Gov't". Being a Federalist would be as destructive as being a Tory in the previous generation. The Whigs were even more expansive than the NRs, including Anti-Masons and such forth, which further muddies the waters, and it is worth noting that a good bit of radical abolitionism hails from Anti-Masonry.

2. OMG the plebs took the White House!!!!!

The Federalists depended upon the restrictive voting to survive. The Jeffersonians s were being powered off the influx of immigrants from the Celtic rim (who of course were all solid reactionary Monarchists in your tradition, Truman. ) and these people didn't take kindly to living in an apartheid state essentially with Ango-Saxons controlling everything from the top down. While the Whigs were more inclusive and expansive beyond this Anglo-Saxon elite, they were still a pro-establishment, minoritarian party just as say the Friends of Pitt were in 1780s Britain or even conservatism today (minus the establishment part). It often ends up a minority viewpoint and thus it becomes necessary to cleave off parts of the opposition to get close to control.

You do this through two ways, you go anti-executive and work soften the ideologues on the other side who "didn't sign up for King Andrew" and then when that doesn't work, you run a popular General and build a personality cult for him.

Also if you think there are parallels to something else here, you are probably right

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Following on the rise of cotton and the expanded voting, the third biggest shift that would define the politics for most of the 19th century has to be the shift in the North in the early 19th century in terms of where money and power was focused on. It is worth noting that the Federalist Party was at first dedicated to economic nationalism and centralism but at the same time was the party wedded to the financial elite of slave traders and Merchants in New England. Well with Britain being the dominant trade power of the time, this led to a preference for a pro-British policy. However, with the Embargo Act of 1807, the War of 1812 and then the Tariff of 1816, this dynamic was wrecked completely and set the stage for a shift of capital from the merchant focus to the industrial one.

This is why Federalists backed a Free Trade Republican in 1812 and then flirted with secession in 1814. Special interests are a powerful drug. The nuking of this economic elite, created the political opening for the Republicans to destroy the Federalists under Madison, because the new industries were certainly not keen on a return to pre-1807, and a lot of ex-Feds who did believe in nationalism of some sort were certainly not going to follow the rump to their special interest driven oblivion. The renewal of the bank, the instituting of the tariff of 1816 and the rise of nationalists like Henry Clay as western allies for this kind of politics also made this possible.

This helps to explain the cleavage in the North between pro-nationalist elites and more economically liberal ones I mentioned on the previous page. So while the Whigs are the successor to the Federalists in that they contain the majority of  Northern elites, it has to be remembered, it is not quite the same elite and they did not always necessarily share the same interests. Going further, actual remnants of such Federalist elites, assuming they were still in an economic position harmed by by economic nationalism would be favoring the Democrats in later periods against Republicans in contrast to their fellow rich types. This should also explain why a pro-Fed planter (Southern of course) or merchant (North or South), might support Southern Whigs or even the Democrats in the Jacksonian Era and then gravitate towards the Democrats if not already so by the 1850s.

It was one thing to support tariffs to fund an army to shoot down the rioting Plebs, quite another to use tariffs to discourage commerce with Britain in favor of internal commerce and industry.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The rise of King Cotton is what produces the radicalized Southern fire eater over the course of the ensuing decades, from the likes of John C. Calhoun to Jefferson Davis, by which point you get people trying spin slavery as a positive "civilizing force", which was not present to my knowledge in the 1780s.

And the planters themselves were positively aware that this shift in opinion had occurred —as we've both discussed previously, pro-slavery literature of the 1850s is full of denunciations of Jefferson. There is an essay published in Debow's Review (a pro-slavery publication) during the campaign of 1860 I love to quote that captures this revisionist history quite well:

Now, to return to the year 1790; at that time the number of slaves was comparatively small, and the disposition to emancipate them quite general. People saw that slavery was an evil to the country; they had no longer a King George to compel its existence, and there can be no doubt but that in a few years, there would have been a general emancipation; the negroes would have decreased in numbers, owing to their idleness and profligacy, and afterward the great immigration of Irish and German labor would have crushed them by competition in the marts of industry, and the black race would probably have been swallowed up in the capacious maw of civilization, as many savage races have been before them. But just at this juncture, just in the nick of time, and only ten years after King George had relinquished his rule in America, in steps King Cotton, forbidding by his power what the other had forbidden by his veto, viz.: the abolition of slavery; and so the negroes were saved.

And conversely Republicans constantly invoked Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, in contrast to the Constitution. They clung to Jefferson's ideals even beyond what the framers had managed to put into law as sort of an aspirational approach. This is also one of the reasons why they took the name Republican.

It goes hand in hand with my post about cleaving off sections of support from the other side (just like Reagan invoked FDR in constrast to 1980s Dems, Obama invoked Ike a lot in contrast to the Tea Party and so on), by shaming them for deviating from their forbears.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

1) Fair enough, but on the whole the Federalists and Whigs were more antislavery than their opponents, I think you'd agree, owing to their bases of power in the Northeast, even if there existed many individual pro-slavery Federalists/Whigs and antislavery Republicans/Democrats.

How do we have 11 pages and you're still sticking to this absurd point.

The Whig Party was not a northeastern party with a several pro slavery characters within it. It was an overtly pro slavery party that blamed anti slavery agitators for the disturbances in the country, and went out of it's way to portray itself as a national party, not a north eastern one.

The Whigs were not significantly more anti slavery than the Democrats in any real way. They nominated a pro-expansion hack twice (William Henry Harrison) against a future Free Soiler (although MvB is hardly an icon of the anti slavery cause), it was a Whig President that signed the Fugitive Slave Act! Where did the Whigs actually meaningfully oppose slavery more than their opponents.

Sure the Whig Party had Lincoln and Seward (although, case in point, Seward was inferior in his influence in the NY Whigs to the likes of Fillmore), but it also had Alexander Stephens and Robert Hunter. I really fail to see how it was meaningfully more anti slavery than the Democrats.

I sometimes get the feeling that Henry is trying validate his affinity for the GOP in a particular era on a "The party left me" basis as opposed to acknowledging that such across the board progressivism within the GOP even at earlier periods was much weaker and very much a minority position within the party. There is also a lot of us versus them on a religious basis.

This also gets extended back to the Whigs and Federalists.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

1) Fair enough, but on the whole the Federalists and Whigs were more antislavery than their opponents, I think you'd agree, owing to their bases of power in the Northeast, even if there existed many individual pro-slavery Federalists/Whigs and antislavery Republicans/Democrats.

How do we have 11 pages and you're still sticking to this absurd point.

The Whig Party was not a northeastern party with a several pro slavery characters within it. It was an overtly pro slavery party that blamed anti slavery agitators for the disturbances in the country, and went out of it's way to portray itself as a national party, not a north eastern one.

The Whigs were not significantly more anti slavery than the Democrats in any real way. They nominated a pro-expansion hack twice (William Henry Harrison) against a future Free Soiler (although MvB is hardly an icon of the anti slavery cause), it was a Whig President that signed the Fugitive Slave Act! Where did the Whigs actually meaningfully oppose slavery more than their opponents.

Sure the Whig Party had Lincoln and Seward (although, case in point, Seward was inferior in his influence in the NY Whigs to the likes of Fillmore), but it also had Alexander Stephens and Robert Hunter. I really fail to see how it was meaningfully more anti slavery than the Democrats.

I sometimes get the feeling that Henry is trying validate his affinity for the GOP in a particular era on a "The party left me" basis as opposed to acknowledging that such across the board progressivism within the GOP even at earlier periods was much weaker and very much a minority position within the party. There is also a lot of us versus them on a religious basis.

This also gets extended back to the Whigs and Federalists.

Agree completely with both David and NCYankee. I think it may be because Henry Wallace’s father had been a Republican so the “party left me” idea is even more strong.

I think the problem with quantifying the Whigs as a party opposed or supporting any particular issue is that it was formed off the basis of a single issue originally and expanded further. It was formed originally from the apparatus of Henry Clay and his opposition to Andrew Jackson. The similar idea led to the foundation of the Democrats though it was Jackson and his own personality cult that formed the Democrats. The Whigs not only had a large and virulent pro slavery wing the so-called cotton Whigs, but they had a huge nativist presence as well. In fact their 1844 Vice Presidential nominee held significant sway among these nativist mobs. The Whigs serving as a precursor to the modern Republican Party is dishonest, due to the foundation of the modern GOP coming from a coalition of Whigs, Know Nothing’s, and Disaffected Northern Democrats. While the secessionist movement was a combined force of Democrats, Cotton Whigs, and even those who had supported the Constiutional Unionist party I.e. John Bell.

I would agree at least initially, that the Republicans were indeed a single issue party as well founded from various politically affiliations previous to that point.

What I have contended in this thread is that from 1860 onward, Lincoln made various appeals to bring on elitist, business and other more conservative Whig factions who were uneasy about abolition and likewise of the Republicans but were willing to trust this Clay disciple (economically speaking) and especially once he ran on most of their old economic platform.

Furthermore, it is worth remembering that Democrats took complete control in 1856, lowered tariffs in 1857 and there was a recession of sorts in 1857-1858. Some of have blamed this on the Dred Scott decision, while more recent analysis says it was more caused by external factors. Even so, the view at the time was likely prevalent that Democrats had wrecked the economy to please the South, so by 1860 there is thus much broader Northern appetite for Republicanism especially as extolled by Lincoln in contrast to Fremont and other earlier hard liners.

Following from there, as the Civil War gave way to the gilded age and their influence was manifest in their party of choice, the party itself came much more defined by their interest at the expense of other considerations. This is so much so by the 1870s that you see Republicans being see as "The party of the rich" and the "Party of the businessman", just as much as the party of Lincoln and abolishing slavery. Overtime the former would begin to outweigh and erode the latter, with 1876 being the moment when it is definitive that business had the upper hand in the party and regardless of factions to come later and various Presidents, this general relationship would remain continue to strengthen.

What Henry is doing is relying on hard coded ideologies as if they are attached to ones DNA and thus saying that because Republicans were the party of the abolitionism and Yankees, they must have been the more liberal party until they shed their Yankee base in the 1960s in favor of a Catholic one. It discounts human agency, or the general left-wing character economically speaking of the poor debtor farmer in the South and West who were left out of the industrial prosperity, were getting screwed by banks, screwed by railroads and shot whenever they demanded change either by Pinkerton's or the national guard.

This is not to say that Democrats were perfect champions for such people, a point he often clings to. In fact it is very likely that the Democrats were able to become better such champions precisely because Republicans were alienating so many people to them by being so business oriented. However you have to recognize this dynamic as being underway as far back as the early 1870s.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The title of this old blog post by historian Eric Rauchway sends up all sorts of red flags, but the content actually reinforces the point Yankee and I (among others) have been making here: that while the policy prescriptions of the major parties changed dramatically between 1876 and 1936, their core ideologies did not.

"In the West were voters disillusioned with the Republican Party’s Second American System, which turned out awfully favorable to banks, railroads, and manufacturing interests, and less favorable to small-time farmers such as those who had gone West and gone bust."

"Now, one can get cleverer and point out that although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places, their core supporters don’t—which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it’s just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don’t."

I have linked to Rauchway before including earlier in this thread: https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is a rather obvious reason why business would shift towards a small government footing, because once they had achieved international dominance as they had by 1900 to a large extent, many American firms slowly began to see government more as an obstacle then as a positive. This is why by 1930 you actually had a number of business types opposing Smoot-Hawley and it was mere political inertia behind the policy and perceived benefits politically that pushed it along, only to fail miserably. The economy is dynamic, but the politics backing a policy only change once it is proven to be a complete disaster as such.

When in an earlier period, American firms were competing against dominant British ones and also competing against established plantation owners for political power in the south, using the government for trade protection, subsidies and the like as a policy of developmental capitalism was desirable instead.

Rauchway's argument thus makes perfect sense when you consider it from a primarily economic and business basis, as well as the relative dynamics of money and power in a given time period.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The title of this old blog post by historian Eric Rauchway sends up all sorts of red flags, but the content actually reinforces the point Yankee and I (among others) have been making here: that while the policy prescriptions of the major parties changed dramatically between 1876 and 1936, their core ideologies did not.

"In the West were voters disillusioned with the Republican Party’s Second American System, which turned out awfully favorable to banks, railroads, and manufacturing interests, and less favorable to small-time farmers such as those who had gone West and gone bust."

"Now, one can get cleverer and point out that although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places, their core supporters don’t—which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it’s just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don’t."

I have linked to Rauchway before including earlier in this thread: https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Ha! I am starting to forget everything that has been said in this thread after 12 pages.

Well I am not even 100% sure it was this thread, but I have linked to it a couple of times.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Now, I could point out to you that the North held on to Established Churches for longer than the South did

It doesn't make any sense to me how there could be an "established" state Congregational church in the North, when the whole point of Congregationalism is that local congregations control their own affairs. Case in point: when the Independents came to power in Britain, they abolished the Church of England and granted freedom of religion to Protestant dissenters.

Okay, but there was. The Congregationalist Church remained the state church of Connecticut until 1818, when it was finally disestablished by a coalition of Republicans and moderate Federalists who ran under the banner of the "Toleration party"; New Hampshire had disestablished its state Congregationalist Church only the previous year, while neighboring Massachusetts kept its established church for another decade and a half, only formally disestablishing the Church in 1833. I should think this should not be too surprising to anyone familiar with the history of Puritanism in New England.

I just don't understand it on a conceptual level. How can a denomination that definitionally gives congregations local control have a state church?

I wonder what you imagine a state church to be, and how it is incompatible with Congregationalism? In New England, the established Congregational Church had the support of the state, meaning it was able to collect tithes and enforce church attendance. As I say, this continued well into the nineteenth century, long after the rest of the country disestablished their state churches in the late eighteenth century.

It is rather forgotten aspect of our history.

It is also a case of "it isn't a problem if it is our people doing it". Same with the religious discrimination discussion that occurred earlier in this thread.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I do feel like we're reaching a consensus of sorts, as I have little to argue with in response to Truman or most of Yankee's points, but there's one thing Yankee said which is still bugging me. That is, his insistence that the Democratic party of the 1850s and 60s was still a liberal party, despite all evidence to the contrary.

5) Indeed, but I'm reminded of something Yankee once said in another thread (or perhaps earlier in this one). It was about how sometimes in history there have been ideological alignments which pitted conservatives and leftists/labor together against liberals.

Yep, here we go

His claim was that the Republican Party at its founding included both conservative businessmen and socialists drawn together against Democratic liberals

Yes I did

but I'm increasingly getting the sense that the opposite was true, if you replace "businessmen" with "slave owners" and "socialists" with "labor".

Yes you would naturally.

Even if socialist thinkers like Marx who understood the importance of the slavery battle supported the Republicans, most workingmen in the 1850s continued to vote Democratic based on the old economic issues and racist demagogic appeals.

Old economic issues drawn heavily from a classical liberal policy base, combined with an opposition to monopolies, yes.

Even so, working voters were divided as I have repeatedly said since 1) Slavery was beginning to be seen as a threat to working people in the north as opposed to a salvation, post Dred Scott. 2) Republican Economic Nationalism was more befitting their economic interest then the Democrats agrarian+period liberal economic policy (which threatened deindustrialization in the eyes of many workers).

They were joined in the party by slave owners, of course, desperate to preserve their favored economic and political position from abolitionism.

Glad you finally acknowledge they were joining an egalitarian party out of mutual interest.

I just don't see how you can continue to insist this. The Democratic party of the 1850s was a reactionary mess that no longer stood for anything or anyone, least of all the unfortunate, besides the slave power and Southern interests. Truman himself has stated that by 1850, all genuine liberals bolted the party. Is it not obvious that in a political arena in which slavery was the defining issue, perhaps the one true issue of the 1850s which underlaid all else, that the defenders of such an institution are nothing but the most blatant of conservatives? I'm curious how you would respond to these two passages I posted a couple pages back from the Louisville paper, which make quite clear to me that in the 1850s-60s the Republicans were a liberal party and the Democrats a conservative one:

Not only did Church officials perceive the Republicans to be anti-Catholic and associate them with the nativist riots that occurred during the prewar period, but prelates and priests also argued that the party of Lincoln represented the ill-effects of Protestantism in American society. Clergy considered the Republican antislavery platform and the party’s association with abolitionism to be examples of Protestant fanaticism. Although by 1860 nearly all Protestant sects contained an antislavery faction, almost all members of the Church—in both the United States and Europe—denounced abolitionism as a radical movement that opposed Catholic teachings. Catholic leaders considered abolitionism to be a product of Protestant liberalism which threatened to upend the social and legal status quo in the country. As abolitionists demanded an immediate end to slavery, despite American laws that protected the institution, Catholic leaders sought to preserve order by upholding the sanctity of the Constitution. Thus, prelates and priests believed that the Republican Party—the party of northern Protestants—endangered the stability of the country by advancing its antislavery platform. In particular, ultramontane clergy—like Francis Patrick Kenrick and Spalding—adhered to the belief that slavery remained a legitimate human relation that fit within a structured social hierarchy. Clergy referenced Catholic theology, doctrine, and dogma to offer an alternative course of action than the one pursued by abolitionists and antislavery Republicans. According to members of the American hierarchy, Catholicism defended national laws, protected the social order, and prevented political factionalism because it provided a central authority—the Church—to settle internal disputes. On the other hand, prelates and priests contended that Protestantism allowed for lawlessness, fomented social disorder, and led to political disunion because, without the acceptance of a central moral authority, Protestantism allowed each man (or woman) to become a law unto himself (or herself). Thus, not only did clergy oppose the Republican Party because of its perceived anti-Catholic stance, but prelates and priests also disparaged the party of Lincoln because it represented the interests of northern Protestants, a group that Catholics considered uninformed religious fanatics that fomented disunion.

Although the clergy in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri did not publicly endorse or campaign for a candidate in the presidential election of 1860, the majority of prelates and priests privately supported Stephen Douglas, the northern Democratic candidate from Illinois. The clergy’s antebellum experiences with nativism and anti-Catholicism forged a strong bond between members of the Church and Democrats. However, by the summer of 1860, the Democratic Party had divided into northern and southern wings, forcing Border State Catholics to decide between Douglas and John C. Breckinridge of the southern Democratic Party. Although some Catholics backed Breckinridge—particularly fellow Kentuckians from the western portion of the state—most members of the Church in the region supported Douglas. The northern Democratic candidate promoted unionism and vowed to uphold the status quo, which, to Catholic clergy, meant an adherence to the law and the preservation of social order. As Catholic historian William B. Kurtz explained, “Catholics’ faith and religious worldview, which emphasized stability over reform, also made them predisposed to favor a conservative and national party.” Douglas gained the support of Catholics because he advocated the policy of popular sovereignty to decide the fate of slavery in the West, opposed abolitionism, promised to protect the rights of immigrants, and promoted the sanctity of the Union by running a national campaign. For example, regarding the dispute over slavery in the western territories, the Douglas Democratic platform pledged to “abide by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States [the Dred Scott decision] upon these questions of Constitutional law.” Thus, clergy from the Border States viewed Douglas as the candidate least influenced by Protestant liberalism and most committed to the interests of the Church and the nation.

On the other side, in the Republican Party, we see Northern liberals and the bourgeois middle class, determined to liberate the oppressed slaves of the South.

And Northern Socialists, Northern Aristocrats, Northern Capitalists, Northern Speculators and Northern Landed Elites and everyone else who for a multitude of reasons listed below came to regard slave power as a threat to their situation or values.

1. Genuine moral outrage
2. Corruption of the Constitution and the courts
3. Violation of Northern State's with Fugitive Slave law
4. Fear of Slavery being spread north by the courts and out competing paid labor (Dred Scott and Bleeding KS before that)
5. Hindrance to the economic development of the country, getting in the way of desired policy outcomes (economic nationalism).
6. Hindrance to the spreading of the gospel to the unwashed

The problem with emphasizing the nature of "The Northern Middle Class" here is that it fails to account for the economic dynamic by which this middle class existed and the resulting altered policy orientation to which they existed towards the establishment. This is the same problem with failing to account for the relative dominance of more calvinistic sects in America and expecting the political relationship of dissenters in Britain and Calvinists/Pius Sects in the US  to be exactly the same. Power dynamics matter.

The Northern Middle Class, or at least that portion of which that was connected to and depended upon the Industrial Revolution, would be thus depended on a set of economically nationalist policies that would put it in contrast to say the middle class in Britain that depended on a trading empire and a free trade policy for its wealth. The effect of this in reality means this portion of the middle class is going to adhere to and behave similarly to the elites, in the US, more so then elsewhere and especially in Britain.

Also before we go further, there was strong middle class support from the Jacksonian era for the Democratic Party. Of course in your view every Catholic is a right wing reactionary Monarchist, but that would be one group of middle class support. Aside from them there would be middle class and likewise even elements of he Wall Street Class that supported Democratic policies precisely because they were engaged in industries that were harmed or at least not benefited directly by the economic policies of the Republican Protective System. Also anti-monopoly politics had a strong middle class appeal in an era where large portions of the middle class were getting screwed by monopolists, just like anti-speculation politics had a strong appeal to the small and poor farmers getting screwed by the speculators.

When you dig into this, you find a clear cleavage on an economic nationalist vs. "liberal" (mostly classical but also with some compromises in terms of opposing speculators/monopolists and trying to regulate that). This would cleave a minority of the Northern Wealthy into opposing the Republicans and an even larger group (though likely not a majority or even close) of the middle class and a significant group, perhaps even a majority of working class voters (variably by era), that would be supporting the Democrats.

Now I know you have repeatedly said you don't give a crap about economic and class dynamics, but just because you don't like it, doesn't mean that these dynamics don't exist.

Yes, the Republicans combined all sorts of Northerners into one party, but what they all had in common was their Protestant liberalism. Read the passages I posted above. Despite the multitude of reasons that led people to oppose slavery, I maintain that the Republicans were at their founding fundamentally a classical liberal party, committed to eradicating slavery for ideological reasons first and foremost before any economic concerns. The party's opposition to slavery came from its ideological commitment to classical liberalism - that is to say, its founding belief in the equality of man under the law and determination to "make men free". This is borne out by everything the party said and did, who founded it, the candidates it ran, how it was perceived and reacted to by contemporaries, etc. Orwell is right; the Republicans were not just a continuation of the Whigs, and it is dishonest to pretend as if they were.

Also, I'm tired of hearing your "economic nationalist = conservative" claim, which you seem to have accepted as a predetermined truth that requires no backing evidence whatsoever. I've already explained how Listian economic nationalism was very much in line with 19th century American liberal capitalism, not "free trade". As you like to say, motivations and interest groups are more important ideological determiners than the policies themselves, or in this case how strictly those policies adhere to classical economic orthodoxy.

Are you seriously arguing that Smithian/Ricardian Economics is not liberal in the mid to early 19th century?

I never said that nationalism was always a liberal or conservative economic policy. I did say that Northern workers felt threatened by Democrats "Classical Liberal" economic platforms, which was primarily defined as being that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo "as it was extolled" in being for lassiez faire and free trade. Listian nationalism having appeal among certain sects of liberalism in Europe doesn't alter what is primarily seen as Liberal economic policy for the time. Democrats did combine this stance with opposition to banks and monopolies in multiple different eras as well, including this one in question.

What I have repeatedly said, particularly with regards to Protectionism is that whether it is a Conservative or Liberal policy is down to who backs it and why. Surely no one in their right mind is going to call 1970s pro-Union Democrats Conservatives, or Donald Trump a Liberal. Economic interest is dynamic because the economy is always evolving, therefore the specific economic policies themselves are not indicative on their own absent who is pushing them and for what benefit. In the mid 19th century, the people promoting economic nationalism were the business owners in the North and they were able to sway their workers to embrace it out of fear the other side's proposals would nuke their jobs. This is not a liberal party, embracing a niche liberal economic policy from a sect of European thinkers. This is a set of owners (yes capitalists) who want to gain/preserve political dominance internally and economic dominance globally through the use of economic nationalism and developmental capitalism. Over the course of a decade they would come to dominate the Republican Party and turn it into a tool largely for their own enrichment, a dynamic that would only strengthen over the decades.

These people and their trusts would be our "Monarchy" and Bourbon Democrats were derisively labeled "Bourbons" because their seen by their own base as too cozy with said Monarchy and their politics no longer serving to benefit said base, but instead serving to likewise enrich the trusts and monopolists.

Writers, thinkers and such leaving a party is one thing. But the base of the Democratic Party doesn't just magically change save for the loss of places like NH, ME, MI and WI. Aside from the loss of more Jacksonian Yankees, the Democrats are still a party of immigrants, small farmers and poor Southern/Westerners, along with urban artisans. The broadest categories here do not change be it 1830s, 1860s or 1890s. Its the same people, supporting largely the same things, for largely the same reasons (though the latter would diverge leading to the populists and eventually WJB, that was a return to normalcy, not a radical divergence of historical alignment).

Here is what I will say to you, is that just like the Federalists in 1814, the Democrats got sucked down the rabbit hole of special/base interest hell to preserve the power and status of the planter class, because the rest of their base flowed naturally into a footing aligned with that mindset.