Obscure Groups Most Loyal to One Party Since 1856

[RINO Tom]

Inspired by this topic, what semi-obscure groups (i.e., not as broad as "White Catholics" or "College-Educated Voters") do you think have been the most loyal to the Democrats or Republicans and more or less voted for the same party since the 1856 election?  Given that this is a VERY long time period in which a lot has changed, there are obviously not going to be very many examples ... so you might have to get creative.  I also added "more or less," as we have had some landslides in that timeframe, so you are going to find examples of nearly every "type" of county flipping at least once.  I think a voter in South Dakota that voted for FDR in 1936 but never voted for a Democrat again could count here.

Here's my stab at a few:

Democratic
- Middle class urban voters in Manhattan with a liberal arts background
- Jewish voters in the Northeast who belonged to a union?

Republican
- Small business owners in the suburbs of the Great Plains states
- Protestant farmers in Central Pennsylvania

[Skill and Chance]

Republicans

-Non-Southern, non-farm small business owners (even in the South, they flipped pretty much as soon as people born after the Civil War could vote)

Democrats

-This is harder, but I think it would apply to plurality-Irish areas in the NE?

Much of Appalachia picked a side in the Civil War era and then was stagnant until 2000ish, but those counties vote R at near uniform levels now.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Whig
- True Protestants
- Dissenting fanatics
- Bankers, financiers, stockjobbers

Tory
- Irish Papists
- Loyal churchmen
- Backwoods country gentlemen

Edit: I misread the year in the thread title as 1685.

[Aurelius]

Republican: Members of San Francisco's ultra-elite private social clubs, like the Pacific Union Club. It gets a lot less attention now because of the tech deluge, but there is some serious old money in SF dating all the way back to the Gold Rush.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Have Democrats always won recent immigrants?

[RINO Tom]

Have Democrats always won recent immigrants?

I would say as a broad group, yes, but there were obviously exceptions (like some German and Scandinavian groups that were pretty much GOP off the boat).  However, that group is also always changing, so I am not sure it should count.  Pretty much once the Irish and Italian Catholics were no longer discriminated against and were viewed as sufficiently mainstream, they took the label happily and said adios to the Democrats.

[Alcibiades]

Democratic
- Working class urban Irish Catholics in Boston
- Hispanics in South Texas (for now…)

Republican
- Appalachian Unionists (especially Southeastern Kentucky and East Tennesse)
- The small town/rural/(and later) exurban upper crust outside of the South

Democratic
- Middle class urban voters in Manhattan with a liberal arts background

I’m not quite sure what precise definitions you’re using here (blame the fast-and-loose way Americans use the term “middle class” ), but, either way, I very much doubt that this group has been anything close to reliably Democratic over this time period.

Assuming that by “liberal arts background” you mean that they have an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts, then for a very long time, university education was the preserve of the privileged, and thus the preserve of Republicans. In 1948, well over 70% of college graduates voted Republican, and this was even after the “liberal intellectual” phenomenon had certainly started to emerge. In addition, for much of this time period, having this sort of background in Manhattan would also likely mark you out as a WASP, which it goes without saying would strongly imply Republican politics.

[Sol]

The Puerto Rican diaspora has been pretty firmly Democratic since coming stateside, right? Not that there have been significant numbers on the mainland pre-1930s or so.

[RINO Tom]

Democratic
- Working class urban Irish Catholics in Boston
- Hispanics in South Texas (for now…)

Republican
- Appalachian Unionists (especially Southeastern Kentucky and East Tennesse)
- The small town/rural/(and later) exurban upper crust outside of the South

Democratic
- Middle class urban voters in Manhattan with a liberal arts background

I’m not quite sure what precise definitions you’re using here (blame the fast-and-loose way Americans use the term “middle class” ), but, either way, I very much doubt that this group has been anything close to reliably Democratic over this time period.

Assuming that by “liberal arts background” you mean that they have an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts, then for a very long time, university education was the preserve of the privileged, and thus the preserve of Republicans. In 1948, well over 70% of college graduates voted Republican, and this was even after the “liberal intellectual” phenomenon had certainly started to emerge. In addition, for much of this time period, having this sort of background in Manhattan would also likely mark you out as a WASP, which it goes without saying would strongly imply Republican politics.

I purposely said “background” to try to capture liberal arts “types” and not restrict it to college graduates for long-ago time periods.  Even among graduates, I think the math can work out.  What percent of college grads, even when being one was rare, were liberal arts majors?  They’re certainly more liberal than college grads at large in every era, IMO.  Additionally, ones living in Manhattan are going to be much more liberal than the national average.  I could definitely see 70% of college grads leaning GOP nationally while this specific major in Manhattan leans left.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Democratic
- Working class urban Irish Catholics in Boston
- Hispanics in South Texas (for now…)

Republican
- Appalachian Unionists (especially Southeastern Kentucky and East Tennesse)
- The small town/rural/(and later) exurban upper crust outside of the South

Democratic
- Middle class urban voters in Manhattan with a liberal arts background

I’m not quite sure what precise definitions you’re using here (blame the fast-and-loose way Americans use the term “middle class” ), but, either way, I very much doubt that this group has been anything close to reliably Democratic over this time period.

Assuming that by “liberal arts background” you mean that they have an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts, then for a very long time, university education was the preserve of the privileged, and thus the preserve of Republicans. In 1948, well over 70% of college graduates voted Republican, and this was even after the “liberal intellectual” phenomenon had certainly started to emerge. In addition, for much of this time period, having this sort of background in Manhattan would also likely mark you out as a WASP, which it goes without saying would strongly imply Republican politics.

I purposely said “background” to try to capture liberal arts “types” and not restrict it to college graduates for long-ago time periods.  Even among graduates, I think the math can work out.  What percent of college grads, even when being one was rare, were liberal arts majors?  They’re certainly more liberal than college grads at large in every era, IMO.  Additionally, ones living in Manhattan are going to be much more liberal than the national average.  I could definitely see 70% of college grads leaning GOP nationally while this specific major in Manhattan leans left.

But you wanted groups going back to 1856, and liberal New York liberal arts "types" in 1856 were certainly not Democrats. The leading liberal paper in 19th century America was the New-York Tribune, a solidly Republican outfit. Needless to say, it was written by New York liberals (with the help of Karl Marx) and abhorred by Democrats, leading a mob of Irish to try to burn down the paper's headquarters in the Draft Riots.

The ideological affiliations of the Democratic and Republican parties in New York were also reflected in other states. In the Lincoln-Douglas Senate race of 1858, Stephen Douglas won the endorsement of the Conservative, a Springfield newspaper which approvingly reprinted articles calling for the enslavement of both black and white workers. Here is an example of that sentiment from another Democratic newspaper of the time:

Free society! We sicken of the name! What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern and especially the New England states are devoid of society fitted for well bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meets is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery; and yet are hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which the northern hordes are endeavoring to extend to Kansas.

Rather ingeniously, Lincoln supporters responded to this clipping by bringing a banner to one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates which read "“Small Fisted Farmers, Mud-sills of Society, Greasy Mechanics for A. Lincoln.”

Skipping ahead to the early 20th century, we find that Nicholas Murray Butler, longtime President of Columbia and author of The Faith of a Liberal (1924), was a committed Republican and even served as the party's Vice Presidential nominee in 1912. Given the Republican Party's historic liberalism, it seems unlikely to me that the New York liberal intelligentsia, or whatever you want to call it, supported the Democrats in large numbers prior to the New Deal era.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Western Michigan Dutch Reformed for Republicans (though that region has started to trend Democratic in this century, I would imagine that declining religiosity and thus identification with that cultural heritage is much of it)

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Democratic
- Working class urban Irish Catholics in Boston
- Hispanics in South Texas (for now…)

Republican
- Appalachian Unionists (especially Southeastern Kentucky and East Tennesse)
- The small town/rural/(and later) exurban upper crust outside of the South

Democratic
- Middle class urban voters in Manhattan with a liberal arts background

I’m not quite sure what precise definitions you’re using here (blame the fast-and-loose way Americans use the term “middle class” ), but, either way, I very much doubt that this group has been anything close to reliably Democratic over this time period.

Assuming that by “liberal arts background” you mean that they have an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts, then for a very long time, university education was the preserve of the privileged, and thus the preserve of Republicans. In 1948, well over 70% of college graduates voted Republican, and this was even after the “liberal intellectual” phenomenon had certainly started to emerge. In addition, for much of this time period, having this sort of background in Manhattan would also likely mark you out as a WASP, which it goes without saying would strongly imply Republican politics.

I purposely said “background” to try to capture liberal arts “types” and not restrict it to college graduates for long-ago time periods.  Even among graduates, I think the math can work out.  What percent of college grads, even when being one was rare, were liberal arts majors?  They’re certainly more liberal than college grads at large in every era, IMO.  Additionally, ones living in Manhattan are going to be much more liberal than the national average.  I could definitely see 70% of college grads leaning GOP nationally while this specific major in Manhattan leans left.

But you wanted groups going back to 1856, and liberal New York liberal arts "types" in 1856 were certainly not Democrats. The leading liberal paper in 19th century America was the New-York Tribune, a solidly Republican outfit. Needless to say, it was written by New York liberals (with the help of Karl Marx) and abhorred by Democrats, leading a mob of Irish to try to burn down the paper's headquarters in the Draft Riots.

The ideological affiliations of the Democratic and Republican parties in New York were also reflected in other states. In the Lincoln-Douglas Senate race of 1858, Stephen Douglas won the endorsement of the Conservative, a Springfield newspaper which approvingly reprinted articles calling for the enslavement of both black and white workers. Here is an example of that sentiment from another Democratic newspaper of the time:

Free society! We sicken of the name! What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern and especially the New England states are devoid of society fitted for well bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meets is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery; and yet are hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which the northern hordes are endeavoring to extend to Kansas.

Rather ingeniously, Lincoln supporters responded to this clipping by bringing a banner to one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates which read "“Small Fisted Farmers, Mud-sills of Society, Greasy Mechanics for A. Lincoln.”

Skipping ahead to the early 20th century, we find that Nicholas Murray Butler, longtime President of Columbia and author of The Faith of a Liberal (1924), was a committed Republican and even served as the party's Vice Presidential nominee in 1912. Given the Republican Party's historic liberalism, it seems unlikely to me that the New York liberal intelligentsia, or whatever you want to call it, supported the Democrats in large numbers prior to the New Deal era.

Adding on to this post, one of the most towering figures in 19th century New York intellectual life was Robert G. Ingersoll, widely recognized as the leader of the Freethought movement and an ardent abolitionist, feminist, and secular humanist. Given his deep-seated progressivism, it is only natural that Ingersoll was an extremely partisan Republican - here is part of a delightful speech, full of righteous indignation, that he gave while campaigning for Hayes in 1876:

I am opposed to the Democratic party, and I will tell you why.  Every State that seceded from the United States was a Democratic State.  Every ordinance of secession that was drawn was drawn by a Democrat.  Every man that endeavored to tear the old flag from the heaven that it enriches was a Democrat.  Every man that tried to destroy this nation was a Democrat.
Every man that shot Union soldiers was a Democrat.  Every man that denied Union prisoners even the worm-eaten crust of famine, and when some poor, emaciated Union patriot, driven to insanity by famine, saw in an insane dream the face of his mother, and she beckoned him and he followed, hoping to press her lips once again against his fevered face, and when he stepped one step beyond the dead line the wretch that put the bullet through his loving, throbbing heart was and is a Democrat.
Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was a Democrat.  The man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat.
... Every man that wanted the privilege of whipping another man to make him work for him for nothing and pay him with lashes on his naked back, was a Democrat.  Every man that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat.  Every man that clutched from shrieking, shuddering, crouching mothers, babes from their breasts, and sold them into slavery, was a Democrat.
... Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic bodies was given you by a Democrat.  Every scar, every arm that is lacking, every limb that is gone, is a souvenir of a Democrat.  I want you to recollect it.

Ingersoll was also a member of the National Liberal League and the first president of its successor organization, the American Secular Union. These groups worked with the Republican party to advance secularist policy proposals like the Blaine Amendment, which was sadly never adopted.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Sounds like something you would hear from Candace Owens. We don't take her historiography seriously and for good reason, as thinking people would identify it as a partisan exercise as opposed to an accurate portrayal of historical dynamics.

Yet once again we have Henry engaging in the same of old exercise of taking period partisans in their partisan rhetorical excess, for being historically accurate and fair historical representations, and also cleverly packing religious bigotry in the most inoffensive packaging possible. "Its not discriminations, its just 'liberalism' and 'secularism".

We know why Republicans pushed the Blaine amendment, its because they wanted to use the public schools (teaching the King James Bible at the time as this was before the rulings in the mid 20th century that forbade such) to Protestantize immigrant Catholics. Its because nativist Americans wanted their thirst for anti-Immigrant policy satiated by their preferred political vehicle. Its because those Immigrants just happened to favor the party that didn't want them sent back home more often than that.

Likewise with this "interesting" speech. Most everyone of this "every x was a Democrat" examples can be refuted. Vance, Toombs, Stephens, John Tyler. Certainly not every slave holder was a Democrat, the Democratic Party did not even exist until the 1820s and as "we" have pointed out time and again, the Whigs were the favored party of the slave areas as demonstrated by the maps, with that only shifting as the Southern Whigs declined over the 1850s.

It is worthy of study and understanding as a period example of a political speech, but it let's not treat it as some kind of accurate historical assessment of the recent past (for them). The purpose of political speeches is not to recount history accurately, it is to win elections by throwing the hot potato, or in this case the bloody shirt, at the other side.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Sounds like something you would hear from Candace Owens. We don't take her historiography seriously and for good reason, as thinking people would identify it as a partisan exercise as opposed to an accurate portrayal of historical dynamics.

Yet once again we have Henry engaging in the same of old exercise of taking period partisans in their partisan rhetorical excess, for being historically accurate and fair historical representations, and also cleverly packing religious bigotry in the most inoffensive packaging possible. "Its not discriminations, its just 'liberalism' and 'secularism".

We know why Republicans pushed the Blaine amendment, its because they wanted to use the public schools (teaching the King James Bible at the time as this was before the rulings in the mid 20th century that forbade such) to Protestantize immigrant Catholics. Its because nativist Americans wanted their thirst for anti-Immigrant policy satiated by their preferred political vehicle. Its because those Immigrants just happened to favor the party that didn't want them sent back home more often than that.

Likewise with this "interesting" speech. Most everyone of this "every x was a Democrat" examples can be refuted. Vance, Toombs, Stephens, John Tyler. Certainly not every slave holder was a Democrat, the Democratic Party did not even exist until the 1820s and as "we" have pointed out time and again, the Whigs were the favored party of the slave areas as demonstrated by the maps, with that only shifting as the Southern Whigs declined over the 1850s.

It is worthy of study and understanding as a period example of a political speech, but it let's not treat it as some kind of accurate historical assessment of the recent past (for them). The purpose of political speeches is not to recount history accurately, it is to win elections by throwing the hot potato, or in this case the bloody shirt, at the other side.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. From everything I've read it seems clear to me that while many anti-Catholics were primarily motivated by nativism, there were also many who were genuine believers in liberalism and secularism and whose anti-Catholicism was based on their adherence to those beliefs. Misguided, perhaps, but in the case of something like the Blaine Amendment it makes sense why secular anti-Catholics could form alliances with evangelical Republicans despite differing motives and why a modern progressive like myself might sympathize with them in their efforts. As I said, I think it is gravely inaccurate to presume that American anti-Catholicism in the 19th century was exclusively a conservative or nativist phenomenon and not also a liberal or progressive one. I am not defending anti-Catholicism by saying this; if anything, I am defaming liberalism by associating it with that strain of bigotry, but since it is true I feel that I must. Besides objections to Catholics which are obviously either liberal or conservative in nature, there is as well a substantial amount of grey area; for instance, is an evangelical Protestant who opposes popery and slavery because they are both immoral and ungodly a liberal or a conservative? Well, one side might argue that opposition to those institutions based on a combination of religious morality and political convictions is a longstanding and indeed crucial component of Anglo-American left radicalism, while another side might contend that any political belief based on religious fundamentalism is inherently conservative. I think you know which side I am on, and I think I know which is backed by the historical record and frankly more logical, but again, you can believe what you want and we can agree to disagree.

Also, you're ignoring the broader point I was making, which is that the Republican party was not only supported by a few liberal intellectuals or liberal newspapers, but by the most notable liberal intellectuals and the biggest liberal paper in the entire country.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

OH JESUS CHRIST


Since I have been summoned here, I will just second everything Yankee has said and point out for any intelligent people who may be interested in learning something about this period of American history that the Know Nothings and nativist hangers-on who were incorporated into the Republican party after 1858 came from the reactionary Old Line Whig tradition who viewed the slavery issue as a nuisance and desperately wanted it removed from the national discourse so they could go back to their favorite pastime, hating on immigrants and poor people. Eric Foner, the preeminent historian on the development of the Republican party in the Civil War era, calls them "conservatives" and points out that time and again they were a thorn in the side of Seward and the moderate-to-radical Republicans who undermined the anti-slavery movement at every turn. Seward in particular was so disgusted by these "Protestant bigots" that his lieutenant in New York politics called it a "great blessing" to be finally rid of them after the rupture of the Whig party, and counseled that if Republicans wanted to win the 1860 election they should rely on their German friends and the Barnburner Democrats and "leave the damned Know Nothings alone."

If "everything Henry has read" on the subject suggests these people were somehow "liberals," may I suggest he is not very well read!

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the ideology and development of the Republican party in the decade preceding the Civil War. Fifty years after its first printing, it remains the definitive text on the Republican party in the 1850s and continues to be cited by academic historians as the basis for their investigations into the politics of the Early Republic. It is dated in some respects, as Foner's students have picked up where he left off in 1970 by expanding on for instance the strange career of the Barnburner Democrats (to whom Foner devotes an entire chapter), and other historians have been inspired by Foner's emphasis on ideology to investigate the development of antislavery politics prior to 1850 (see for instance this article on antislavery rhetoric in the Missouri Compromise debates, which draws heavily on Foner), but still it holds up very well despite its age. Overall, a very worthwhile read and a good starting place for someone interested in the serious scholarship on this topic.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Every State that seceded from the United States was a Democratic State.  Every ordinance of secession that was drawn was drawn by a Democrat.  Every man that endeavored to tear the old flag from the heaven that it enriches was a Democrat.  Every man that tried to destroy this nation was a Democrat.

This isn't even true, lol. Virginia and Tennessee were Whig/"Constitutional Union" (Bell) states, as were nearly North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana; several members of Jefferson Davis' cabinet were Whigs, including some of the most outspoken secessionists: Robert M. T. Hunter and Judah P. Benjamin come to mind. Robert Ingersoll, a partisan Republican of the post-war era, obviously has reasons for misrepresenting the historical reality, but this is why we distinguish between primary and secondary sources. I wonder if certain people even understand the difference, or the different uses to which they are put in serious historical writing.

As for the "New York intelligenstia" — in fact, urban centers were well known for producing Whigs and Republicans of a conservative bent in the nineteenth century; it was the rural areas of New England and the Yankee diaspora that produced the famous radicals. Not only were the conservative Old Line Whigs broadly hostile to the radicalism of these rural Republicans, but the radicals themselves considered the ex-Democrats in the Republican party more reliable allies than their big-city friends — and for good reason! The merchant classes were famously in bed with the Slave Power for most of the 1840s and earlier, and only got on board the anti-expansion train much later, when it became apparent the economic interests of the northern upper classes were endangered by the aggressive and reckless policies of the southern Democrats and the Buchanan administration. Throughout the 1860s, New York City was a hotbed for anti-war and anti-black sentiment; Boston famously welcomed William Lloyd Garrison with a noose when he visited the city decades earlier; Cincinnati experienced many and frequent race riots and was one of the last holdouts to the racially egalitarian social policies adopted by the Republican state legislature in the 1850s; and Philadelphia, despite its active abolitionist movement, was also host to an active and thriving anti-abolition presence. Myself and Yankee have both written at length about how antislavery does not necessarily equal liberalism, ditto for radical Republicanism, but if someone did want to make that argument, you probably shouldn't put all your cards on urban intellectuals!

[Wikipedia delenda est]

I pretty clearly said in my post that I consider anti-Catholicism based on nativism to be conservative, so most of your response is simply irrelevant. There were some exceptions, like when the Massachusetts Know-Nothings passed progressive social and even economic policies, but I won't get into that now. The point of my post was to defend groups like the National Liberal League and the American Secular Union from Yankee's charge that they used pretenses of "liberalism" and "secularism" as covers for religious bigotry. That just isn't true, and even if they did sometimes teeter over into bigotry that doesn't negate their entire worldview. Let's be clear, it's not the American Protective Association we're talking about here. Ingersoll and his friends were part of an Anglo-American radical tradition which was often deeply anti-Catholic, but they weren't nativists. Christopher Hitchens, himself a member of that tradition, wrote astutely about it in relation to Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke:

The Revolution Society was not as insurgent or incendiary as its name might suggest. It was a rather respectable sodality, dedicated to celebrating the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, a relatively bloodless coup that installed William and Mary of the House of Orange on the English throne, and established Protestantism as the state religion. One of the society's leaders was the Reverend Richard Price, a great friend to the American Revolution and a staunch Unitarian clergyman. His resolution, carried by the same meeting that had forwarded a "Congratulatory Address" to the National Assembly in Paris, read in part, "This Society, sensible of the important advantages arising to this Country by its deliverance from Popery and Arbitrary Power ..."

It was made immediately plain to Burke that those who had enthused over revolution across the Channel were also interested in undermining and discrediting the same Church that he—an Irishman brought up under anti-Catholic penal laws—felt so obliged to defend. (This deep connection has been established by Conor Cruise O'Brien in a masterly series of studies that began with his own edition of the Reflections in 1968.) But the point is not a merely sectarian one. In 1780 London had been convulsed and shamed by the hysterical anti-Papist Gordon Riots, in which a crazed aristocratic demagogue had led a mob against supposedly subversive Catholics. (The best evocation of the fury and cruelty of that episode is to be found in Dickens's Barnaby Rudge.) This memory was very vivid in Burke's mind, and goes far to explain his visceral detestation of crowd violence. No less to the point, some emulators of Jacobinism—the United Irishmen, with many Protestants among their leaders—were at work in Ireland trying to bring off a rebellion that would compromise all parliamentary "moderates." And several of the pro-Jacobin activists and spokesmen in England, not excluding the rather humane Price himself, had had political connections with Lord George Gordon. As between the Jacobite and the Jacobin, Burke could not be neutral for an instant; he might give up the Jacobite cause out of loyalty to the British crown, but he was profoundly stirred when he saw old-fashioned anti-Catholicism renascent under potentially republican colors. So one does well to keep Barnaby Rudge in mind along with A Tale of Two Cities.

It was Conor Cruise O'Brien who pointed out, almost 40 years ago, that the most famous and foundational political debate of modern times--the confrontation between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine--was based not just upon conflicting interpretations of 1688, but on differing religious attitudes to it. Burke was a covert Catholic (very probably having this in common with William Shakespeare) and an Irishman, while Paine was a part-Quaker English Deist. The radical and constitutionalist groups in London that hailed the 1789 revolution in France, and had hailed the 1776 revolution in America, were largely and openly pro-1688 and against "Popery," and it was this that had excited Burke's original alarm. Paine was anticlerical rather than anti-Catholic, but he ridiculed Burke's belief that the Glorious Revolution was a one-time-only settlement that established a permanent monarchy. (Burke's position was the more vulnerable one, in that he thought even a Protestant monarchy, and Protestant established church, were better than none at all.)

His [Paine's] father was a Quaker and this was at a time, remember, when what the Quakers would have recalled was the Cromwellian revolution, the Protestant Revolution, the overthrow of the monarchy in Britain, the execution of King Charles in 1649, the destruction of all these achievements by the restoration of the Stuart Monarchy, the reestablishment of a church that was a department of monarchy, where the divine right of kings was still half believed in.

This is important, by the way, first because he represents this Protestant, freethinking, Quakerish, anti-clerical, anti-established-church, anti-monarchic tradition that leads to the American Revolution eventually, because I think the English Revolution is the ancestor of theirs.

At the same time, Hitchens makes clear that Paine detested the sort of vulgar, sectarian, and reactionary anti-Catholicism represented by the Gordon Riots (other radicals like Richard Price were more sympathetic, but like I said earlier, one blind spot doesn't negate his entire worldview):

Both men had good reason to remember the Gordon Riots of 1780, in which a murderous and arsonist anti-Catholic mob was mobilized by a demented reactionary aristocrat named Lord George Gordon, an ancestor of Lord Byron, who later resolved his religious troubles by converting to Judaism in Newgate prison. That horrible episode of crime in 1780 is best revisited in the pages of Dickens's Barnaby Rudge. Both Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and Paine's Rights of Man contain stern condemnations of mobocracy at that level.

Paine, of course, agreed with Edmund Burke, who is the great - well, not - people call Burke a Tory; they're slightly wrong in saying that. Burke was a classical liberal. But Paine agreed with him that the rule of what would have been called ochlocracy, that's literally to say mob rule, the rule of the crowd, was a wicked thing. He, like Burke, was very worried by the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London. He didn't like what he saw, which he saw more than Burke did, of the rule of sheer street force in Paris either. In fact, he was twice very nearly to lose his life to it.

Finally, you say that "Myself and Yankee have both written at length about how antislavery does not necessarily equal liberalism", which I agree with. In fact, I'm arguing against the same sort of ideological absolutism as you are, the notion that anti-Catholicism necessarily equals conservatism. Because the truth, whether you like it or not, is that anti-Catholicism has long been a major part of Anglo-American left radicalism. Was Paul Blanshard, the socialist author and Nation editor who wrote American Freedom and Catholic Power, a conservative? Perhaps he was misguided or simply wrong, but he was following in a recognizably left-wing anti-Catholic tradition dating back 3 centuries before his book was published.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

There's a reason people tend not to take Christopher Hitchens very seriously, especially on the subject of religion. But I am not going to be dragged into another debate over whether "actually Catholics are the Masons, the Jews, and the Illuminati all in one" is a reasonable position for anyone to hold. (Especially not with someone who is already demonstrating their usual knack for swinging from argument to argument like some kind of Puritanical Tarzan, but somehow always staying on the topic of "anti-Catholicism was woke, actually" —curious, that!) I only came here because someone sent me a link to this thread, and the initial statements made by certain persons I found to be of a decidedly comic nature. Good evening.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

OH JESUS CHRIST


Since I have been summoned here, I will just second everything Yankee has said and point out for any intelligent people who may be interested in learning something about this period of American history that the Know Nothings and nativist hangers-on who were incorporated into the Republican party after 1858 came from the reactionary Old Line Whig tradition who viewed the slavery issue as a nuisance and desperately wanted it removed from the national discourse so they could go back to their favorite pastime, hating on immigrants and poor people. Eric Foner, the preeminent historian on the development of the Republican party in the Civil War era, calls them "conservatives" and points out that time and again they were a thorn in the side of Seward and the moderate-to-radical Republicans who undermined the anti-slavery movement at every turn. Seward in particular was so disgusted by these "Protestant bigots" that his lieutenant in New York politics called it a "great blessing" to be finally rid of them after the rupture of the Whig party, and counseled that if Republicans wanted to win the 1860 election they should rely on their German friends and the Barnburner Democrats and "leave the damned Know Nothings alone."

If "everything Henry has read" on the subject suggests these people were somehow "liberals," may I suggest he is not very well read!

Holt makes essentially the same case in his massive book "American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War".

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Finally, you say that "Myself and Yankee have both written at length about how antislavery does not necessarily equal liberalism", which I agree with. In fact, I'm arguing against the same sort of ideological absolutism as you are, the notion that anti-Catholicism necessarily equals conservatism. Because the truth, whether you like it or not, is that anti-Catholicism has long been a major part of Anglo-American left radicalism. Was Paul Blanshard, the socialist author and Nation editor who wrote American Freedom and Catholic Power, a conservative? Perhaps he was misguided or simply wrong, but he was following in a recognizably left-wing anti-Catholic tradition dating back 3 centuries before his book was published.

I was having a discussion about this with some conservative posters on discord, people who are more knowledgeable on religious matters. A point was made to me about the fact that regardless of the group in question, Americans of various different groups alledged to be part of some international political alignment against the principles of the US, often tend to lack such allegiance despite the best claims of any number of groups hostile to their presence.

American Catholics were by and large not taking orders from Rome, just like millions of German-Americans fought in the American Army in WWII along with numerous Italians and Japanese (even as their families were horribly abused and interned).

Most people after moving to America, have become Americanized and their allegiance is to the principles of the United States. For all of the bemoaning of Catholics, and discussions of pro-Republican trends among Catholics in the 20th century, vast numbers of Catholics were essential to the elections of FDR, Truman, JFK, were critical to the successes of Civil Rights, the enactment of the New Deal and such forth. Trends are just that, a smaller percentage becomes a larger percentage, but its not 100% to 0%, its 40% becomes 60% or in the case of Catholics as a group probably 25% becomes 50%. As recently as the 2000s, Catholics were a swing group nationally.

The first Catholics to become Republicans and remain so, were ones who had the means to not be concerned about surviving to the next paycheck. Middle Class, professionals, small business owners and bonus points if they left the city and its machine's reach for the suburbs. Beyond that towards the later part of the 20th century, it became more of a religiousity skew as opposed to a wealth skew. This is not because they were taking orders from the Pope, but because they saw the Protestant zeal of the Republicans a more befitting ally than the secular liberalism of the Democrats.

Religiosity as it relates to political identity is not generated because of what the religious is, or even what its teachings are, but by the perceived regard in which they are held by the dominant or "perceived" dominant view on religion. In the late 20th century and onwards, increasingly the dynamic was the more religious, the more Republican because religious people (certainly so towards the more recent period) see a dominant secular establishment that is hostile their interests and that which dominates the Democratic Party. By the same token, many groups were alarmed and still are alarmed by the perceived power held by the Evangelical community and their influence within the Republican Party.

While these writers and thinking types are relevant to understand the justifications and such, as I have repeatedly stated, I think the power dynamic comes first and then often times the justification is either appropriated or created to justify it afterwards, which explains any number of incoherent positions seemingly held by the parties. They are collections of interest groups, operating within and against various power dynamics and the academic types merely serve to provide a basis for these seemingly random combinations. Republicans want smaller government, but a larger military etc.

I don't want to come across as completely discounting these writers, but when we are especially talking about a period where most Americans were more concerned about how they are going to eat tomorrow, their opinion is not motivated by what some "writer drawing on 300 years of tradition is saying". Their opinion is motivated by who they think is causing their pain and for the nativist, it is the immigrants taking their jobs. For the Whig patronage worker, it is the immigrant voting their political meal ticket out of office. These writers, thinkers and the politicians who would cite them to justify their actions, are really just coopting the 95% motivated by the above relative power dynamics and generally, I tend to think they are more important to consider when understanding political history.

[TDAS04]

I think I read somewhere that Quakers were about 95% Republican during the late 1800s.

[Death of a Salesman]

Democratic
- Working class urban Irish Catholics in Boston
- Hispanics in South Texas (for now…)

Republican
- Appalachian Unionists (especially Southeastern Kentucky and East Tennesse)
- The small town/rural/(and later) exurban upper crust outside of the South

Democratic
- Middle class urban voters in Manhattan with a liberal arts background

I’m not quite sure what precise definitions you’re using here (blame the fast-and-loose way Americans use the term “middle class” ), but, either way, I very much doubt that this group has been anything close to reliably Democratic over this time period.

Assuming that by “liberal arts background” you mean that they have an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts, then for a very long time, university education was the preserve of the privileged, and thus the preserve of Republicans. In 1948, well over 70% of college graduates voted Republican, and this was even after the “liberal intellectual” phenomenon had certainly started to emerge. In addition, for much of this time period, having this sort of background in Manhattan would also likely mark you out as a WASP, which it goes without saying would strongly imply Republican politics.

I purposely said “background” to try to capture liberal arts “types” and not restrict it to college graduates for long-ago time periods.  Even among graduates, I think the math can work out.  What percent of college grads, even when being one was rare, were liberal arts majors?  They’re certainly more liberal than college grads at large in every era, IMO.  Additionally, ones living in Manhattan are going to be much more liberal than the national average.  I could definitely see 70% of college grads leaning GOP nationally while this specific major in Manhattan leans left.

Take those numbers, and say that college grads voted GOP 70-30 while the country as a whole voted D 49-45 in 1948. That implies college grads were 2.5 times more Republican than the country as a whole, so even in Manhattan, which voted 51.5% Truman-32.75% Dewey you'd expect college grads to break for Dewey (I'd guess ~50% Dewey-30% Truman). Going back, I think college graduates in Manhattan voted GOP in every election from 1864-1932, probably narrowly voted for Roosevelt in his 1936 landslide, and then voted GOP again until 1960 or 1964. After 1964, they've been safely Democratic, but that's not a group with undying party loyalty.