Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[darklordoftech]

Wealthy Southerners prior to WWII weren't particularly religious either

Yet Mississipi continued Prohibition until 1966, which was one year after the Voting Rights Act. Also, what happened to the pre-WWII Southern elite throughout the rest of the 20th Century?

[RINO Tom]

A political movement advocating a quasi-feudalist economy, like the 19th-early 20th century Southern elite has to be considered conservative, but conservative in an anti-enlightenment way, not conservative in the pro-business, hands off kind of way.  We've never had an explicitly anti-Enlightenment movement win statewide elections in modern times, so the whole concept feels foreign, as indeed it should because the US was explicitly founded on Enlightenment principles. However, you can see a much stronger strain of this form of conservatism in UK politics- lords and ladies and inherited titles, social class as something fixed for life, heavily restricting who can vote and hold office, etc.  The Southern founding fathers clearly expected the Southern neo-feudal system to die a natural death much faster than it did, as the anti-Enlightenment strain of Puritan New England had collapsed by their time.  Anti-Enlightenment movements in modern politics are pretty fringe, but you do see a strain of it on the integralist right and the eco-left, and also with anti-vaxxers.

Wealthy Southerners prior to WWII weren't particularly religious either, so they don't really fit in with modern pro-church conservatism either.  Indeed, the people they were oppressing were usually more devout than they were.  There is more of a straight line from the poor family farmers of the Upland South to modern Christian conservatism, but those were the people in the South who were most likely to consider voting Republican 100+ years ago.   

Good post.  I think it's worth pointing out that this is where a decent amount of confusion comes about - the Southern Democrats (specifically the plantation class) was rather alien to the political system of the US, and they are hard to classify.  While they have obvious "right wing" elements, a lot of those operate so far into reactionary territory that they really can't be accurately associated with the tradition of *American conservatism*.  (This does not, of course, mean that you can't classify them as "conservative" in ways.)  NC Yankee did a good job of pointing out the ways they were perhaps not so stereotypically conservative.

Most historians agree that the Democratic-Republicans were, for every intellectual intent and purpose, to the left of the Federalists, and it's also not usually controversial to suggest that the Jacksonian Democrats were to the left of the Whigs.  So, then we find ourselves with a party born out of the Federalist and Whig tradition (the Republicans) and one born out of the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian tradition (the Democratic Party), finding themselves largely divided over one major issue - slavery/the Civil War.  This causes an ideological mess, but even if we monolithically label the Southern Democrats as conservative due to their reactionary nature, that still does not mean that the Democratic Party was more conservative than the Republican Party, as they (in my humble opinion) attached themselves "like a barnacle" (as Stevens says in Lincoln ) to the more left-leaning party.  If the Democratic Party started courting conservatives in the South (already happening??), it wouldn't change the fact that the GOP is made up of largely conservatives, as well, and the pre-existing Democrats were to their left.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

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

[Don Vito Corleone]

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

[Lechasseur]

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

This sounds right

[Skill and Chance]

Wealthy Southerners prior to WWII weren't particularly religious either

Yet Mississipi continued Prohibition until 1966, which was one year after the Voting Rights Act. Also, what happened to the pre-WWII Southern elite throughout the rest of the 20th Century?

Well, they either adapted to industrialization (e.g. Texas oil barons) or got swamped by the in migration of successful businessmen from elsewhere with population growth and the meritocratic rise of some of the locals born poor in the farming days once public education was finally taken seriously.  The latter group dominate the Southern Evangelical movement today, not the former plantation elite.

[RINO Tom]

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

Given the non-ideological nature (on a political matrix, anyway) of the Civil War and slavery, the coalitions naturally drew people of all ideologies, so yes - there were many former Democrats who became Republicans due to either a support for the Union, their opposition to the spread of slavery or because they believed that Jeffersonian and Jacksonian principles had been bastardized by the current Democrats in power (a very fair assertion).  What most of us on the Parties Didn't Switch Sides, As That's Ridiculous Team™ try so hard to point out, though, is that this gets overemphasized by people practicing revisionist history, and thus we de-emphasize both the conservative elements of that era's GOP and the liberal elements of that era's Democratic Party.  I would argue that the fact that these types of people largely wound up back in the Democratic camp by the late Nineteenth Century or early Twentieth Century (i.e., once sectionalism had defused a bit) points to the fact that the assertion of the GOP being the "more liberal party" rests almost entirely on a support for Black rights, and we argue that this is very misguided, as we must view that issue through the lens of THEIR time ... otherwise, we end up with an ideological classification system that more or less treats the Good Guys of History™ as liberals and the Bad Guys of History™ as conservatives (regardless of how either approached issues or what they thought about lesser issues), believing in a Marxist type "march" to history.

I do not have something at hand right now to back this up, but I would wager that in the North (where the vast, VAST majority of Republicans were), the conservative faction was largely made up of former Whigs, and the more "progressive" faction was largely made up of former Democrats or people who would later defect the GOP and/or take major issue with its post-Reconstruction path (a path that I would argue wasn't some strange divergence but rather what the GOP always wanted to do on the whole, absent a Civil War).

As for your last question, there is precious little to go on unless you are REALLY willing to dig deep, as so much of that period's historical record is focused on the Civil War.  A lot of my knowledge on this subject comes from either an advanced Civil War and Reconstruction class I took in college or the book we had to read for that class, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War by Bruce Levine (a great read if you're interested in this, by the way!!).  While I don't have much in the way of an answer on Fremont or Hamlin, I do recall that there was actually extreme ideological diversity among the so-called Radical Republicans, with motives running the entire spectrum of possibilities, but often from the list below:

- More of a "social justice" desire for government intervention (i.e., more "liberal")
- A fervently religious/puritan perspective that wanted to punish sinners (i.e., more "morally conservative")
- An almost-sort-of "blood lust" attitude fueled by a very black and white sense of patriotism (similar in flavor to conservatives during the Iraq War, IMO)
- A financially motivated desire to kick the Southern agrarian economy while it was down to help out Northern industrialists (i.e., a pretty unambiguously conservative motive)

That is the problem with transposing our current perspective onto the past.  It's easy to look at White Southerners preaching for small government (which is a TOTAL myth about the Confederacy or Southern Democrats, by the way ... Dred Scott and the confiscation of private property in the CSA make this obvious) and liberal Northern Democrats preaching for government intervention to help minorities and draw the conclusion that the parties "flipped."  However, this topic is SO much more complex (and interesting!) than that, and it deserves to be delved into seriously by people who are actually interested in dissecting the truth ... as I believe everyone in this thread is.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

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

This sounds right

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

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

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

I wouldn't say slavery was a non-ideological issue. Rather, there were a multitude of perspectives in the pre-war North and West that all came to view slavery as an existential threat to their imagined future utopia. Conservative industrialists saw slavery and the feudal society that maintains it as an obstacle to economic growth; liberal egalitarians looked and the rigid class structure of the slave states and objected to its replication across the West (long the promised land of Jeffersonian orthodoxy); evangelical Protestants objected to the institution on moral grounds; poor farmers and workingmen instinctively identified slavery as a threat to their own interests; and so on. So the Republican party of the 1850s emerged as an unholy alliance of the left and the right against the true enemy, the Southern aristocracy. In some ways it was the last hurrah of the Old Whigs of '76 (the English sort, not the Clayite nationalists) that fell apart as soon as the unifying threat of neo-feudalism was vanquished and the progress of industrial capitalism drove the two halves of the party further and further apart.

Now that I've got that out of my system, there was indeed a health liberal minority within the Republican party. You mention Frémont and Hamlin; Salmon P. Chase was the poster child for this class of Republican, however, and indeed was constantly at odds with the conservative wing. David Wilmot is another example. "On the issues" they tended to be more bullish than moderate/conservative Republicans on emancipation, which may have to do with their egalitarian motives as opposed to the commercial motives of the Republican right; but the ideological divergence became most obvious after the war was over, and Chase and others are unable to reconcile the military rule necessary to enforce Reconstruction with their liberal democratic beliefs. Hence the "Liberal Republicans" of 1872 argued for quickly reintegrating the former rebel states back into the Union, while the Radical former Whigs (though not without exception —James Garfield, for example) were more intent on transforming Southern society through whatever means necessary.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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

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

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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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

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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

This sounds right

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

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

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Since discussion has stalled for a few days, I'd like to reiterate some points I've made previously in the thread that I don't feel have been fully answered. I don't agree with calling either one of the Democratic or the Republican parties more liberal or conservative than the other, during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Yankee admitted that in the 19th century neither party's members referred to themselves in those terms, even while in Britain there was a clear distinction between liberals and conservatives. I don't think it was until Wilson at the very earliest, FDR at the latest, that Democrats had firmly established themselves as self-described "liberals", and Republicans as "conservatives" (and even then, there would continue to be plenty of conservative Southern Democrats and liberal Rockefeller Republicans for some time to come).

To get back to the point, the political parties of turn of the century America were such big tents - with coalitions based more around cultural identity than common policy positions - that neither one really had much of a consistent ideology. Trade is the one exception, as Republicans were united around protectionism and Democrats around free trade. But on the whole, both parties were focused solely on gaining power for its own sake, and were just as willing to nominate conservatives (McKinley, Parker) as progressives (Bryan, Roosevelt) if they thought it'd help them win. This is why I think it makes more sense to view the politics based on a progressive-conservative dichotomy, similar to how some historians view the traditional Court-Country divide as still more relevant in 1690s England than the emerging Whig-Tory party system. Many of the most progressive and liberal politicians of the period like Bob La Follette, George Norris, William Borah, and Hiram Johnson were Republicans. I therefore don't see how a party that produced such men can be considered conservative, while Ben Tilman's Democrats were supposedly a liberal party.

Also, there's one specific issue I'd like to offer as a counter to the idea that Democrats were always the more liberal party. On the issue of women's suffrage, an undeniably liberal cause if there ever was one, the Republicans were to the left of the Democrats. The traditionally Republican western states were the most forward-looking on the issue, with many of them granting suffrage as early as the 19th century. In the 1916 election, Hughes ran on a more pro-suffrage platform than Wilson. When the 19th Amendment was ratified, the Republican North was far more favorable to the cause than the Solid Democratic South, with many Deep Southern states not ratifying the Amendment until decades afterward. I could go on, but I think you get the point. (Edit: I also wanted to add that it's a myth that Prohibition was mostly a Republican policy. The split of Democrats and Republicans voting for and against the Prohibition resolution in Congress was about equal. There were plenty of Prohibitionist Democrats at the national level like Bryan. Furthermore, I don't view Prohibition as a left-right issue. Many progressives supported it as well as conservatives, believing it to be a just and necessary reform.)

Lastly, I'd like to express an interesting observation I've made, unrelated to the current discussion about historical partisan ideologies but relevant to the thread topic. The 1876 and 1976 election maps, for being a century apart, are astonishingly similar. In both elections, the West was uniformly Republican, while the South was almost completely solid for the Democrat. The Northeast was highly contested, with the Democrat generally doing better in the Mid-Atlantic, the Republican in New England. The Midwest is the main difference between the two maps, as it was slightly more Republican in 1876. However, one could attribute this to the fact that in the 19th century the Midwest was less of its own distinct region, and more an extension of the Western states (hence the west part of the name).

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I'm left wondering whether there was any point to the last five pages, because it seems we're back to square one: assuming that being a "progressive" is the same as being left-wing, cherry-picking a few Republican politicians and claiming they speak for the entire party at the turn of the century (despite all evidence to the contrary), arguing that nineteenth century Democrats couldn't be liberals because they were racist, and dismissing the obvious flaws in your argument with "it wasn't an ideological issue." Social issues are difficult to fit into an ideological framework given how dramatically our views on race and gender have changed in the last 200 years (this cannot be overstated), and trying to arguing that [candidate X] must have been a conservative because they believed [racist nonsense] and no liberal would every believe that today, is an obviously flawed model for understanding the past. Your point about prohibition really underscores the problem here.

Many progressives supported it as well as conservatives, believing it to be a just and necessary reform.

Many progressives were conservatives. The progressive movement was a set of policy objectives that different kinds of people endorsed for different reasons. This shouldn't be hard to understand, as you presumably support gun control while condemning the racist ideology that led white conservatives to press for an assault weapons ban in the 70s and 80s. Some people became progressives because, like Bryan, they understood that the Second Industrial Revolution had changed the playing field and the lower classes would now need to leverage the power of the newly-democratized state to counter the influence of big business. Some people became progressives because they understood that, in lieu of substantial reforms, capitalism would collapse in on itself and be replaced by a radical new order. Some people who became progressives saw themselves as leading an egalitarian revolution against the status quo, and some people who became progressives saw themselves as restoring a bygone era of civic virtue. Lumping all these people together and saying, "yup, they're the left" ignores all of these nuances in favor of a simplified dichotomy that fits with our modern ideas of what the world is like, instead of trying to understand past individuals for who they were.

There's a reason Roosevelt's 1912 campaign went down in flames at the Republican National Convention (yes, I am aware that Taft was far more progressive on the issues than he is often given credit for —that doesn't change the fact that he ran as the conservative candidate in 1912, and the party divided accordingly): the party bosses and the majority of elected Republicans were very hostile to the progressive agenda and viewed Roosevelt, La Follette, Borah, and the rest as dangerous men. Neither party has ever been ideologically homogenous, but that doesn't mean we can't draw conclusions about what the average Republican or the average Democrat believed in 1900, nor does it mean that everyone who supported a given policy did so for identical reasons. The presence of conservative Southern Democrats in Congress during the 30s and 40s does not change the fact that the Democratic party of FDR was fundamentally a liberal and progressive political party nationally, just as the presence of progressive Western Republicans in Congress during the 1880s and 1890s does not change the fact that the Republican party of Harrison and McKinley was a fundamentally conservative political party nationally.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

To get back to the point, the political parties of turn of the century America were such big tents - with coalitions based more around cultural identity than common policy positions - that neither one really had much of a consistent ideology.

The existence of a dissenting minority faction does not mean the group as a whole has no ideology. "Waving the bloody shirt" indeed held together an ideologically idiosyncratic Republican coalition for longer than a purely ideological raison d'être otherwise might have; likewise for race-baiting and the Solid South. To use your own example, we don't pretend that the GOP in the 1940s wasn't a conservative party despite the presence of a powerful group of liberal Republicans who out-voted the conservatives at every nominating convention of the decade. The fact of the matter is that pro-silver, anti-trust Republicans were a distinct minority of the national Republican party after 1874. Take a look at the platforms adopted by the party during this period on just the currency issue:

In the first act of congress, signed by President Grant, the national government assumed to remove any doubt of its purpose to discharge all just obligations to the public creditors, and solemnly pledged its faith "to make provisions at the earliest practicable period, for the redemption of the United States notes in coin." Commercial prosperity, public morals, and the national credit demand that this promise be fulfilled by a continuous and steady progress to specie payment.

The Republican party [...] has restored upon a solid basis payment in coin of all national obligations, and has given us a currency absolutely good and equal in every part of our extended country.

We have always recommended the best money known to the civilized world; and we urge that efforts should be made to unite all commercial nations in the establishment of an international standard which shall fix for all the relative value of gold and silver coinage.

The Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold and silver as money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic Administration in its efforts to demonetize silver.

The American people, from tradition and interest, favor bi-metallism, and the Republican party demands the use of both gold and silver as standard money, with such restrictions and under such provisions, to be determined by legislation, as will secure the maintenance of the parity of values of the two metals so that the purchasing and debt-paying power of the dollar, whether of silver, gold, or paper, shall be at all times equal. The interests of the producers of the country, its farmers and its workingmen, demand that every dollar, paper or coin, issued by the government, shall be as good as any other.

The Republican party is unreservedly for sound money. It caused the enactment of a law providing for the redemption [resumption] of specie payments in 1879. Since then every dollar has been as good as gold. We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are therefore opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the earth, which agreement we pledge ourselves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be maintained. All of our silver and paper currency must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor all measures designated to maintain inviolable the obligations of the United States, of all our money, whether coin or paper, at the present standard, the standard of most enlightened nations of the earth.

We see that in 1876, 1880, 1884, and 1896 the Republican platform endorsed the maintenance of the gold standard as the basis for a national currency. The 1876 platform specifically calls for the redemption of notes "in coin," an explicit repudiation of the soft money position. In 1884 the platform calls for adherence to the "international standard" —that is, the gold standard. (This was a common pro-gold argument used to kill silver coinage in the cradle, by pointing out that other nations used gold alone as the basis for their currency and the resumption of silver would therefore weaken the dollar abroad.) In the same platform, the convention praises the "conservative" administration of outgoing President Arthur. But in 1888 and 1892, the party changes course and endorses the bimetalist position. Why did they do this? In essence, some of the goldbugs got cold feet as the economy began to contract in the late 1880s: one of these men was Ohio's John Sherman, who had been a gold man in the 1870s but afterwards advocated for limited silver coinage. Much in the way moderate Kansas Republicans repudiated the Brownback legacy once it became clear his reforms had gone too far, Sherman didn't become a liberal Greenbackite, but rather felt that some moderation was necessary to correct an overly extreme, but well-intentioned, policy. This puts him to the left of the likes of McKinley (and arguably Cleveland as well on this one issue), but to the right of Bryan and others calling for the unlimited coinage of silver. Crucially, by 1896 the goldbugs had retaken control of the party and repudiated the pro-silver 1892 plank. Notably, the platform cites President Hayes' defense of the gold standard in 1879 to argue that the new plank is consistent with traditional Republican orthodoxy.

What conclusion must we draw here? We see that the national Republican party maintained a pro-gold position through the 1870s and most of the 1880s in spite of the protests of an outnumbered bimetalist faction, briefly moderated during the four years of the Harrison presidency, before swinging hard back to sound money immediately afterwards. This is a party that is attempting to reconcile its early history as the champion of homesteaders and free labor with its current role as the bastion of industry. Naturally, this evolution provoked disagreement within the party. And yet when the period is viewed as a whole, we see that Republicans in general tended to endorse a sound money policy, and invoked essentially conservative arguments to make that case. Even in endorsing bimetalism in 1888, the primary concern of the platform writers is with preserving the integrity of the dollar —sound currency —and not with producing inflation (as the Greenbacks hoped to do).

Similarly, to project forward a century, a historian studying the period from 1970 to 2000 might observe that the Democratic party took essentially liberal positions on social issues and in general became less rural and less Southern than in the past. A naysayer might point to the nomination of Jimmy Carter in 1976 as proof that this thesis is incorrect ("Only JC can save America"), but you and I know that anecdotal evidence does not disprove large trends. The Democratic party of the late 20th century was a socially liberal party in national politics. The Republican party of the late 19th century was an economically conservative party in national politics.

Now, surely you will point out that the Democratic standard bearer during this period was Grover Cleveland, a gold bug if there ever was one. But two people can come to the same conclusion for vastly different reasons, as has been discussed at length here. The country was changing, and not everyone was changing at the same pace. Cleveland failed to recognize that the Second Industrial Revolution meant that free markets did not necessarily make free people, clinging to a pre-industrial  version of liberalism that still imagined the feudal state as the driver of class divisions.

Trade is the one exception, as Republicans were united around protectionism and Democrats around free trade.

Trade is a really big issue to just dismiss like that, and in any case is hardly the only so-called "exception." On immigration, on religious morality, on the dollar, each party staked out clear positions derived from a consistent ideology, with some dissent within both camps. On some issues, such as the dollar, the parties were very similar —because liberalism and conservatism arguably had a lot in common during this period, both being essentially in favor of free markets and sound money. Hence significant support for left-wing third parties during this period.

But on the whole, both parties were focused solely on gaining power for its own sake, and were just as willing to nominate conservatives (McKinley, Parker) as progressives (Bryan, Roosevelt) if they thought it'd help them win.

That is very lazy analysis, Henry. It's also objectively false: the smartest thing the Republican establishment could have done if all they cared about was power, would have been to dump Taft for Roosevelt in 1912. They didn't, because what they actually cared about was using power to preserve their social position, to which Roosevelt was perceived as a threat.

Many of the most progressive and liberal politicians of the period like Bob La Follette, George Norris, William Borah, and Hiram Johnson were Republicans. I therefore don't see how a party that produced such men can be considered conservative, while Ben Tilman's Democrats were supposedly a liberal party.

If you're going to argue that being a racist automatically makes one a conservative, you probably shouldn't have identified Woodrow Wilson as the original liberal Democrat a few paragraphs ago. But, yes, the Republican party produced many prominent progressives in the early twentieth century. For the sake of the argument let's say these men were liberals and see how they fared at national party conventions between 1908 and 1928.

Year		Candidate		Delegates (%)
1908		LaFollette		25 (2.55%)
1912		LaFollette		41 (3.80%)
1916		LaFollette		25 (2.57%)
1916		Borah		2 (0.20%)
1920		Johnson		133.5 (13.57%)
1920		LaFollette		24 (2.44%)
1924		LaFollette		34 (3.06%)
1924		Johnson		10 (0.90%)
1928		Norris		24 (2.21%)
xxxx
1912		Roosevelt*		451 (41.84%)
1916		Roosevelt*		85 (8.75%)

Overwhelmingly, we can see that Republican delegates (representing elected officials, party leaders, and others who might be described as the political establishment) did not favor the politics of the individuals you mentioned and did not support them in their many campaigns for the presidency during the first quarter of the twentieth century. La Follette ran for president five times from 1908 to 1924 and never garnered more than 5% of the delegate vote. Outside their home states, they had hardly any support from nationally prominent Republicans. In 1908, 1912, and 1916 the party preferred to nominate a moderate with support from both the progressive and conservative camps. While La Follette may have lost some votes to Roosevelt in 1912, it appears extremely unlikely he could have equalled Roosevelt's performance in a head-to-head race against Taft, in light of the refusal of the Roosevelt delegates to support La Follette as a compromise candidate after it became clear that Roosevelt could not win. (La Follette himself chose to support Wilson in the general election, which does lend some credence to your description of him as a "liberal.") You cannot point to La Follette or Johnson or Borah or Norris and observe "wow, Republicans sure were liberal back then" when on average 80%+ of the party voted against them at every convention over the course of a quarter century. Yes, these guys bucked the conservative line, and for that reason they never had a realistic chance of winning their party's presidential nomination.

Also, there's one specific issue I'd like to offer as a counter to the idea that Democrats were always the more liberal party. On the issue of women's suffrage, an undeniably liberal cause if there ever was one, the Republicans were to the left of the Democrats. The traditionally Republican western states were the most forward-looking on the issue, with many of them granting suffrage as early as the 19th century. In the 1916 election, Hughes ran on a more pro-suffrage platform than Wilson. When the 19th Amendment was ratified, the Republican North was far more favorable to the cause than the Solid Democratic South, with many Deep Southern states not ratifying the Amendment until decades afterward. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

The first major presidential candidate to endorse woman's suffrage was William Jennings Bryan. Before that, the loudest advocate for suffrage on the national stage was the Prohibition party. Considering the ideological diversity of the suffrage movement (which included evangelical Protestants, white supremacists, and xenophobes as well as socialists, radicals, and progressives) I would be hesitant to say the advocates of suffrage were clearly anything. Again, attitudes toward race and sex have changed so dramatically in the last century that social issues do not fit neatly into a modern ideological framework. That doesn't mean we can't examine the ideological underpinnings of the suffrage movement, but one must be careful not to draw lazy conclusions based on our modern self-identification as liberals.

(Edit: I also wanted to add that it's a myth that Prohibition was mostly a Republican policy. The split of Democrats and Republicans voting for and against the Prohibition resolution in Congress was about equal. There were plenty of Prohibitionist Democrats at the national level like Bryan. Furthermore, I don't view Prohibition as a left-right issue. Many progressives supported it as well as conservatives, believing it to be a just and necessary reform.)

Indeed, Prohibition was a progressive policy. That alone should cast doubt on any attempt to argue progressives as a group were left-wing.

Lastly, I'd like to express an interesting observation I've made, unrelated to the current discussion about historical partisan ideologies but relevant to the thread topic. The 1876 and 1976 election maps, for being a century apart, are astonishingly similar. In both elections, the West was uniformly Republican, while the South was almost completely solid for the Democrat. The Northeast was highly contested, with the Democrat generally doing better in the Mid-Atlantic, the Republican in New England. The Midwest is the main difference between the two maps, as it was slightly more Republican in 1876. However, one could attribute this to the fact that in the 19th century the Midwest was less of its own distinct region, and more an extension of the Western states (hence the west part of the name).

Indeed, there is much to be learned from the partisan alignments of the 1970s. I am not sure what the part in bold means, however? In the nineteenth century, the Midwest was the West, not the other way around.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

I'm left wondering whether there was any point to the last five pages, because it seems we're back to square one: assuming that being a "progressive" is the same as being left-wing, cherry-picking a few Republican politicians and claiming they speak for the entire party at the turn of the century (despite all evidence to the contrary), arguing that nineteenth century Democrats couldn't be liberals because they were racist, and dismissing the obvious flaws in your argument with "it wasn't an ideological issue." Social issues are difficult to fit into an ideological framework given how dramatically our views on race and gender have changed in the last 200 years (this cannot be overstated), and trying to arguing that [candidate X] must have been a conservative because they believed [racist nonsense] and no liberal would every believe that today, is an obviously flawed model for understanding the past. Your point about prohibition really underscores the problem here.

Many progressives supported it as well as conservatives, believing it to be a just and necessary reform.

Many progressives were conservatives. The progressive movement was a set of policy objectives that different kinds of people endorsed for different reasons. This shouldn't be hard to understand, as you presumably support gun control while condemning the racist ideology that led white conservatives to press for an assault weapons ban in the 70s and 80s. Some people became progressives because, like Bryan, they understood that the Second Industrial Revolution had changed the playing field and the lower classes would now need to leverage the power of the newly-democratized state to counter the influence of big business. Some people became progressives because they understood that, in lieu of substantial reforms, capitalism would collapse in on itself and be replaced by a radical new order. Some people who became progressives saw themselves as leading an egalitarian revolution against the status quo, and some people who became progressives saw themselves as restoring a bygone era of civic virtue. Lumping all these people together and saying, "yup, they're the left" ignores all of these nuances in favor of a simplified dichotomy that fits with our modern ideas of what the world is like, instead of trying to understand past individuals for who they were.

I'd agree that progressives weren't necessarily left-wingers at heart, as many of them were initially conservatives who adopted progressive policy positions in order to co-opt popular reforms. However, relatively speaking, I think they were the liberals of their day, or at least more liberal than their opponents. On the whole, the progressive reforms made a more egalitarian society, regardless of the motives of the reformers. Like you said, many conservative party elites opposed progressives for that reason, as they sought to preserve their social position.

But if progressives weren't the left-wing of that period of American politics, then who was? I know there were leftist third parties like the Populists and Socialists, but since we're talking about the differences between the two major parties, let's ignore them for now. Were the Democrats the left then, since they were supposedly the liberals? Well, I'd argue that some indeed were, like William Jennings Bryan, but others just as easily weren't. The small government classical liberals were getting old fast, and Cleveland and his ilk were conservatives by the time Bryan came along. I don't know why you're so insistent on portraying Cleveland as such a true believer in liberalism - except that it fits with your narrative of the Democrats as liberals - when it was clear that his outdated, conservative ideas were no longer helping the common people. Similarly, Alton Parker was like Cleveland a traditional Democrat, and was duly regarded as the conservative to Roosevelt's progressive. I'd also argue that the Southern wing of the party was never really liberal, as their arguments for states' rights didn't come from a deeply held belief in liberal federalism, but from a desire to justify slavery and white supremacy. With all that in mind, it is my view that the left of American politics consisted of progressive members of both parties, while the right was made up of social elites resistant to progressive reforms, including both Republican New England financiers and Democratic Southern landholders.

If we accept that the progressives were the liberals of their day, then let's look at which parties they came from. I wasn't trying to cherry-pick Republican progressives, it's just that a vast majority of well-known progressives seem to come from that party. The only notable Democratic progressives I know of are Bryan and Wilson. There are probably more, but they're not familiar enough to me. So if most progressives were Republicans, then doesn't that in some sense put the party to the left of the Democrats, when the establishments of both parties were conservative?

There's a reason Roosevelt's 1912 campaign went down in flames at the Republican National Convention (yes, I am aware that Taft was far more progressive on the issues than he is often given credit for —that doesn't change the fact that he ran as the conservative candidate in 1912, and the party divided accordingly): the party bosses and the majority of elected Republicans were very hostile to the progressive agenda and viewed Roosevelt, La Follette, Borah, and the rest as dangerous men. Neither party has ever been ideologically homogenous, but that doesn't mean we can't draw conclusions about what the average Republican or the average Democrat believed in 1900, nor does it mean that everyone who supported a given policy did so for identical reasons. The presence of conservative Southern Democrats in Congress during the 30s and 40s does not change the fact that the Democratic party of FDR was fundamentally a liberal and progressive political party nationally, just as the presence of progressive Western Republicans in Congress during the 1880s and 1890s does not change the fact that the Republican party of Harrison and McKinley was a fundamentally conservative political party nationally.

The party bosses of the Democrats disliked progressives, too. The corrupt Tammany Hall machine strongly opposed the Bryan wing of the party, for instance. That said, he still did manage to win the nomination three times, so...you've probably got the stronger argument there. But I'd like to address the second part of your paragraph. Who decides what conservative means anyway? I still fail to see how Southern aristocrats were any less conservative than Northern industrialists and bankers. Was it because they supported a liberal party with liberal policies like free trade? Without further elaboration, that's just circular reasoning. What makes that party and those policies liberal? What is so much more liberal about the Southern Democratic elitist who supports free trade because it enhances his riches, than the Northern Republican elitist who support protectionism because it protects his wealth?

[darklordoftech]

Prohibition was a progressive policy. That alone should cast doubt on any attempt to argue progressives as a group were left-wing.

There were left-wingers who supported Prohibition, so Prohibition != not left-wing.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I'd agree that progressives weren't necessarily left-wingers at heart, as many of them were initially conservatives who adopted progressive policy positions in order to co-opt popular reforms. However, relatively speaking, I think they were the liberals of their day, or at least more liberal than their opponents. On the whole, the progressive reforms made a more egalitarian society, regardless of the motives of the reformers. Like you said, many conservative party elites opposed progressives for that reason, as they sought to preserve their social position.

Relatively speaking I would not automatically disagree. I think it is important to remember that the progressive movement was a diverse coalition of groups who did not always get along, and some of those people (e.g. eugenicists) were objectively trying to transform society in ways that were obviously not egalitarian. And this is the problem with using "left-wing" and "liberal" as synonyms. Liberalism is an absolute political philosophy with a definite set of core beliefs. Not everyone who is left-wing is a liberal, and in many cases today and in the late nineteenth century those who are liberal are not left-wing. Marx is the obvious example of the latter; there are countless classically liberal parties in Europe today that demonstrate the former. (Here's one.) So it is arguable at the very least that most progressives were to the left of their political opposition (classical liberals and conservatives), but they weren't all of them liberals. From the practical standpoint of a voter choosing what policies they want to run the country, someone like La Follette might seem closer to the likes of Wilson than Mark Hana or Joseph G. Cannon —and with good reason! When you invoke the word "liberal," however, you make the conversation about ideology —and that's when it's necessary to remember that most (not all) Republican progressives saw themselves as very different from people like Wilson, Bryan, and Debs.

I don't know why you're so insistent on portraying Cleveland as such a true believer in liberalism - except that it fits with your narrative of the Democrats as liberals - when it was clear that his outdated, conservative ideas were no longer helping the common people. Similarly, Alton Parker was like Cleveland a traditional Democrat, and was duly regarded as the conservative to Roosevelt's progressive.

Cleveland and Parker were classical liberals, which was indeed a right-wing ideology (in absolute terms) by 1890 or so, arguably earlier. They are often called conservatives in popular discussions of history because Americans have no grasp of ideology (thanks, two-party system!) and think "liberal"/"progressive"/"left-wing" are all synonyms. Sometimes they are (Wilson was all three); during the Progressive Era, they were not.

I commented earlier that politics after 1890 could be described as a four party system, with progressive Republicans and Democrats arrayed against classical liberals and conservatives in their own parties. Sometimes the progressives formed a united front against the stalwarts, sometimes, they toed the party line. 1916 is a perfect illustration of this: some progressive Republicans (La Follette) supported Wilson's reelection, others (Roosevelt) fell in line behind Hughes. Wilson and his school were liberal progressives, and his nomination completed the takeover of the party that had begun in 1896; before then, Bourbon "classical liberals" ran the show, and lingered for some time after as the contrarian inter-party opposition. The last great battle between the two was at the 1904 nominating convention, when a Bourbon Democrat (Parker) defeated the progressive candidate (Hearst).

I'd also argue that the Southern wing of the party was never really liberal, as their arguments for states' rights didn't come from a deeply held belief in liberal federalism, but from a desire to justify slavery and white supremacy.

Southern Democrats are hard to pin down, because the South in this period was a one-party state —accordingly you had conservatives, liberals, and brazen opportunists all residing under one roof. By "this period" I mean the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. If you're extending "never" to include literally all of American history before 1970 or so, I'm going to have to disagree. It's just not a good idea to make blanket statements about an entire region, and while your assessment is true for many Southern Democrats of the Antebellum period (Calhoun, Davis, etc.) it is untrue of others (Andrew Johnson) who did in fact embody the Jacksonian "common man" image, even if there was a decent amount of race baiting mixed in. By 1850, of course, this was no longer an important distinction, as slavery became the one issue on which the entire country divided and the Southern Democrats effectively stopped talking about the policies (the homestead bill, free trade, opposition to banks and the financial interests) that identified them to the left of the likewise pro-slavery Southern Whigs —and it's no accident that this is the point at which the Southern Whig party disintegrates, with most of its members being absorbed into the Democratic fold. This is the point at which one can say with accuracy that Southerners only cared about protecting slavery and had no other motive for their rhetoric. Once slavery was the only issue on the table, there was no longer any reason for these two groups to remain divided; of course, that suggests that there was something dividing them before 1850.

It's a disgusting worldview, but a fact nevertheless that most Democrats in the early nineteenth century (North and South) did not support equal rights for what they essentially considered to be livestock. We should condemn this —liberals in particular should condemn it —but we should also own that the world is not always pretty outside of Plato's cave, and the history of liberalism is tainted with the same racism that soils all of American history.

As for the period after the Civil War, you had a large contingent of Southern Democrats who were conservatives (Strom Thurmond would be the poster child for this sort at the end of the period), others who supported equality for white men (which of course isn't egalitarianism, but that's how they thought about it), still others who did extend their liberal notions to blacks as well as poor whites (Huey Long comes to mind), and finally those who didn't give a cr*p either way and were willing to employ either race-baiting or egalitarian language as the moment required (George Wallace). I would argue that the third group were liberals and the second and fourth at least pretended to be, while the first clearly weren't and didn't pretend to be. A big part of the Democratic playbook pre-1970 was appealing to racial animus to divide poor whites from poor blacks, using the language of populism to disrupt biracial coalitions such as that which the Populists assembled in North Carolina. Was this a perverted form of liberalism "for white men," or was it pure opportunism? I'm inclined to say the latter, though reasonable people might disagree. Either way, it's undeniable that especially post-Wilson the Democratic party was sharply divided between its Southern and non-Southern elements. This threatened to divide the party in 1924 (when the Klan and Southern Democrats blocked the nomination of Al Smith) and 1928 (when the same forces lent support to Herbert Hoover when Smith did get the nomination) before finally boiling over in 1948.

I don't normally recommend fiction as a means for analyzing history, but To Kill a Mockingbird is very relevant here. It's a somewhat obscure plot point in the book that Atticus Finch is an elected Democratic state representative; while in an earlier draft his character is shown in a more critical light (this isn't a thread about literary theory, but no, Go Set a Watchman is not a sequel to Mockingbird and the predatory leeches at Harper Collins should be ashamed of themselves), he clearly isn't a race-baiting blood psychopath in the mould of Tillman in any case. Now, I will not for a minute argue that most or even a large minority of Southern Democrats were closeted Gregory Pecks, but those kind of people (however few) were Democrats during this period, simply because there was nowhere else for them to go. The Southern Democratic party as a whole was racist, reactionary, and only opportunistically liberal —but the existence of men like Huey Long, Claude Pepper, Lyndon Johnson, and yes Harry Truman informs us that the truth is always more complicated than the truism.

If we accept that the progressives were the liberals of their day, then let's look at which parties they came from. I wasn't trying to cherry-pick Republican progressives, it's just that a vast majority of well-known progressives seem to come from that party. The only notable Democratic progressives I know of are Bryan and Wilson. There are probably more, but they're not familiar enough to me. So if most progressives were Republicans, then doesn't that in some sense put the party to the left of the Democrats, when the establishments of both parties were conservative?

"Well-known" is a prickly term. The well-known history of the Civil War until a few decades ago was that the South went to war in 1861 in defense of their states' rights and with no reference to slavery —we of course know this is nonsense. I would suggest looking into nationally prominent Democratic politicians of the period besides just those two. The 1896 Democratic national convention was overflowing with liberal populists. Unlike Roosevelt, who had to become president through the backdoor and only became the undisputed leader of his party after his most powerful opponent died, the silver forces took the Democratic party in a rout: the Bourbon candidate won 97 delegates out of a total 930. As you observe later, Bryan's capture of the Democratic party proved far more complete and permanent than Roosevelt's eight years later. After the latter's victory in 1904, the party nominated his chosen successor in 1908, who was quickly abandoned by progressives within the party (despite going beyond Roosevelt in some areas, notably in his vigorous prosecution of trusts) and by 1912 the conservatives were once again firmly in control of the party apparatus. We seem to be on the same page here,

The corrupt Tammany Hall machine strongly opposed the Bryan wing of the party, for instance. That said, he still did manage to win the nomination three times, so...you've probably got the stronger argument there.

so I'll move on.

But I'd like to address the second part of your paragraph. Who decides what conservative means anyway? I still fail to see how Southern aristocrats were any less conservative than Northern industrialists and bankers. Was it because they supported a liberal party with liberal policies like free trade? Without further elaboration, that's just circular reasoning. What makes that party and those policies liberal? What is so much more liberal about the Southern Democratic elitist who supports free trade because it enhances his riches, than the Northern Republican elitist who support protectionism because it protects his wealth?

"Liberal" and "conservative" aren't weasel words that you can define however you want. Liberalism as an ideology begins with John Locke; it has radical and moderate interpretations and has evolved over time in response to changes in politics and society. For most of the nineteenth century, Adam Smith was the world's foremost liberal thinker, and his ideas influenced how liberals responded to the emerging capitalist economy. Early on this placed liberals in opposition to the business elites, but by the 1880s liberal capitalism had won out and liberalism came more in line with the interests of the monied interest, though not entirely —trade policy kept the two camps from ever fully merging. (Indeed, trade policy was the major bone of contention between Gilded Age Democrats and Republicans.) Hence the rise of populism, socialism, and progressivism as alternatives to classical liberalism during this period.

Likewise, conservative has been used to describe several distinct (though inter-related) political phenomena: reactionary opposition to the liberalization of society being the first and the oldest (Toryism is one expression of this), a reflexive position in favor of the status quo (this is a relative term), and the modern ideology of conservatism (which like liberalism takes many forms, but is usually identified by an association with the business and financial interests in society). The third is how I have been using "conservative" in this thread. In Britain, liberalism became associated with the middle and lower classes in opposition to the elites who favored protectionism and strict social hierarchies, but in America the situation was complicated by the existence of a class of wealthy landowners (the Southern gentry) who weren't peasant farmers, but also weren't bankers and industrialists. Often their interests aligned with the yeomen farmers in Pennsylvania and the upland South who opposed the bankers for obvious reasons, but this was not a uniform rule, and many —especially in the Carolinas and along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers —allied with the conservatives to support internal improvements and stable markets.

(After the Civil War, the South was a one-party state and as I have already discussed the Democratic party absorbed both liberals and conservatives who continued to battle it out in the primaries —though not entirely: Tennessee, for instance, produced a modest number of pro-business Republicans during this period. This is why I prefer to identify specific groups within society—"Southern gentry," "Northern financiers"—rather than use the ambiguous term "elites." The latter is far too broad to be useful when trying to pick apart this problem, and lends itself to simplistic and under-researched conclusions.)

So depending on what sense of the word you wish to invoke, the Southern gentry were conservative (reactionary) socially and variously conservative or liberal politically.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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


Woman's Suffrage

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

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

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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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

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

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

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

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

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

The earliest instance of "progressive" I've been able to find in American political literature is from a speech by William Henry Seward in 1857 or so, in which he uses it to refer to the political program of Henry Clay. If you look up the word in a dictionary from the period, you see it is defined as "moving forward, proceeding onward, advancing" or simply "improving." (Webster's 1852) Of course that could mean almost anything depending on the speaker's frame of reference; Seward used it to suggest industrial development and increase in general prosperity brought about by Whig economic policies in the North. Much like the famous Lincoln quote about labor and capital, we have to be careful about assuming things based on the modern connotations words and phrases that appear in historical sources.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

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


Woman's Suffrage

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

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

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

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

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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


Woman's Suffrage

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

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

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

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

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

[darklordoftech]

I find it interesting how Republicans have consistently advocated a unilateralist foreign policy while Democrats have consistently advocated a multilateralist foreign policy.