Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I mostly agree with this.  We are reverting to something resembling the post-Reconstruction, pre-Great Depression coalitions.  What people forget is how long the protectionist, pro-infrastructure spending, vaguely isolationist version of the GOP went on.  1932 was as far from 1876 as it was from 1988 and Republicans were much stronger nationally.  Including Trump, all Republican presidents split 13/6 in favor of protectionism over free trade.  Yes, it's true that there were more 1-termers early on, but that gives a great perspective on where the parties have been in the long run.  There hasn't ever been an aggressively protectionist Democratic president. 

I think you are wrong about the elite South in the present day though.  Look at GA-06, TX-07, TX-32, the Birmingham suburbs in the Doug Jones senate special, Jefferson Parish going 57% for JBE when he got 51% statewide, Bredesen doing really well in Rutherford and Williamson, etc.  The wealthy South is rapidly shifting post-Trump and likely to end up in the Dem coalition soon.  Democratic elite South vs. Republican working class South (especially during economic downturns) was absolutely something that happened in various late 19th century elections, at least before the poll taxes were imposed.  If Harrison had succeeded in getting his proto-VRA plan through the Senate in 1890, that may well have been the long term alignment in that era.

It also happened in 1928.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Something I've thought about recently is that contrary to a common misconception that the Democrats and Republicans have "switched sides" there's always been some continuity within each. Republicans have always tended to be the more nationalistic party and accused Democrats of being traitors/soft on the rebs/reds/terrorists, and included in their coalition Protestant zealots (in the north) and small business owners. To some extent current trends are causing the parties to revert to coalitions resembling those in the third party system as well with Democrats as the party of more recent immigrants, finance capital and free trade (DLC type Democrats are actually sort of similar ideologically to the Bourbon Democrats) and Republicans as the party of the native born working class and protectionism. The difference is that now it's as if their had been a nineteenth century coalition that had included the northern conservative Republicans and southern ex-slaveholders.

You can extent it back to the Federalists with rebs/red/terrorists. Daniel Shays played a role in triggering the Constitutional Convention. There is also the whiskey rebellion, and the Dorr Rebellion.

Its one aspect of the Conservative versus Liberal that has remained relatively constant for 200 years and is a good indicator of which side is a Conservative versus which is a Liberal. Ironically, one of the few times this comes up with a contrary example is the Wilson administration, though it should be noted that Wilson came from elitist circles, was very anglophile and was part of a melting of traditional conservative aspects (including elements from Burke) into Liberalism. This is not a flip though, it is an academic absorption to compensate for the embrace of government for egalitarian ends that the left was doing in this period on both sides of the pond. In the UK, the Liberal Party was doing the same things, taking it from largely the same sources, and just like in the US the end result was electoral disaster in the 1920's. The difference is that the Democrats had a rotten borough of a whole region to fall back on for a decade, while the Liberals went bye bye.

There was a chart posted on here some time ago from an election in the late 19th century and it detailed how religious affiliations voted and it is worth mentioning that "Pious Protestants" and Quakers voted almost as Republican as white Evangelicals today, so for most of the Party's existence there has been a connection and even dependence on strong support from a vocal religious sect, often usually Calvinist in its teachings. This also goes right back to the 1790s with issue being made of Adam's faith versus Jefferson's lack thereof.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Something I've thought about recently is that contrary to a common misconception that the Democrats and Republicans have "switched sides" there's always been some continuity within each. Republicans have always tended to be the more nationalistic party and accused Democrats of being traitors/soft on the rebs/reds/terrorists, and included in their coalition Protestant zealots (in the north) and small business owners. To some extent current trends are causing the parties to revert to coalitions resembling those in the third party system as well with Democrats as the party of more recent immigrants, finance capital and free trade (DLC type Democrats are actually sort of similar ideologically to the Bourbon Democrats) and Republicans as the party of the native born working class and protectionism. The difference is that now it's as if their had been a nineteenth century coalition that had included the northern conservative Republicans and southern ex-slaveholders.

You can extent it back to the Federalists with rebs/red/terrorists. Daniel Shays played a role in triggering the Constitutional Convention. There is also the whiskey rebellion, and the Dorr Rebellion.

Its one aspect of the Conservative versus Liberal that has remained relatively constant for 200 years and is a good indicator of which side is a Conservative versus which is a Liberal. Ironically, one of the few times this comes up with a contrary example is the Wilson administration, though it should be noted that Wilson came from elitist circles, was very anglophile and was part of a melting of traditional conservative aspects (including elements from Burke) into Liberalism. This is not a flip though, it is an academic absorption to compensate for the embrace of government for egalitarian ends that the left was doing in this period on both sides of the pond. In the UK, the Liberal Party was doing the same things, taking it from largely the same sources, and just like in the US the end result was electoral disaster in the 1920's. The difference is that the Democrats had a rotten borough of a whole region to fall back on for a decade, while the Liberals went bye bye.

Probably a bridge too far and too many butterflies, but from this do you think that if the South won the Civil War (ie no South for the Dems to fall back on), that the Democrats would have collapsed as a national party and been replaced by something else entirely?

If so, what replaces them?

The obvious answer looking at other countries seems to be a socialist party not unlike say, the British Labour party; probably getting elected nationally for the first time in 1932?

Depends on what happens afterwards. I am favorable towards the perspectives that left wing academics add to discussions. For instance, they are very rarely suckered in by "party's flipped on x date". That being said (and here come the Vittorio flashbacks), there is a desire to shoehorn in socialist parties where the ground just simply wasn't there for that to exist.

The Democrats had strong positions in the border states and the Mid-Atlantic excluding Pennsylvania (how appropriate to today in that sense lol). I don't think they would have collapsed and in the aftermath of the war you saw rather close elections in many northern states and that is why the GOP would often lose the PV since they would narrowly win most northern states and get destroyed in the South (lower turnout and small populations meant that the disparity caused by this was not as severe as might at first glance presume but it had an impact).

You run into this a lot with alternate history's about the GOP collapsing if the South won. This is a factor in the Turtledove series of books. It relies on an oversimplification of "war lost/GOP collapses". For the Republican side of things, it is important to understand how the GOP coalition that dominated the North came about in the time since the the founding and I recently laid this out in a series of posts on a Youtube video where this had come up in the context of the vote split in 1860 and whether or not it was relevant to the final outcome:

Lincoln won a majority in all but three of his states. Republicans had secure holds on ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT, OH, MI, WI, IA and MN. NY was at risk bc of the Irish, but Fremont had won it in 1856. Fremont had lost PA, ILL and Indiana, but Fremont had focused only on slavery. Lincoln ran as a Whig on economics and tariffs typically sold well in PA since 1846, when the Whigs scored massive gains in the state on that issue, and Lincolns final margin was 56% - 37% (with Breckenridge in second). As for Illinois, already in 1858, the GOP scored more votes than Dems (won by 3,400 votes) but failed to win a legislative majority (Dems had an 8 seat majority) due to nearly decade old maps. Since the 1850 apportionment Northern Illinois had swelled in population mostly with Pious Yankees leaving New England, and also Germans. This means that had direct election of Senators been a thing then, Lincoln would have beat Douglas in 1858. By 1860, Lincoln won by 11,000 votes, nearly quadrupling the 1858 pv margin. Indiana had also had a surge of German immigrants as well as some Yankee migration as well. The flipping of PA, ILL and Indiana were dictated by demographics, economic interests and Dred Scott. After Dred Scott the racist nimby (no blacks taking my jobs) voters were ripe for Lincolns containment message and Northern Democratic narrative that slavery kept them in the South rang hollow. I think however narrow, Lincoln had those states in the bag regardless of his opponent.

New York was more difficult but Lincolns economic message, softer tone on immigrants and solid support upstate would hold the state and as it was he beat a fusion ticket getting 53% of the vote. So yeah I think the split was largely irrelevant bc Lincoln had a good lock on an ec majority.

The Republican coalition that would come dominate the Northern states until the New Deal was coming together right at the end of the 1850s:
1. Pious Yankees voted ~75% Republican or so kind of like the Evangelicals of today. They were the abolitionist base and due to the "Yankee diaspora" as I call it, they had spread to places like Michigan, Illinois, Kansas, Northern CA and Oregon. This meant that Republicans had a energetic core base spread across the Northern states. Over time, intermarriage would erase the voting power of this block as they diffused into the larger group of "Northern Protestant Whites", but that is decades into the future.
2. As the Erie Canal and then later the railroads connected the Great Lakes region to the coastal cities of Boston, New York and Philly, this pulled that region out of the grip of New Orleans river trade and also made settlement in the Northern parts of these states, which had been underpopulated, very attractive. Easy transportation into the region for people and easy export of agricultural products and increasingly manufactured goods, is what made possible a North that was inclusive of the Midwest and thus powerful enough to overtake the South.
3. Republicans held all of the cards in this fight because they had the business interests who wanted protectionism from British competition, meanwhile the factory workers were inclined to vote their industries interest over labor interests because of job preservation (Coal miners and mine owners vote the same way today because of the same reason, they view the other party's policies as economic doomsday). Democrats were traditionally a free trade party and the South especially so, since they wanted global trade and cheap imports. This would constantly leave Democrats struggling over the next decades.

Some over generalizations present obviously, but the big three factors would be present regardless and therefore the idea of a Republican collapse post war doesn't make sense. If anything, it would do well against he backdrop of a Southern victory as a revanchist party and one constantly pointing out how Democrats are "soft on the South", "selling out workers to British Merchant interests" etc.


For the Democrat side of things, you have the immigrant populations, you have the Southern parts of the ILL/IN/OH, you have the dominant positions in the border states as well as NJ, and the ability to make things difficult in New York and Connecticut. Trade will always leave some dissatisfied with the Republicans obviously. There is also Southern PA east to the York/Lancaster county border, The block of Counties including, Lehigh, Monroe and the Lackawanna area, which was settled by a combination of non-Yankee whites and Irish and thus leaned Democratic in the 19th century, and of course the WV like Counties in Western PA.

The Republicans would usually have the upper hand in the Senate, but Democrats would certainly be able to win the House and the White House without the South in a good year. So no, I don't think either party collapses absent a South and then it begs the question of how long does this last and what breaks it. Furthermore, it must be asked if the South wins how long does it last and what happens down there economically and in terms of population growth, as well as if they start conquering in the Carribean, Mexico etc.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Something I've thought about recently is that contrary to a common misconception that the Democrats and Republicans have "switched sides" there's always been some continuity within each. Republicans have always tended to be the more nationalistic party and accused Democrats of being traitors/soft on the rebs/reds/terrorists, and included in their coalition Protestant zealots (in the north) and small business owners. To some extent current trends are causing the parties to revert to coalitions resembling those in the third party system as well with Democrats as the party of more recent immigrants, finance capital and free trade (DLC type Democrats are actually sort of similar ideologically to the Bourbon Democrats) and Republicans as the party of the native born working class and protectionism. The difference is that now it's as if their had been a nineteenth century coalition that had included the northern conservative Republicans and southern ex-slaveholders.

You can extent it back to the Federalists with rebs/red/terrorists. Daniel Shays played a role in triggering the Constitutional Convention. There is also the whiskey rebellion, and the Dorr Rebellion.

Its one aspect of the Conservative versus Liberal that has remained relatively constant for 200 years and is a good indicator of which side is a Conservative versus which is a Liberal. Ironically, one of the few times this comes up with a contrary example is the Wilson administration, though it should be noted that Wilson came from elitist circles, was very anglophile and was part of a melting of traditional conservative aspects (including elements from Burke) into Liberalism. This is not a flip though, it is an academic absorption to compensate for the embrace of government for egalitarian ends that the left was doing in this period on both sides of the pond. In the UK, the Liberal Party was doing the same things, taking it from largely the same sources, and just like in the US the end result was electoral disaster in the 1920's. The difference is that the Democrats had a rotten borough of a whole region to fall back on for a decade, while the Liberals went bye bye.

Probably a bridge too far and too many butterflies, but from this do you think that if the South won the Civil War (ie no South for the Dems to fall back on), that the Democrats would have collapsed as a national party and been replaced by something else entirely?

If so, what replaces them?

The obvious answer looking at other countries seems to be a socialist party not unlike say, the British Labour party; probably getting elected nationally for the first time in 1932?

Depends on what happens afterwards. I am favorable towards the perspectives that left wing academics add to discussions. For instance, they are very rarely suckered in by "party's flipped on x date". That being said (and here come the Vittorio flashbacks), there is a desire to shoehorn in socialist parties where the ground just simply wasn't there for that to exist.

The Democrats had strong positions in the border states and the Mid-Atlantic excluding Pennsylvania (how appropriate to today in that sense lol). I don't think they would have collapsed and in the aftermath of the war you saw rather close elections in many northern states and that is why the GOP would often lose the PV since they would narrowly win most northern states and get destroyed in the South (lower turnout and small populations meant that the disparity caused by this was not as severe as might at first glance presume but it had an impact).

You run into this a lot with alternate history's about the GOP collapsing if the South won. This is a factor in the Turtledove series of books. It relies on an oversimplification of "war lost/GOP collapses". For the Republican side of things, it is important to understand how the GOP coalition that dominated the North came about in the time since the the founding and I recently laid this out in a series of posts on a Youtube video where this had come up in the context of the vote split in 1860 and whether or not it was relevant to the final outcome:

Lincoln won a majority in all but three of his states. Republicans had secure holds on ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT, OH, MI, WI, IA and MN. NY was at risk bc of the Irish, but Fremont had won it in 1856. Fremont had lost PA, ILL and Indiana, but Fremont had focused only on slavery. Lincoln ran as a Whig on economics and tariffs typically sold well in PA since 1846, when the Whigs scored massive gains in the state on that issue, and Lincolns final margin was 56% - 37% (with Breckenridge in second). As for Illinois, already in 1858, the GOP scored more votes than Dems (won by 3,400 votes) but failed to win a legislative majority (Dems had an 8 seat majority) due to nearly decade old maps. Since the 1850 apportionment Northern Illinois had swelled in population mostly with Pious Yankees leaving New England, and also Germans. This means that had direct election of Senators been a thing then, Lincoln would have beat Douglas in 1858. By 1860, Lincoln won by 11,000 votes, nearly quadrupling the 1858 pv margin. Indiana had also had a surge of German immigrants as well as some Yankee migration as well. The flipping of PA, ILL and Indiana were dictated by demographics, economic interests and Dred Scott. After Dred Scott the racist nimby (no blacks taking my jobs) voters were ripe for Lincolns containment message and Northern Democratic narrative that slavery kept them in the South rang hollow. I think however narrow, Lincoln had those states in the bag regardless of his opponent.

New York was more difficult but Lincolns economic message, softer tone on immigrants and solid support upstate would hold the state and as it was he beat a fusion ticket getting 53% of the vote. So yeah I think the split was largely irrelevant bc Lincoln had a good lock on an ec majority.

The Republican coalition that would come dominate the Northern states until the New Deal was coming together right at the end of the 1850s:
1. Pious Yankees voted ~75% Republican or so kind of like the Evangelicals of today. They were the abolitionist base and due to the "Yankee diaspora" as I call it, they had spread to places like Michigan, Illinois, Kansas, Northern CA and Oregon. This meant that Republicans had a energetic core base spread across the Northern states. Over time, intermarriage would erase the voting power of this block as they diffused into the larger group of "Northern Protestant Whites", but that is decades into the future.
2. As the Erie Canal and then later the railroads connected the Great Lakes region to the coastal cities of Boston, New York and Philly, this pulled that region out of the grip of New Orleans river trade and also made settlement in the Northern parts of these states, which had been underpopulated, very attractive. Easy transportation into the region for people and easy export of agricultural products and increasingly manufactured goods, is what made possible a North that was inclusive of the Midwest and thus powerful enough to overtake the South.
3. Republicans held all of the cards in this fight because they had the business interests who wanted protectionism from British competition, meanwhile the factory workers were inclined to vote their industries interest over labor interests because of job preservation (Coal miners and mine owners vote the same way today because of the same reason, they view the other party's policies as economic doomsday). Democrats were traditionally a free trade party and the South especially so, since they wanted global trade and cheap imports. This would constantly leave Democrats struggling over the next decades.

Some over generalizations present obviously, but the big three factors would be present regardless and therefore the idea of a Republican collapse post war doesn't make sense. If anything, it would do well against he backdrop of a Southern victory as a revanchist party and one constantly pointing out how Democrats are "soft on the South", "selling out workers to British Merchant interests" etc.


For the Democrat side of things, you have the immigrant populations, you have the Southern parts of the ILL/IN/OH, you have the dominant positions in the border states as well as NJ, and the ability to make things difficult in New York and Connecticut. Trade will always leave some dissatisfied with the Republicans obviously. There is also Southern PA east to the York/Lancaster county border, The block of Counties including, Lehigh, Monroe and the Lackawanna area, which was settled by a combination of non-Yankee whites and Irish and thus leaned Democratic in the 19th century, and of course the WV like Counties in Western PA.

The Republicans would usually have the upper hand in the Senate, but Democrats would certainly be able to win the House and the White House without the South in a good year. So no, I don't think either party collapses absent a South and then it begs the question of how long does this last and what breaks it. Furthermore, it must be asked if the South wins how long does it last and what happens down there economically and in terms of population growth, as well as if they start conquering in the Carribean, Mexico etc.

I wonder what would happen in terms of the Gilded Age Populist movement. Would there even be a Gilded Age?

Depends on the exact manner of the defeat and such and where the boundaries end up, but the North had the necessary ingredients to become an industrial powerhouse on its own and even become the leading Industrial nation though perhaps this occurs later on by a few years. The very poverty of the South in the late 19th and early 20th century (a factor also overwhelmingly overlooked by "party flip theorists") is precisely in large part because it is a region left behind economically. It produces cotton and that is great for textiles but textiles are yesterday's news by 1900. There are more sources of cotton coming online in Egypt and India, there is a shift in investment capital to new emerging industries (money follows returns). For comparison there are still people making a lot of money off of sugar today but you don't have sugar islands a few miles across that are more valuable then whole continents like in the 17th century. That is the way cash crops evolve in terms of the economic and trade networks.

There is still the railroad building, the land grant colleges, the Homestead Act, the Morrill Tariff and thus the basis for the second wave industrial revolution is most certainly present and thus by extension the formation of a gilded age is very possible.

One thing that must be said though is that without the South, there is nothing really to break the Democrats from Middle Class non-Yankee whites and Germans. To understand 1896 it is important to remember that Democrats had entryism into the business, commercial and middle class sectors of the population via the trade issue and also the religious divides even if they were just mainline Protestants who loathed the cliche of New England Witch hanging Republicans. This is why those Northern states remain so close for the next thirty years after the war and you can see in some counties the slow decline of GOP support as Germans and Irish begin to catch up to the Yankee voting base. Then in the 1890's, this just implodes and Republicans solidify their hold on the North. WJB breaks the back of Northern Democratic Middle Class support in the process of nuking the Bourbon Democrats. You also see a bit of rebellion against the elites in the South in favor of more populist and agrarian oriented candidates.

This reclaiming of Jacksonian legacy of the Democrats a poor farmer's party, a shift that would prove essential for the rise of Wilson and later the New Deal would not be possible without the South.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

@NCYankee, the dynamic you discuss at the end leaves us with a Democratic Party, by the 1910s, probably resembles the UK's Liberal Party. The Liberals lost any chance at power shortly thereafter, which leads us to question the place of the Democrats. The four possibilities are (1) this pattern somehow holds, and the left in the United States is even weaker than OTL--given the very good possibility of some sort of depression, combined with a very combative and pluralistic domestic schema that encourages instability, I see this as unlikely; (2) the Democrats moving left as in OTL; (3) the Republicans moving left as was flirted with briefly; and (4) the emergence of a third party that could displace the two (the Democrats being more likely as the weaker party).

In the short run this likely leaves greater room for ideological diversity in the GOP as the liberal Democrats may not have much to offer unions in a variety of industries, and a Theodore Roosevelt-like figure might have substantial support from the cadres. But ultimately involvement in a world war combined with domestic ethnic discrimination and an economic downturn could serve to cleave substantial portions of the working class from either party. I was toying with this idea in at least one timeline, though I never saw it through.

Actually the UK Liberals had adapted economically by the 1910s just as the Democrats had in our timeline. The destruction of the Liberals was caused by an external factor, namely the Great War and related items to that, absent that I don't think the Labor Party would have displaced them and instead the Liberals would have absorbed most of that support over the next several years, which is also what the Democrats ended up doing over the 1930s under the New Deal, eventually shedding (or reshedding) middle class Catholic support to the Republicans.

So it is possible that eventually you end up in a similar place in the mid 20th century that you are in real life.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I sort of view it as the Republicans always being the representative of the "in-group" (starting with Northern WASPs and expanding to other whites as time went on) and Democrats being a coalition of "out groups" (Southerners + white ethnics in the 19th century, shifting more to non-whites in the 20th century).

Well, there is one very obvious exception to this "rule." There's something of merit here, but it's lost in trying to be overly simplistic.

Yes it needs to be qualified along the lines that I used a few days ago. Not in a position to do that right now on my phone.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It's not that I ignore the progressive movement, actually quite the opposite. The problem is that there isn't one unified progressive movement to speak of prior to the New Deal. Even within the Roosevelt clan there was bitter hostility. Also there is a strong tendency to label establishment ex Whigs like Harrison as Progressives just bc they advance the old Whig economic line, and yet the Whigs are very often regarded as "conservative" and rightly so.

As for drawing lines of continuity, it is not my objective to project or legitimize my own views. I don't have to. From the time I was a young kid studying the early days of the Republic, the whole concept of the parties switching places just didn't work in my brain.

It is not I who is trying to draw lines, it is ex Republicans and their descendents trying to fabricate a history of liberalism to grab hold of and cloak cultural elitism behind faux history. Here are some things to consider. Why is ideology treated as a fixed construct? When you do that you unavoidably hit modern bias. Second a lot of what we consider to be ideology is not actually ideology, it is cultural influence. For instance the GOP became more pro immigration, trade and military when they moved South. This wasn't ideological, it is the local economic interests influencing the party. Think about that and then ask yourself what would a  Northern Conservative look like in 1884, using period definitions for the term?

Harrison was not a liberal  or a progressive. He was a mainstream Whig turned Republican. Even at the time there was a sense that TR was out of place and that is why most of his career involved establishment business types kicking him out or kicking him upstairs to get rid of him.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I sort of view it as the Republicans always being the representative of the "in-group" (starting with Northern WASPs and expanding to other whites as time went on) and Democrats being a coalition of "out groups" (Southerners + white ethnics in the 19th century, shifting more to non-whites in the 20th century).

Well, there is one very obvious exception to this "rule." There's something of merit here, but it's lost in trying to be overly simplistic.

Yes it needs to be qualified along the lines that I used a few days ago. Not in a position to do that right now on my phone.

That’s funny, I didn’t see you mention African-Americans in any of your previous posts in this thread.

I assume Yankee is responding to the second part of my post ("lost in trying to be overly simplistic"). There's more that's problematic about Orser67's analysis than neglecting to mention African-Americans.

Actually, I believe Yankee may have been referring to his posts in this thread, in which he did in fact talk extensively on black voting patterns. I now recognize that my previous post was uncalled for, so I apologize. In any case, I still do believe that it's wrong to view the Republicans as always having been the more conservative party, as Yankee and some others seem to.

It has always been the more conservative party.

I also happen to feel that Yankee and others engage in some motivated reasoning. Since they're Republicans, they want to be able to draw a connection from themselves to the "good old Republicans" that everyone respects like Lincoln and Teddy. That way they can say, "see, those Republicans were conservatives too", even when the contemporary Republican party is nothing like the old one. Of course, I probably engage in the same sort of motivated reasoning from the other end by portraying those Republicans as overly liberal.

I am trying to break apart an academic consensus that is wrong. How the hell can you label Federalists as "conservatives" while advancing big gov't, Whigs Conservative while advancing economic nationalism and suddenly because it is the 1890's, these same positions are "liberal" or "progressive". Why is there some magic line after which modern definitions (with incumbent distortions) are suddenly appropriate? NO that is not how it works. The traditional narrative here is wrong and the inconsistency has been so obvious for 15 years that it practically smacks me right into the face. John Adams was the conservative candidate in 1796. Henry Clay was the Conservative candidate in 1832 and William McKinley was the Conservative candidate in 1896.

Screw it going bold: Lincoln was the conservative choice in 1860 against radical separatists and their apologists, and naive washed up has-beens: Line of conservative thought to which Lincoln appealed can be found in this post: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=371767.msg7326666#msg7326666

But I still do think that Yankee and co. tend to ignore the elephant in the room, the Progressive movement, when talking about the history of the Republican party. Yes, the national party in the Gilded Age was in bed with big business, but what about all the Western Republican progressives, and what about TR? And it's not like the Democrats were any more pro-worker or less pro-business (unless you view free trade in that way), and I think it's fair to say that the Progressive movement was more active inside the Republican party than the Democratic one.

I literally mentioned them in the thread you linked as did Wazza. The Western Progressives didn't control the party. Neither did TR. The Party was dominated by the NE establishment, which itself was tied to big business. This establishment only moved left economically, when it was forced to by the New Deal, unionization and the Greatest Generation voting patterns.

Overall though, in the Gilded Age neither party really had a coherent ideology. There were progressives and conservatives in both parties, many of whom were closer politically to their fellow progressives across the aisle than their more conservative party members. Maybe, then, it's not helpful to consider either party more conservative or liberal. Perhaps a progressive-conservative distinction is more useful, 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.

Oh god the pain:

The closest parallel that can be informative is the post Civil War period. This is often wrongly taught today emphasizing too much that there was a "lack of disagreement" between the two parties. This is fundamentally false, appropriating modern understandings of policy (especially economic) onto a past period. The Republicans, the party of Yankee whites and the Democrats, the part of White Southerners, Irish and other immigrants. The Democrats viewed the success of their opponents as an existential threat to either Southern culture or Irish political and religious rights, or both. Republicans viewed the success of the Democrats as an economic threat risking complete devastation to their wealth and power achieved in the Industrial Revolution and also a demographic threat in the form of displacement by immigrant groups (some things never change).

There is always a post.

One of the worst examples of historical distortion is the mantra that the parties in the late 19th century had "no concrete policy differences" or "no coherent ideology". This is WRONG. Say it with me: This is modern centrict definitions being wrongly applied to a historical context.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Roosevelt (and his particular brand of progressive) believed in balance. He opposed the excessive concentration of wealth and power in the hands of capital, because he saw such as inherently dangerous to free enterprise. If competition is the lifeblood of the market economy, then a monopoly is a parasite: left alive, it will drain the host until it kills him. This is, with some important differences, the Marxist critique of capitalism. But where Marx looked to the collapse of the capitalist system as the salvation of the international proletariat, Roosevelt saw the same future —and feared it. He did not want capital to be all-powerful in the American economy, but he did not want labor to be ascendant, either. He fundamentally distrusted left-wing politics and loathed Bryan and Debs as dangerous radicals. His constituency was not the union organizer, but the middle class consumer. That is why, in the 1902 miners strike, he intervened to grant the miners' demands —but not recognition of the union. In that particular case, capital wielded excessive power and was in the wrong, but Roosevelt had no doubt that labor would do the same in a similar position.

Roosevelt did not believe that a fair society would naturally tend towards egalitarianism. This sets him apart from liberal thinkers from Rousseau to Bryan, who did believe that and attributed class inequality to artificial divisions imposed from on high. Rousseau blamed the state; Bryan blamed the financial interests; Debs blamed the capitalist system itself. All three were leftists of some stripe or another, because they rejected the notion of a "natural aristocracy." Roosevelt was fundamentally opposed to this view. His philosophy of the "strenuous life" presumed that some are strong and some are weak, and the strong are inherently more deserving of worldly success, be that glory, riches, or power. His imperialism was not an accident; it grew naturally from his ideology.

Unlike the conservative wing of his party, Roosevelt did not believe that supremacy justifies cruelty. He came from old money, and part of that was a patrician feeling of responsibility to the lower classes. His was a paternalistic concern for the wellbeing of the masses, much in the spirit of a feudal lord for his vassals. This branch of conservatism has all but died out today, but it is conservatism —for the simple reason that it rejects both liberal egalitarianism and communism as the description of life after the end of history.

Yes for the love of god fing yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalistic_conservatism#One-nation_conservatism.

And this is why labeling everyone in this period with the same "policies" a progressive is so misleading and wrong. Policies aren't one's ideology, contrary to what modern understandings on the left and right want you to believe (they want sheep not thinkers).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Ok, fine. The Gilded Age Republicans were conservatives, the Democrats liberals, both in the classical sense and meaning very different things from today. But if that's really the case, I'm curious, did Republicans back then describe themselves as conservatives, and Democrats as liberals, like they do today? Did other contemporary observers describe them in those ways? Considering the names of the British parties at this time, I don't think I'm being modern centric here.

I am going to regret making a partial post on my phone from work. Back then there wasn't the Pence mindset in terms of emphasizing ideology over party. What they did do is emphasize the derivitive points and those points in turn serve as standard tropes for one ideology or the other. Also there would be general loyalty to the party bc the party was seen as a loyal vehicle for the advancement of those tropes.

I will add more later when I get home. I got a book to cite for Caths point to narrow his range of years.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Ok, fine. The Gilded Age Republicans were conservatives, the Democrats liberals, both in the classical sense and meaning very different things from today. But if that's really the case, I'm curious, did Republicans back then describe themselves as conservatives, and Democrats as liberals, like they do today? Did other contemporary observers describe them in those ways? Considering the names of the British parties at this time, I don't think I'm being modern centric here.

I think this is actually a very good question and, were I an Americanist (I am not), something I'd be keen to answer. I think you've probably a better chance of seeing the Democrats described as "liberals" than Republicans as "conservatives" in that period. I don't really have a reason to explain this other than the fact that I feel like Jefferson and Jackson were more emphatically identified in the past as part of a liberal tradition than their counterparts were as part of their own ideological lineage (Republican rhetoric--I'm going off a few limited impressions here--seems to have been more centered around the idea of the "nation" and patriotic service in the Civil War than around "an unbroken ideological tradition from the Founding to present" in this era; think maybe patriotism over substance and also the lack of truly iconic presidents to look to between Washington and Lincoln, and Lincoln's own association with victory and patriotism). The 1st party system in this sense is rather explicit in terms of who the American "Jacobins" were (Jefferson, Burr), and as I've said years before on this forum, the lines are most blurred from our perspective in the 1824-1896 period (aka 2nd and 3rd party systems), and I know a lot less about the nature of political rhetoric in the era of the Whigs and the first Republicans.

I will now strive to condense down that window.

When Rutherford Hayes stepped down as President he saw himself as "the best President since John Quincy Adams, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln". Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur (I think) and certainly Benjamin Harrison were all Whigs prior to becoming Republicans. There is also that clip from 1929 interviewing senior citizens and one of them said he had voted Republican all his life and before that "The Whig ticket".

Whenever a party collapses, there is always some scattering to the winds and some who end up joining the other side eventually. However, it is easy to over emphasize this. Most Whigs in the Northern states became Republicans, as did a number in the border states (eventually).

If you really want a good understanding of how the transition from the Whig Party to the Republican Party happened, I cannot stress enough how you need to read Michael F. Holt's work on the subject: https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195161045.001.0001/acprof-9780195161045

Not just the decline, but the formation of the Party and the sources that it drew support from.

To begin with in 1824, and going back a few years who basically had a one party state develop around Jefferson's party. However, the streaming of Federalists into the DRs as well as the disconnect between the Party's establishment and its more old school DR/Jacobin members, is what created the seeds of that party's unraveling.

You remember that James Madison himself had been a Federalist but was one of the earliest defectors to the DRs. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the Madison administration signed off on a new bank of the United States and the tariff of 1816. This is kind of like Bush enacting NCLB and Medicare Part D. There are voices even years prior to this, lamenting the "federalization of the DRs". You also have to account for the rise of the Nationalists, the War hawks in the West and South including Henry Clay. On top of this there is the destruction of the old financial elite in the NE largely focused on trading (with Britain) and its replacement with the textile industry. The former was devastated by and hated the war for obvious reasons and the embargo before that. The latter was literally born of the embargo and the war, and wanted the tariff to keep them going. As you can imagine, a lot of DRs didn't sign up for these Hamiltonian policies. Finally, it is worth remembering that many states and places had property requirements or at least wealth requirements to vote and there was a widespread movement to overturn these limitations. This is overwhelmingly overlooked against a backdrop of how restricted voting remained along race and gender even after that and it is true. But you cannot in the process of emphasizing that aspect, neglect to consider just how revolutionary this was in the 1820's.

Andrew Jackson's movement, which became the Democratic party, was literally birthed from this anti-establishment discontent with banks, tariffs and restrictive voting, and wanted to get back to the basics of opposing the elites and expanding democracy (that is literally why they took that name and it should be mentioned that 'democracy' was a dirty word for many in the establishment even in America at this time). For his part, and this is why he said and you get the famous quote, "Andrew Jackson considered himself a Jeffersonian Republican". Of course for all of his radicalism in his day, Jefferson was not thrilled with this raging populist championing a return to "hard line Jeffersonianism" and as such you get the other part of the famous quote, "Thomas Jefferson considered him (Jackson) a dangerous man".

It is easy to look back now and view Jackson a certain way, but to a Philadelphia banker like say Nicholas Biddle of the time, they would have had the same view of Jackson and the Democratic Party as you average Wall Street hedge fund guy today would view Bernie Sanders and his political movement today. As dangerous group of extremists who threatened to tear apart the fabric of the system. Its almost as if this is cyclical whereby the DRs/Dems take in a bunch of wealthy finance guys and then in reaction to that, the vast ranks of poor people who look tot he party for help, stage a revolution and take back control of the party from them. 1824/1828, 1896, 1972, 2020s? How's that for continuity for ya?

On the other side of the equation you have the Nationalist Republicans and most of the ex-Federalists and they coalesce behind JQA and Henry Clay. They thing that the control of the establishment machinary and state legislatures will help them dominate Congress and then rest on Congressional supremacy against a backdrop of opposing executive tyranny (King Andrew). This is where the NRs and later the Whigs (hence the name) especially differ substantially from the Federalists. The Federalists wanted a strong Presidency, even a life time serving one, the Whigs wanted a weaker one. This is not because of a magical flip, its more because "OMG THE PLEBS TOOK THE WHITE HOUSE". Finally, I will note getting back to what I said before about it never being clean transitions, some Feds did join Jackson but only a small number.

The Whig Party was created because the NRs realized that betting on institutional power instead of masses of people was a losing proposition. By creating a larger umbrella party, they could thus expand and better thwart the Democrats, at the expense of cohesiveness. That being said, the Whigs were often dominated by former NR Henry Clay and it is Clay's economic program that gets passed on to Lincoln and the Republican Party. The American System itself was indirectly derived from Hamilton's economic philosophy. There is also a tie in with the German Historical School and Fredrich List as well, who were in turn influenced by Hamilton as well.

So you have one party that is trying to break up a political and economic elite, and another that is doing everything it can to preserve and it expand its power instead.

Once the Republican Party is formed, you do have a realignment based on the slave issues and this plus the Reconstruction Period. However, there is still an inherent conservatism to the Republican Party, even during this period, as I explained in the thread that I linked above. The South was hypocritically violating Northern State's rights, it had corrupted the judiciary and the damage that the ever increasing demands of slave power, posed an existential threat to the Republic (it is one of three reasons why they selected that name, the others were to appeal to Jeffersonian legacy especially for Free Soiler Dem's sake and also to differentiate with the popular sovereignty argument advanced by the Northern Democrats). That doesn't even get into the whole concept of preserving the constitution and union itself against radical separatists. And yes there are indeed the whole Radical Republican faction, but it is worth noting that Lincoln often quarreled with this group obviously.

By 1876, with an ex-Whig Presidential candidate, the economy in ruins and the party basically giving up on civil rights, there is a clear desire to hone in on the protectionist system, and also to use that as a backdrop to create a "pro-business nationalist" coalition for the GOP that included some Southerners as well. In a sense, they basically were trying to reconstruct the Whig Party. You see this in the policies that Harrison pursues, not just protectionism but cheap money (Jackson favored hard money because he believed it would tamp down on speculators, whereas the Whigs wanted soft money to fuel business investment. The reason why WJB takes a different view from Jackson is because WJB's base was debtor farmers who benefitted from inflation while Jackson's base was people who were screwed over by speculators).

As much as I would like to continue, running out of energy here. I will have to continue this later.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Grover Cleveland though was a clear exception in that he was arguably one of the 4 most pro-business presidents we have ever had (Coolidge, Harding, McKinley) and its not even really for small vs big government because you honestly can call Andrew Jackson left despite being anti-big government as he did it from a populist framework while Cleveland was anything but a populist .

You see this is why I cannot afford to sleep.

Whenever you have a revolution that overthrows the pre-existing political order. It becomes the new political order and those policies become the establishment policies. If you ever watch the movie "Duck! You Sucker" (alternatively called "Fistful of Dynamite"), there is a line in there where Rod Steiger's character reduces revolution to a vicious cycle that screws over the poor people. As he puts it, "the people who read the books, they go to the people that don't read the books and tell them it is a time to make a change. So the poor people, they make the change. Then people who read books, they sit around the big polished table and talk and talk and eat and eat, but what has happened to the poor people? THEY'RE DEAD!!! That's your Revolution. And then what happens the same fing thing starts all over again".

Cleveland was a strong supporter of the Gold Standard , was very anti union, and was pro-business in almost every conceivable way and you could make an argument he was more conservative than Harrison.


Politically on Economic issues/Domestic Policy there were far far more similarities between Grover Clevelend and William McKinley then there were between Grover Cleveland and William Jennings Ryan

Grover Cleveland is the tail end of the eating around the big polished table of the Jacksonian Revolution. Cleveland thinks he is a Jacksonian by virtue of doing the same thing as Jackson, he thinks he is helping the poor. Just like Old Hickory, he supported hard money. Just like King Andrew, he opposed bigger government seeing it philosophically as a tool for the elites to enrich himself. Just like King Andrew, he opposed business monopolies. Just like King Andrew Jackson he opposed protectionism. Of course he supported immigration and he supported universal white male suffrage (though it is not like anyone opposed this by 1884 except for maybe some Plantation owners and New England blue blood aristocrats).

Grover Cleveland is like the George W. Bush of the Reagan Conservative dominated GOP, and William Jennings Bryan is the Donald Trump figure.

It is of no service to the poor farmer that the establishment has now embraced the populist rage of 30 or 50 years prior. They need help TODAY with TODAY's problems. Just like the Bushes failed to grasp that, so to did Cleveland and thus to achieve the same effect as a Jackson, as a Reagan, you need a new figure working against the traditional order of things, with a set of policies aimed at the challenges of today. Clinging to last cycle's revolutionaries, makes you the bourbons, the Rockefellers or the Bushes, it makes you next in line for the populist firing squad.

To call Cleveland a conservative because he is different from Bryan, would be like calling the Bushes Liberals because they disagree with Trump. In a relativist sense maybe, but I don't like to deal in relativist positioning because that is almost meaningless ("example: Brezhnev was a Conservative"). Its the opposite extreme in these discussions of using modern metrics (that's how you end up with "Louis XIV and Hitler were Socialists"). Both are wrong.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You remember that James Madison himself had been a Federalist but was one of the earliest defectors to the DRs.

I think that your comparison to the NCLB later in this paragraph is spot-on, but I disagree with this characterization of Madison on two levels. Firstly, Madison wasn't "one of" the earliest defectors to the Democratic-Republican Party; he was one of its two co-founders (alongside Jefferson). Jefferson may have won the party's presidential nomination in 1796, but he and Madison were very much partners in founding and developing the party in the early 1790s, and it was Madison who led the party after in the mid-1790s after Jefferson temporarily retired from public life.

More importantly, you seem to be conflating the Federalists of the 1780s with the Federalists of the 1790s. There were continuities there, to be sure, but these were two different groups with different goals. The Federalists of the 1780s were a loosely-organized group that agreed on the necessity for constitutional reforms to empower a federal government capable of defending the country and performing basic functions without the unanimous consent of the states; perhaps their single biggest issue (other than the general agreement on the need for a stronger government) was on the necessity of a tariff. Though the Federalists of the 1790s did build on the work of Robert Morris, who had been sort of the informal leader of a nationalist faction in the early 1780s, the original split between the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists occurred about midway through Washington's first term in reaction to Alexander Hamilton's economic policies (the national bank, rather ironically given later developments, was perhaps the single biggest area of disagreement). And even then, the parties didn't really solidify along clear lines until the 1800 election; e.g. in 1796 several electors split their votes among Federalist and Democratic-Republican candidates.

For the purposes of our conversation we have gone back to Shays and the Constitutional Convention, of which James Madison was a principle architect. Most of the politicians to come later were Federalists if they supported the Constitution and yes, broke off later on (as in the early 1790s) as opposed to someone like JQA Adams (who jumped ship in 1808). There are a vast array of books that talk about the decline of the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists (opponents of the Convention and the Constitution, some of whom joined the DRs) and as you can clearly see, I made a multi-paragraph post at 3 AM in the morning to the extend that I practically buried myself into sleep. Surely, I can be allotted some simplification lest I start making 100 paragraph posts that only Truman reads.

The thing is while Jefferson was deviating from ideology out of expediency, Madison I think was open to nationalist arguments owing to his background as a "Federalist" during the Constitutional Convention and thus was willing to go along with the young gun nationalists like Clay on things like the Bank and the 1816 Tariff.

Also it is worth pointing out that the Federalist themselves, while they birthed these policies via Hamilton, Hamilton was not a unifying figure and the Federalists heavy reliance on merchant support meant that they would be hard pressed to be a consistently economically nationalist party with its base of support as it was. It took the nuking of merchant business in New England and the rise of the textiles to form a political geography that was open to that. Also the rise of steel and iron in PA, though that took years and it wasn't really until later than the Whigs and later the Republicans could reap the rewards of economic nationalism to dominate PA politics.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Grover Cleveland is the tail end of the eating around the big polished table of the Jacksonian Revolution. Cleveland thinks he is a Jacksonian by virtue of doing the same thing as Jackson, he thinks he is helping the poor. Just like Old Hickory, he supported hard money. Just like King Andrew, he opposed bigger government seeing it philosophically as a tool for the elites to enrich himself. Just like King Andrew, he opposed business monopolies. Just like King Andrew Jackson he opposed protectionism. Of course he supported immigration and he supported universal white male suffrage (though it is not like anyone opposed this by 1884 except for maybe some Plantation owners and New England blue blood aristocrats).

In a way, doesn't that make Cleveland a conservative, if by that point the Jacksonian policies were no longer helping the common people? I remember one time when I praised the Whigs for being ahead of their time on the currency issue, you told me "context matters." The Whigs supported soft money to benefit speculators and bankers, you said, while the Bryan Democrats believed it would help out poor indebted farmers. Does not context matter in this case also? By the 1890s, if hard money and laissez-faire primarily benefited businesses rather than commoners, doesn't that make the man behind those policies conservative in some sense, even if those policies were once Andrew Jackson's? Also, you claim that Cleveland supported Jackson's old policies for the same reason Old Hickory had, namely that he believed in liberal anti-elitist principles. I won't pretend to know Grover Cleveland's motives, but it strikes me as unlikely that a leader of a faction called the Bourbons was motivated by a desire to help the poor or fight elites.

If he didn't believe it on at least some level, he would not have been a Democrat. To a point I actually anticipated your response with my last paragraph. In a relativist sense yes, but I prefer not to deal in relativist ideology either because it is essentially meaningless.

Cleveland is a classical liberal lost in the beginning stages of modern liberalism. It is worth noting that Cleveland did fight monopolies, did fight corruption (he was a successor indirectly of Tilden who was also a Bourbon Democrat). It is easy to over-emphasize the differences between Cleveland and Bryan, which I will get to in the response to OSR in a minute.

Yes, context is everything, but it is too easy to pick out the things that we would emphasize that make him a "conservative" but ignore the backdrop at the same time. Monopolies, trade, immigration, lack of service in the Civil War (kind of lack attacks on Draft dodger Clinton in the 1990's), work to combat corruption and yes his support for hard money. If by virtue of his policies being behind the eight ball, he becomes an "unintentional conservative", it is in that sense like Bill Clinton and while Bill Clinton's policies are certainly too conservative now for the Democratic Party, I don't think anyone would say that Bill Clinton is a "Conservative" by any definition used in the 1990's, 2000's or 2010's.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Cleveland was a strong supporter of the Gold Standard , was very anti union, and was pro-business in almost every conceivable way and you could make an argument he was more conservative than Harrison.


Politically on Economic issues/Domestic Policy there were far far more similarities between Grover Clevelend and William McKinley then there were between Grover Cleveland and William Jennings Ryan

Grover Cleveland is the tail end of the eating around the big polished table of the Jacksonian Revolution. Cleveland thinks he is a Jacksonian by virtue of doing the same thing as Jackson, he thinks he is helping the poor. Just like Old Hickory, he supported hard money. Just like King Andrew, he opposed bigger government seeing it philosophically as a tool for the elites to enrich himself. Just like King Andrew, he opposed business monopolies. Just like King Andrew Jackson he opposed protectionism. Of course he supported immigration and he supported universal white male suffrage (though it is not like anyone opposed this by 1884 except for maybe some Plantation owners and New England blue blood aristocrats).

Grover Cleveland is like the George W. Bush of the Reagan Conservative dominated GOP, and William Jennings Bryan is the Donald Trump figure.

It is of no service to the poor farmer that the establishment has now embraced the populist rage of 30 or 50 years prior. They need help TODAY with TODAY's problems. Just like the Bushes failed to grasp that, so to did Cleveland and thus to achieve the same effect as a Jackson, as a Reagan, you need a new figure working against the traditional order of things, with a set of policies aimed at the challenges of today. Clinging to last cycle's revolutionaries, makes you the bourbons, the Rockefellers or the Bushes, it makes you next in line for the populist firing squad.

To call Cleveland a conservative because he is different from Bryan, would be like calling the Bushes Liberals because they disagree with Trump. In a relativist sense maybe, but I don't like to deal in relativist positioning because that is almost meaningless ("example: Brezhnev was a Conservative"). Its the opposite extreme in these discussions of using modern metrics (that's how you end up with "Louis XIV and Hitler were Socialists"). Both are wrong.

Then why did Cleveland support the gold standard, why did he oppose assistance for the unemployed , why was he extremely anti union as well .

Because gold was seen traditionally as working against financial speculation and it is one thing that Democrats have agreed on from Jefferson and Madison (happy Orser? ) from 1792 to today is that they don't like financial speculation. The economics of who benefits and who loses has changed but the establishment still is stuck on yesterday, so they keep pursuing gold for its own merits, because of its innate qualities and because 50 years prior it was seen as a way to thwart speculation. The thing is financial speculation is like rats, you shine a light on one corner it will move to another, that is why every regulatory effort ultimately fails, it is fighting the last war so to speak. It is no different with Cleveland and Gold.
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland


Look at the reasoning he gives for opposing government programs it’s not cause they would help the elitist but because he believes it’s unconstitutional. That’s an argument that Calvin Coolidge would make

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

Andrew Jackson was clearly anti big government cause at the time big government was used to help elitists only while in Grover Cleveland cause he came out and opposed legislation specifically that helps the unemployed and look at that reasoning.

The concept of direct help to the poor and also of unions would work against the classically liberal economic philosophy that he is a ingrained in and thus would continue to keep that position because he thinks the on the whole, classical liberalism is better than economic nationalism. The primary issue of economics in this age isn't defined by welfare, it is defined by trade and trusts and in Cleveland's eyes he is just applying uniformly the principles of the philosophy that dictates that protectionism is bad, that monopolies are bad, also means that unemployment aid and unions are also bad. It is not case of Cleveland being conservative, it is a case of a dogmatic adherent to the economic bible from 1835, without understanding that the ground that dictated this bible's creation has changed. Thus always is economic conditions and thus policies have to adapt.

Also no George W Bush and Trump are similar on nearly 90% of the issues while it’s a stretch to say that Cleveland and Bryan are on even say 25%.

Is it a stretch by their standards? or Yours?
                     Grover          WJB
Trade             Free            Free
Trusts            Anti             Anti
Speculation   Anti             Anti
Immigration   Pro              Pro
Corruption     Anti             Anti


These were big five dividing lines between the parties prior to 1896. They both generally line up the same way and both come across as obvious Democrats for the period.

Also while it is true that Cleveland was a leader of the so called "Bourbon Democrats" that included a number of rich people, it is worth remembering that they themselves would never have called themselves that. In fact this is a pejorative term by their opponents, just like Whigs calling other Whigs, "Tories" in the 18th Century UK. They would have considered themselves Democrats, perhaps even Jacksonian Democrats. The reason why their were rich people supporting "Jacksonian Democrats" is because well their were rich people supporting Jackson in 1832. What matters is what rich people and why? Well rich people of immigrant backgrounds obviously. Rich people whose industry was harmed by the protectionism of the dominant GOP-Economic Nationalist-Industrial Complex that had been built up over the past years. And of course the obvious group, plantation owners who for obvious reasons had been directly harmed by GOP policies, still yearned for free trade and were definitely on the outs in terms of national power, even if they dominated their local area (like being a rich man in a third world country, you are still an outsider on the global scene).


Also don't forget, WJB is considered a conservative culturally by the 1920's against the likes of "progressive" Al Smith. And Al Smith was a Republican by 1940 for all intents and purposes. When these revolutions happen, people get tossed aside and it is always messy. Suddenly, the party isn't your kind of conservative or your kind of liberal anymore and you prefer to stake your lot in with the other side. The story of liberalism in the period from 1890 - 1940 is as Truman referenced, a messy period in which old understandings are tossed aside and an attempt to adapt to the challenges of the modern age is thus made. During this process many people still clinging to classical liberalism decide to throw in with the right and over time the right shifts its rhetoric to accommodate them (its kind of like how forum libertarians either become Socialists or far rights conservatives when they get older).

But leaving that aside, on the ground in as late as 1892, there is nothing about Grover Cleveland that doesn't scream bog standard Democrat for the time, not because the Democrats were the conservative party, but because that is where liberalism was in 1892. Free Trade, against monopolies, against speculation, for immigration and against corruption.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

His position on Gold isnt similar to Jackson either cause remember he opposed bimetallism which Jackson did not oppose and was abondened not by Democrats but by Republicans. So Cleveland was basically supporting Republican policies when it came to Gold.

Again, the context. In the 1820's, any form of backing be it gold or silver would produce "harder" money then what was happening with banks issuing their own notes and the chaos that it was creating in the process. It matters less the specific policy, and more the objective of Hard versus soft money as that allows for the different levels of "hardness" to "coin" a term.

Also worth noting that Grant, was the first Republican President who was to my knowledge not a member of the Whig Party, prior to William McKinley. That should help to emphasize why both were more favorable to hard money then the ex-Whigs from Lincoln to Harrison.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yes i understand that but looking at how Cleveland justified his policies it seems like his intentions were to be pro business in general.

They call it liberal capitalism for a reason. Yankee does a good job of explaining how the revolutionaries of yesterday are the establishment of today —read his post again.

His opposition to goverment programs weren't because they benefited the elite but because they were unconstitutional which is a  conservative argument.

No it isn't. Especially at that moment in history, you were more likely to hear strict constructionist arguments coming from liberals than from conservatives. Of course, neither party has ever let the constitution stand in the way of their legislative agenda, and it's silly to pretend that is an ideological distinction.

His position on Gold isnt similar to Jackson either cause remember he opposed bimetallism which Jackson did not oppose and was abondened not by Democrats but by Republicans. So Cleveland was basically supporting Republican policies when it came to Gold.

Again, see above. I recently described Cleveland on the IP board as representative of a tradition of Bourbon liberalism that had long since outlived it's usefulness. That bit of editorial aside, Cleveland was clearly and old-fashioned liberal and by 1896 was behind the times —but that was at the end of his career, twelve years after his first presidential campaign. Cleveland couldn't have been nominated three times by the national Democratic party if he was some friendless gadfly with no connection to the party's history or values. In that sense he's more like Bill Clinton than Zell Miller —a politician popular in his day whose brand of politics has aged poorly as his party turns toward radical alternatives to the status quo.

Democrats probably nominated him a me too type of candidate in which the only way the could win was by being sorta Republican lite in a way . So Bill Clinton on steroids

What about Hancock and Tilden then?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

seemed to confirm this image of a corrupt circle of Northern financiers draining the poor farmers of the South and West for their personal enrichment.

This was a staple of DR/Dem rhetoric from Madison and Jefferson down to LBJ.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Was the South always religious or did they become more religious at some point?

I think they generally caught up with the rest of the county by the mid to late 19th century but then over time became the most religious over the 20th century as the other regions saw their religiosity decline.

As late as the 1880's, there was still Southern originated attacks against New England politicians that referenced the Salem Witch trials. So the concept of the pious New England puritan still existed in the minds of people even if not quite as much in reality even at that point.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

We definitely see continuity in the ideals of Eugene Talmedge with modern liberalism and the modern democratic party

I know you are trying to be difficulty, but I am going to bite.

Southern politics and politicians would necessarily present a distorted image of the party, for the simple reason that it was a one party region. You had a lot of rich plantation and business owners supporting the same party as poor farmers, because as I said in the post a couple of days ago (Civil War Legacy, and the concept of being an outsider nationally even while being elite locally). As even the quickest glance at the period's history would illustrate, there was often vicious primary battles between the "Bourbons" and the Populists and Progressives. Since Bourbons would not have much to offer poor farmers for obvious reasons, they would whip up race hysteria to get votes and win primaries that they likely had no business winning. This was Pat Harrison's model in Mississippi. Depending on the state, people like Wallace and Bilbo responded (being from the other faction) by going even more hardcore racist. Other populist/progressive Southern Dems like Huey Long and Estes Kefauver generally managed to avoid this, at least somewhat.

I have mentioned this dozens of times now, none of it detracts from the main points that Truman and myself have made.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

We definitely see continuity in the ideals of Eugene Talmedge with modern liberalism and the modern democratic party

I know you are trying to be difficulty, but I am going to bite.

Southern politics and politicians would necessarily present a distorted image of the party, for the simple reason that it was a one party region. You had a lot of rich plantation and business owners supporting the same party as poor farmers, because as I said in the post a couple of days ago (Civil War Legacy, and the concept of being an outsider nationally even while being elite locally). As even the quickest glance at the period's history would illustrate, there was often vicious primary battles between the "Bourbons" and the Populists and Progressives. Since Bourbons would not have much to offer poor farmers for obvious reasons, they would whip up race hysteria to get votes and win primaries that they likely had no business winning. This was Pat Harrison's model in Mississippi. Depending on the state, people like Wallace and Bilbo responded (being from the other faction) by going even more hardcore racist. Other populist/progressive Southern Dems like Huey Long and Estes Kefauver generally managed to avoid this, at least somewhat.

I have mentioned this dozens of times now, none of it detracts from the main points that Truman and myself have made.

Literally just last night I was reading an interview of Gaylon Babcock, who knew the Trumans growing up in Jackson County, Missouri at the turn of the century. He explained that while his family were registered Republicans, his father would vote the Democratic ticket at the state and local level, because in his words "so seldom a capable man ran on the Republican ticket in our area because there was so little chance of being elected, he couldn't afford to give too much time to that."

Kind of a tangent but I think it's still the case today that in many one party regions you have that sort of crossover. I lived in Brooklyn for a while and noticed that many nominal conservatives were registered Democrat just so that they could vote in primaries because in many districts the Brooklyn GOP was virtually non-existent.

Very much so, you see it in scattered pockets, but it is nothing like it was in the Jim Crow South.

Power tends to attract money, which tends to corrupt. If you are the only game in town...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I haven't read this whole thread, but the "short answer" that I always give to this is that, even if nothing else, the Democratic Party has always been the natural political home of immigrants and not-fully-assimilated populations, whereas the Republican Party has always been more comfortable providing overtly moral or religious justifications for its policies.

Thats pretty decent though a generalized reference to the whole "monopolies/trusts/business aspect. Even though it took different forms over the years, there was a generally hostility to business cartels and speculating on the Dem side and greater tolerance for them on the Federalist/Whig/Republican side.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would argue that the slaveowners were elites and were conservative, even if their interests differed from that of northern business elites. They were probably more Hamiltonian than Jeffersonian when it came to voting rights and immigration, but their economy depended on selling cash crops overseas and therefore they feared tariffs more than they feared Jeffersonian liberty or Tammany Hall, and the de-polarization of tariffs after the Great Depression and WWII allowed them to “come home” and join their fellow elites in the GOP.

As Truman notes, their is a feudalistic conservatism to the planter elite of the South and taken in isolation could be used to label them as such. You could also make the same determination based on their feud with poor farmers and others who tended to bake more populist and later progressive economically speaking candidates.

However, there are some errors that lead to misunderstandings here. There were certainly Coastal planters in the Federalist Party and others in the Whigs (KY, TN etc) and it is correct to say that the Civil War alignment kept them isolated from their counterparts in the North. However, it is mistake to take things in isolation from the context in which they exist or especially to hand wave off the economics. It must be remembered that for all the talk of fears of slave revolt prior to the Civil War, nothing was ever done to reduce the slave populations in the South. On the contrary, the number of slaves increased and their were even extremist calls to reintroduce the slave trade across the Atlantic. This of course runs contrary to racial rhetoric, but it must be remembered that most all of the actions of the planter class were dictated by money first, second and always. Everything else was about achieving their objectives to further that end. The racial rhetoric as I illustrated before, enabled elites to keep power when otherwise they had little to offer the poor farmers and yes in some states, they restricted the voting even of those poor farmers, so that is accurate to some extent.

However, they were not against immigration of "cheap labor" of various kinds because of racial animus (some probably), in fact the introduction of imported labor by Southern elites in agricultural, construction and such forth to maximize profit margins has been a standard operating procedure since 1619. Worth noting that they largely stuck with Smith though not fond of their Catholicism, because the nature of by that point Jim Crow, required the Dem machine to not crack in the South. Whereas the people most opposed to immigration would be the ones who defected to Hoover, anti-Catholic up country whites. Though the Klan had presence with both groups, over time it came to be substantially more down market and less educated (In 1991, David Duke lost St. Tammany Parish and Bossier Parish, two of the most Republican Parishes and also more upscale suburban in the state.)

That being said what is the benefit of singling out one group of rich people, doing rich people things to stay rich (typically involving some form of abuse or crime). Is not the bulk of Silicon Valley Tech execs today, engaging in all manner of corrupt business practices, abuse of immigration laws and their workers generally, on the left and supportive of the Democratic Party today? Does that mean that they are just "conservatives" waiting for the GOP to drop its alienating factors? They are liberals because their social values and monetary interests align with the Democratic platform.

Just like planters were liberals because "according to what defined liberal values at the time on a national scale", they lined up with them generally speaking. Planters also had no love for NE banking interests either, typically they owed them money obviously. There is still the trade matter as noted. Their was also religious issues as Planter elites being Cavaliers (or at least of that mindset) didn't want pious Cromwellians taking away their Christmas, their booze and their wild social scenes (exaggerated but you get the point). This is seen as another reason why they stuck with the wet Smith, while those favorable to dry cause were more keen on defecting to Hoover.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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

Also, “you were born this way, therefore your rights should be limited” is a conservative way of thinking and the UK’s Conservative Party supported the Confederacy while the UK’s Liberal Party supported the Union.

The ruling Liberal Party elite were pro Confederacy. I am not ab expert on exactly which British officials had which positiobs but there was a degree of favorability to the South in Palmerstons govt and this was in Britain's interest as a divided US would less likely to be a threat to Canada. Now the liberal party base was very much pro Union and antislavery and it was the unions agents desire to use this to pressure the Liberal party govt to oppose the South or at least not recognize them.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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

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

"As Truman notes, there is a feudalistic conservatism to the Southern planter elite..."

That is literally how I started my post prior to yours. Also included among that planter elite was the egalitarian Jefferson himself, though I should quickly point out most of my post prior to yours concerned the post civil war period so the "owning others" hot take is out of place in reference to that post. But let's consider that for a moment anyone. The whole point is about liberalism in the context of the time, a time in which everything is colored by race to the point that such obvious hypocrisy to us is hand waved in their times. Jefferson was a big time slave owner but you cannot with a straight face call him a feudalist conservative, the guy who embraced the French Revolution, pushed separation of church and state and favored rule by small farmer republic as opposed to a financial aristocracy.

If you lose the plot to the point that owning of slaves is enough to counterpoint the argument about 19th century liberalism, then Truman and I have wasted our time.