Southern Democrats ... I still don’t get it

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

To add to what Shua and RinoTom have said, Theodore Bilbo was a devout New Deal Democrat. He once even stressed his loyalty by calling out FDR's Republican appointees (Knox for instance) and his support for the New Deal agenda writ-large, when he came under criticism for his extreme racism, anti-semitism and anti-Italian views.

Poor people, poor farmers and such were a key component of the Democratic base and had been for some time. They were the people that made WJB's takeover possible and the whole rise of "New Liberal".  Economic progressivism depended on the poor farmers and laborers who were completely in agreement with the TVA, Social Security and so forth, even at the same time they were racist as all hell.

Yes FDR had opposition, from two places, Conservative Black belt/urban whites (Who as I have pointed out represented districts whose poor were more exclusively black thus creating a wealth skew alongside the racial vote suppression of Jim Crow, hence why they were so conservative. These were rotten boroughs for the rich whites of the black belt region and cities with no one else voting) and middle class Irish conservatives in places like New York. The Irish component of the opposition gets forgotten, as does the New Deal wing of the Southern Democratic Party, creating this false presumption that it was completely North versus South, when it was Conservative versus Progressive in both regions.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am always very grateful to have Fuzzy Bear's first hand perspectives on matters, as it helps to provide viewpoints that for sake of brevity or lack of his direct first hand knowledge limits my abilities and others to touch on during the course of our postings on the matter. I certainly agree with his timeline, the events that kicked of the start of the solid south and also the importance of regional hegemony as a tool for political leverage and the timeline for how and while they broke down.

That being said, I would to provide my thoughts on this segment:

The Liberal Republicans in the Northeast and Midwest were never the force the Conservative Democrats of the South were, and they were less seniority-minded, as many despaired of every serving in a GOP Majority House.  Northeast Republicans were politically Protestant descendants of post-Civil War Radical Republicans, but there were some liberal Catholic Republicans (e. g. Rep. Silvio Conte, R-MA).  The Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, was far, far less regimented in those days.

The one-party Democratic South was about (A) excluding blacks from voting in the primary, and (B) ensuring finality of the primary.  V. O. Key discussed this extensively in his book, Southern Politics.  There were varying degrees of support for "liberal" positions by Southern Democrats over the years.  Many conservative Democrats supported New Deal measures because their constituents needed them, and because the pols themselves initially supported Roosevelt strongly.  What broke this down were the following events:

The referencing of "Liberal Republicans" here is problematic. For one thing for a large part of this period, "progressive" Republicans were centered mostly out west or in urban machines. For the most part though, in both the Northeast and Midwest, it would be hard to refer to the bulk of these "establishment" WASP Republicans as anything but Conservative, especially on economic matters. After the increased unionization rates and Democratic voting strength in the North, there certainly was a desire by establishment Republicans in the region to shift left to try and chase the regions voters. Kevin Phillips talks about this and the leftward shift of Republican Reps in Yankee districts during the mid 1960's, but as a general process this began as as shift left to accommodate the politics of the New Deal era while trying to hold on in an increasingly hostile region economically and demographically.

Meanwhile the sheer level of poverty held in the South dictated that large numbers of voters there would be natural supporters of the Populists like WJB or later political alliances like the New Deal. Many of these voters benefited directly from such programs. Certainly there were a number of "conservative" Democrats who embraced these programs, but it shouldn't be discounted that there were a number of economically progressive true believers in various parts of the South, again catering that large pool of economically depressed voters, who found things especially rough after the depression. If anything the level of Conservatism increased substantially towards the end as just like the Republicans up North, a few years earlier, there had been a massive shift towards competitiveness and with racial politics no longer holding things in place, this became more necessary.

Population shifts play a role as poorer farmers clear out and leave larger, richer surviving operations, a dynamic people often don't consider when discussing the shift of rural areas over the years and leading to the faulty presumption that rural always means conservative and urban always means liberal.

All of these factors create a pull effect, working on congress members to shift further to the right to keep up with the region's shift to the right.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Secular v Traditional.  The Dixiecrat party that supported slavery and Jim Crow laws were states rights Dems. The Lincoln Rs like Eisehower and Teddy Roosevelt that supported Civil Rights believed in Federal Rights is supreme.

When Nixon created the Southern stratedy after RFK assassination, states rights along with Reagan was the GOP party. Thus Red v Blue since 1992 at the end of the Cold War and instead of Dems v Rep, Blue v Traditional has been used

All you do is regurgitate standard, generic lines of party flip based on superficial and empty analysis.

I categorically reject this narrative in its entirety. From the 1870's onwards, the Republican Party was seen as the too for financial elites and big business interests, just as the Whigs were the party of banks and the Federalists the party of merchant interests. It is worth noting that Nathaniel Banks left the Republican Party over the catering to business in the 1870's.

Republicans gave up on civil rights in the 1870's as well, because it was harming the ability to win elections in the North and thus by extension harming the enactment of pro-business policies. The embrace of small government came not in 1968 or 1932. It was a long term process whereby business interests decided to favor small gov't once they obtained the things they wanted and meanwhile liberalism evolved from classical to New Liberalism, embracing the government as a tool to uplift as opposed to one that could only oppress. This was a change in the wants of core interests groups, which remained the same with the same general alignment of urban business versus poor rural farmers.

During the late 19th and early 20th century, the agricultural population declined leaving only large and wealthy farmers while most of the poor flocked to the cities. This is why rural areas became conservative and urban areas shifted more towards liberalism. We saw the same process play out in the South but it was delayed a few decades.

Furthermore, on the issue of immigration, Republicans inherited the Know-Nothing base in many Northern states including Massachusetts. They used tribalistic voting and nativism to boost up huge margins among Yankee protestants, which worked until the demographics shifted so much that this political base fell apart.When that happened, is when Republicans started looking to the South, but it was not a flip or a change in tactics or core priorities. They just reapplied it, using blacks as the wedge to unite the white population against them in favor of Republicans, just as they had used immigrants the same way in the NE. If anything, the Southern Strategy was just a slightly modified version of the "Northern Strategy" the GOP had been using for decades.

On the matter of secularism, are you seriously saying that politicians that the South attacked for "harboring the same spirit that hung the witches" as late as the 1880's, is going to pass the smell test as a secular coalition. The same coalition that also discriminated against Catholics because of religion on a frequent basis? Of course not. The NE was a very religious region and the process by which this secularized over time took decades and even centuries but certainly through the late 19th century at least it would be safe to say it was still very religious particularly in the rural areas of New England where liberal thought had less influence and furthermore the voters were likewise the most animated by the ethnic voting patterns. The Republicans have almost always been a protestant moralist party, with only a short interlude during the New Deal era until it found a new white protestant base for itself, to continue advancing largely the same pro-business agenda.

As for the Southern strategy, as long as the Republicans were around and serving as a primary vehicle politically speaking for business interests, it was only a matter of time before regional and historical animosities fell by the wayside to create a coalition with the Southern business class and this came about in the mid 20th century. I don't see the Southern Strategy as some massive transformation or worse a party flip, I see it as the reapplication of divide and conquer politics bought and paid for business interests seeking to reign in the New Deal by working with like minded people in the South, especially as the South grew and with it a professional middle class that would in most other regions have been strongly Republican and so to was it now the case in the South, increasingly.

The evolution of parties is a complex web involving core interest groups (business or the poor/debtors), there preferred policy set, the ideological covering to justify said policy set, and then of course the demographic shifts both economic and ethnic/racial and it is necessary that all factors be in considered while analyzingthe parties and how they changed over time.

When you start to pull all of the threads together, it makes a lot of sense actually

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

middle class Irish conservatives in places like New York. The Irish component of the opposition gets forgotten

Would Al Smith be an example?

There was also a Representative, I think O'Connor or something like that who opposed court packing.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Dynamic evolution isn't always pretty in its results, it is just a reflection of the pressures working on it, causing it to develop that way. The same general concept would apply to an organization, just as it would to a plant species or some kind of bird.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Just think states rights when you think conservative, not Dem v R and you will get Dixiectats during Jim Crow era and Rs during Goldwater era.

3 Scotus CJ used this philosophy to promote or upend Jom Crow.

CJ Marshall in 1803 said that Congress can change Crts Appellate Jurisidication, we went from 3 to current 9 members and CRT can use Judicial Review to strike Slavery Laws

FM Vinson in 1953 said it's not in the Constitution to desegregate

1954 Warren reversed Vinson and said 14th Amendment does apply to Jim Crow ending laws

That's when they say Washington and Adam's and Hamilton were conservative due to Alien Sedation laws, they dont apply the fact Marshall was appointed by John Adam's to help end slavery .

Benjamin Franklin was from Boston, no slaves, he was a Quaker like Lincoln

Benjamin Franklin owned two slaves and even advertised slave auctions in his newspaper. His conversion to abolition was late in life.

Adams and Hamilton were both conservatives though of different varieties. Both sought to preserve the interests of financial elites against the interest of the common man, which is the primary long term divide in American politics. Again you fail to grasp that Ideologies can evolve to.

Marshall was not appointed to abolish slavery, the guy was from VA. It is also worth pointing out that the second court ruling to overturn a federal law, was Dred Scott overturning the Missouri Compromise. This narrative you are peddling on the court is just full of holes.

Just think states rights when you think conservative, not Dem v R and you will get Dixiectats during Jim Crow era and Rs during Goldwater era.

Are you seriously going to claim that Calvin Coolidge was not a conservative? Harding? McKinley? Are you seriously going to claim that Theodore Bilbo and Huey Long were conservatives?

Again one dimensional analysis always falls flat.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

From my vantage point everything about opposition to slavery and segregation is liberal in nature, from a belief in individual rights, to the equality of man, to opposition to unjustly enforced hierarchies. I just can't see any way in which opposition to these institutions is ideologically conservative, so please explain your position if you will. And no, just because many abolitionists made moral and religious arguments, that doesn't make them conservative. Not to sound too much like Pete Buttigieg, but religion and morality are not exclusive domains of the political right, contrary to what conservative evangelicals would have you think. This is a point I've made a lot with you, but I think it bears repeating. Liberalism as an ideology literally has its roots in radical Protestant theology, and the two often went hand-in-hand well into the 19th century. Finally, I'd like to note that while conservatives did sometimes support an end to segregation, that doesn't make the position itself a conservative one. Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. was a conservative who supported liberal racial policies, not for ideological reasons, but because he sought to enfranchise black Republican voters in the South.

I haven't played much of a role in this thread, but there's so much wrong with this that I couldn't pass it by. The first two sentences essentially state, it is impossible to be a conservative and anti-slavery/anti-racist, or at the very least, it is impossible to oppose slavery or racism for conservative reasons —but this is clearly false, and betrays a massive failure of imagination on your part. A Northern capitalist who opposed slavery for purely economic reasons (and there were many of them) and an anti-amalgamationist who opposed slavery because it forced whites to live in close proximity with blacks surely don't conform to any version of egalitarian liberalism —yet both were important constituencies in the Republican party of the 1850s. For every Frémont or Hamlin, there was a Preston Blair who didn't give a sh*t about black people but saw opposing slavery as in their economic self-interest. It really should not be terribly difficult to see how someone who supports free markets, corporate interests, and "traditional family values" would be anti-slavery.

Both Radicals and liberals flocked to the Republican party in the early years of its existence because it's foundational issue (limiting the spread of slavery) has obvious egalitarian connotations. These elements held a controlling share in the party during the 1856 campaign and remained a powerful contingent until 1876, surviving in some form until the 1960s. Meanwhile, those Republicans who were conservatives (a rapidly-growing majority after 1876) were Northern conservatives —and while certainly not "woke" by any modern standard, were at least friendlier to the idea of political equality for blacks than were Southern conservatives (who were, in fact, Democrats during this period). But this is a cultural distinction rather than an ideological one. As has already been noted, Phil Scott is obviously not conservative in the way Brian Kemp are Greg Abbot are conservatives; but that does not make him a liberal, except perhaps in a relative sense. The realignment of American politics along cultural lines has helped push these New England Yankees into the Democratic fold, but as we saw in Massachusetts this year, not every New England Democrat is on the left of the party.

There's a lot more that could be said (particularly with regard to equating Radicalism with Liberalism, the two being closely related but not identical movements), but it's late and this post is long enough already.

Its only two paragraphs. long enough? That is like Grant calling it quits after day one at Shiloh. P

Yes, this gets back to the point that I made with regards to RP McM about one dimensional narratives.

To add to what Truman has said, you have to consider the Cultural Imperialist Yankees.

This is the oft cited example for most every Lost Cause whataboutery usual involving Native Americans. That being said, the fact that it is drawn attention to does not make them non-existent, though they do exaggerate for obvious reasons.

There were a number of very zealous protestants who wanted to remake the world and the country in "God's Image" and it was to this element that they sought to "Civilize" the "lesser" cultures and turn them into "Civilized Christian Citizens". This is inherently white, cultural and religious supremacist in its fundamental basis. The reason why they opposed slavery was because 1. they believe it hindered civilizing the slaves and 2. The South passed restrictions on "dangerous" religious instruction after Nat Turner's rebellion in the 1830's.

It is in reaction to this very pious element that you see pro-slavery politicians like Jefferson Davis begin to promote on a much wider scale a view that slavery is "endorsed by the bible" and that slavery itself is a "civilizing force" of its own and a "much better one" at that then the Yankee's Puritanical zealotry.

The historiography completely eliminated this Northern pious element by the mid 2000s and this was to the point where many were saying things like "atheists led the charge for abolition, while Christians justified its continued existence", something that was common in many areas of discussion on this during the mid 2000s when I was in school. Of course this is a one dimensional narrative and yes there were atheists pushing for abolition and their were Christians defending the institution.

But this narrative completely ignores the large number of pious protestant sects in the NE who on some level embraced this zealous desire to "save the souls of the 'lesser' races". Yes there is a certain egalitarian aspect to this at least superficially in terms of their objective, but that doesn't change the fact that this is still cultural imperialism, white supremacy and religious intolerance, that is then being channeled towards abolition of slavery.

For all of the atheists and transcendentalists and such forth, and the Unitarians (which I should point out were themselves much more Conservative in the 19th century then they are now), these were tiny fractions usually centered in small pockets or elite urban segments. Compared to the very large numbers of Congregationalists, Northern Baptists and other similar groups of mostly Calvinist teachings, that formed the back bone of the GOP in the 19th century and held views that would place them on par with the Evangelicals of today in their fervor.

I must caveat not everyone of these pious types was how do I say it, consciously motivated by white supremacy, many were motivated by a strong sense of right and wrong though how much of that is framed by the religious angle and thus impossible to unpack from the supremacist dynamic in question is hard to say and would need a more in depth analysis.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

^ I don't think the assertion that the slave power in the South was fundamentally right wing in any way necessitates that the Republicans opposing them in the North, and therefore looking to curb slavery's expansion and existence, were therefore in any way left wing (or that the Democrats in the North that apologized for said Southerners weren't left-of-center, themselves).  Which is kind of the broader point.  I think there is plenty of historical evidence from primary sources that suggest the basic dynamic of the Nineteenth Century North was a pro-immigration, more-pro-separation-of-church-and-state and economically left-leaning Democratic Party and a rather xenophobic, moralist and pro-business Republican Party ... then you had the Southern planters, who happened to be in the same party as the Northern Democrats, effectively making division over slavery a "Democrats problem."

And I do appreciate that being "Puritanical" has a more complicated history than a direct line back from modern day Evangelicals screaming about the culture wars, but I think that from what I have read about this period, the Democrats did in fact see these moralist Republicans as fundamentally "right wing" in this sense (which I again maintain is more important than our analysis with modern lens).

A lot of times politics is defined by the opposition in one form or another. Perceptions therefore internally may well have been positive, but externally, there would be more criticism hence why the South would tend to view Puritanical New England in a certain lens. It is no accident that Jefferson, the champion of separation of Church and state is from he South and meanwhile Connecticut is one of the few people taxing people to support a state church. Likewise, the immigrants and thus challengers to this "established" puritan/calvinist political dynamic end up in a political alliance with the South. These same general patterns hold up for a good long while too.

One of the main anti-Reconstruction parties in post-war Virginia was also called the Conservative Party - a mere coincidence?

Likewise in NC but in NC it was led by an ex Whig, Zebulon Vance. These people don't just melt into the sand, the cultural elites are still the cultural elites. Many of these same "Conservatives" are the bourbon Democrats fighting back against populist/progressive (economically speaking) Democrats in the 1890s and 1900s.

Let us not forget, there was a Whig and before that a Federalist element in the South. They are drawn into the one party establishment of the Jim Crow era South and in some cases ended up leading it until they were overthrown by internal revolutions or their descendants ended up revolting themselves such as in 1948.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Richard Bensel's Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877 has an interesting analysis of the Republican coalition which relates slightly to what's been discussed above. I'll quote the wiki summary:

Finance capitalists' primary interest was in the overall stability of the financial system. This interest militated against continued Reconstruction for several reasons.

The potential for monetary instability as a result of Treasury incompetence made finance capitalists skeptical of state intervention in the economy. Finance capitalists supported a return to the gold standard, which would re-expose the United States economy to international influence, especially the British sterling, widely seen as more trustworthy and stable than US Treasury regulation. Finance capitalists' general suspicion toward the central state also meant they opposed practically every measure that would increase state revenue and supported tax reductions. A permanent military occupation of the South by federal troops would be extremely expensive, and would require increased extraction from the private economy, a slower return to the gold standard, and impeded the stabilization of the national debt.

Reconstruction threatened to continue the disruption of cotton production. Because most cotton exported for the international market went through Northeastern ports, Northern financiers had a strong interest in uninterrupted cotton production.

Supporters of Radical Reconstruction (notably, a Reconstruction bill sponsored by Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens) aimed to enact a highly redistributive program for the South in order to create an economically independent base for the Republican Party. Under such a program, on the basis of loyalty to the Union, Freedmen and poor yeomen Southern white Unionists would receive wealth directly confiscated from Southern separatists. This had the potential to transform a race-based cleavage between Blacks and Whites into a class-based cleavage between poor farmers and landholding elites. At this point, it was difficult to see how this conflict could be contained in the South. Northern labor would almost certainly begin to make demands for eligibility in the transfer of Southern wealth to the lower classes, since they had remained loyal to the Union as well. This was an unattractive option for Northern capitalist members of the Republican coalition, both because of the disruptive effect on Southern agricultural production and the potential for an increase in generalized class conflict.

Bensel shows that Republican politicians representing banking districts voted closely in line with the interests of finance capital; a large part of the Republican coalition was thereby put against the project of Reconstruction and the state-enhancing measures that would have come with it, while other Northern sections of the Republican Party did not have deep enough interests in Reconstruction to constitute a veto over the influence of finance capitalists. In other words, the client-group formation path of state-building had a strong self-limiting character, wherein further state-building was stymied by this client group.

Tl;dr: the Republican coalition was split between Radicals who wanted to enact a redistributive programme in the South and those linked to Northern financial interests who feared the financial cost and class conflict blowback on the North. The latter won out and ended Reconstruction.

And we know there was a marked shift towards Business in the 1870s in terms of GOP priorities, because this is when Nathaniel Banks left largely because of that very reason.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

1. In what world the West was the primary base of support of Republicans when Western states were still few and sparsely populated?

2. Western Republicans were not definitely liberal only for expanding they expanded the right to vote, even if expanding the right to vote is liberal.

3. Southern Democrats - many of whom were not Bourbon, starting with Pitchfork Ben - were not definitely conservative only for terrorizing Black people and restricting voting rights, even if restricting the right to vote is conservative.

4. You may be forgetting that during your time frame more than half of the population and much more than half of the voters were in the North.

5. The view of the tariff was a freaking important thing!

I'll leave the rest of the rebuttal (I am sure there is a rest) to posters more competent than me.

1. Look at presidential election maps from the Third Party System and tell me which region out of the South, Northeast, Midwest, and West most consistently voted Republican. By the Fourth Party System the Republican base of support had shifted to the Northeast, but in the Third it was still clearly the West.

2. I've given examples of liberal views held by Western Republicans (opposition to slavery, support for women's suffrage, opposition to the gold standard), and provided evidence that the West was viewed as liberal-minded at the time (the Frontier thesis), so what else do you want me to prove?

3. It is no coincidence that many anti-Reconstruction parties in the South were self-described "Conservative Parties" that quite explicitly advocated reactionary and anti-equality beliefs. If that's not conservative, then I don't know what is. In regard to the Populists, most Southern Populists during and after Reconstruction ran on fusion tickets with the Republicans in order to oppose the Democratic ruling class. Seeking to protect Reconstruction and redistribute wealth to the impoverished of both races, these were genuinely radical efforts. Predictably, they were violently driven out of power across the South by conservative Bourbon Democrats, with the Wilmington Insurrection being a primary example. Once back in power, the Democrats set about dismantling Reconstruction and disenfranchising the poor and the Black in order to ensure that true equality would never reach the South.

4. I haven't forgotten that, but it's important to remember where the parties came from and what shaped their ideologies. The Democrats were fundamentally a party of the South and Southern interests, while the Republicans were birthed in the Western states (or what we would today call the Midwest). I will grant however that post-1896 and to some extent post-1876 the Northeast had become the party's new home.

5. Yes, but it need not define whether one be a liberal or conservative. The Greenbacks, who I tend to agree with, had varying views on trade but were all regarded as leftists of some sort. They also rightly contended that trade was mostly a distraction used by both parties to avoid talking about more pressing issues for the working class like currency reform, government farm relief, and public ownership of utilities. When William Jennings Bryan made currency reform the centerpiece of his 1896 campaign, he was attacked by the National (Gold) Democrats for not emphasizing free trade enough when he could've made it the defining issue separating him from the ardent protectionist McKinley.

1. Lmao the West being the most consistently Republican region ain't mean sh**t when Pennsylvania alone had more people than the entire West

2. Fair enough.

3. Your definitions of "Bourbon Democrats" and of "Reconstruction" seem really broad but whatever.

4. Eh. You were using current names for regions until this sentence. I was doing the same. The core base of Republicans may have been more in the Midwest than in the Northeast, but it was still in the North, not the modern West, which was sparsely populated.

5. Well the Greenback were left-wing, but I could argue that they were left-wing enough to not be liberal, in the same way as socialists are not liberals.

The North was indeed, the largest and most economically dominant region in the country. It was also the economic leader at the van guard of the second industrial revolution and thus the only place in the country were there would exist a stable middle class. It is also worth nothing that this turned the rest of the country into peripheral considerations to the primary economic engines and this was reflected in Democrats anti-Wall Street rhetoric of the time. I believe it was Truman who railed against Eastern Business wanting to keep the South and West down and maintain them in basically a colonial state to be extracted of their wealth while they saw none of the benefits. LBJ (or at least the movie depiction thereof) railed against Eastern business stealing West Texas Juice to power their 'damn' skyscrapers". This kind of rhetoric dates back to Reconstruction itself and the attacks on "yankee carpetbaggers and scalawags", which would have tied in with the corruption of the Credit Mobilier and the rest of the scandals in the Grant administration thus linking the south the connection of corruption - business - Yankees and blacks. This in turn devolves from the Jacksonian anti-bank rhetoric of the 1830s. There is a clear and direct line of political though that links from Jefferson to the New Deal and it hinges on rallying populist agrarian discontent economically, with its rage focused on the perceived causative agents. Wall Street and other NE business types.

Economic redistribution as a model thus saw a substantial base in the South and West early on, precisely because of this paradigm of the economic backwardness that Wallace has mentioned and the poverty it created as a result, fed a paradigm of rich Bankers in NY versus the poor farmers/miners of the South and West. This also facilitated the class hiearchical structure being maintained because while locally the elite, nationally they were on the outs normally politically speaking. This means they could point their fingers to the bankers and say those are the real rich men sucking you dry not me with my plantation. Economic panics like those in 1873, 1893, 1907 and 1929, also facilitated this political socio-economic struggle of the local poor versus the distant rich guy as those agricultural areas would often bear the brunt of it along with the industrial workers.

Because the Democrats were so dominated by agrarian interest though, Republicans could always splinter the poor vote with tariffs, nativism and other such issues and thus keep "dangerous men" like Bryan from cracking their NE base. The success of the New Deal was as much a deconstruction of this cracking and thus the forcing of a more class based dynamic that united poor people of all regions against rich people of all regions.

Whenever considering the class/hierarchical elements in politics relative to the geography, it is essential to consider the South and West's "peripheral relationship" to the North and that of a an impoverished resource/commodity based supplier of that industrial machine and the political relationships/resentments that it allowed for and even necessitated.