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

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

^ 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).

I think there is some truth to that, but here's why I ultimately disagree. Even if we accept that the urban Catholic Democrat was the liberal to the Wasp Republican's conservative, things are very different when we look outside the North. In the third party system, the Midwest and Northeast were both heavily contested regions with many swing states, while the West and South provided the backbone of support for the Republicans and Democrats, respectively. The reason I can't call the Republicans in this period a conservative party is because their main base of support, the West, was by far the most liberal region in the country. You've probably heard of the Frontier thesis, of how the Wild West was the most free, liberty-loving (and lawless) part of the country due to its distance from the power base in the East. And indeed, the Wild West was remarkably egalitarian. In the mid-19th century it was a hotbed of Free Soil and early GOP radicalism as typified by John C. Frémont. Years before the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the West led the nation in women's suffrage by leaps and bounds. Economically, it was the region most strongly opposed to the gold standard. All this is not to say the West was some paradise of tolerance - it was full of nasty anti-Chinese racism -  but overall the region was far and away the most liberal in the United States of the 19th century (also, guess who was perceived as the more anti-Chinese candidate in 1880 - you might be surprised).

Now let's look at the Democrats' main bastion of support, the South. In the 19th century, the Southern United States was without a doubt the most reactionary, hierarchical, and backward part of the country. I don't think that really needs explaining. So to recap ... in the North, we have liberal Catholic Democrats versus conservative Protestant Republicans. In the West and South, the most Republican and Democratic regions respectively, we have progressive Republican governors granting women the right to vote on the one hand, and tyrannical Bourbon Democrats disenfranchising blacks and poor whites alike on the other. This evident lack of ideological consistency is why I cannot call either party definitively liberal or conservative. The only thing making one man a Republican and another a Democrat could be, say, their view on the tariff. Thus both parties ended up with liberal and conservative wings that might agree on one issue, but disagree on everything else and often spend more time fighting each other than the other party. So then, when did the Democrats become the obviously more liberal party? I say it happened with FDR. Under Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrats instituted expansive and clearly left-wing programs that went far beyond the progressive reforms of either Teddy or Wilson. It was at this moment that the Democratic Party ceased to be a fundamentally Southern organization with semi-independent branches in Northern cities, and became a truly national liberal party.

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.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

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.