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

[Alcibiades]

3. Republicans practically only supported civil rights legislation that dealt exclusively with the South's legally protected racism, NOT legislation that looked to make the North more "fair."

I actually think this is really important to understanding the Civil Rights Era.  Republicans hardly had ANY constituents in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.  So, they naturally threw their support hugely behind measures like allowing Blacks to legally vote in the South, removing the poll tax, passing an anti-lynching bill, etc ... but they wanted ALL of this to apply only to the South, obviously not their incredibly segregated suburban districts and states they represented.  What resulted was more or less a collective eye roll from Black leaders; they saw a party (the GOP) that supported them verbally and NOT functionally outside of Dixie, and they saw a party (the Democrats) that did NOT support them verbally (at least to the extent they empowered Southern Democrats in Congress) but DID support them functionally in Northern cities and actually improve their lot ... they made the obvious choice.  I'm a Republican, and I am proud of our party's history, but you cannot look at pro-civil rights Republicans as "liberals" in the sense of today's liberals; they largely weren't.  It cannot be understated how easy and not risky it was for them to support civil rights legislation that outlawed blatantly racist institutions in other states.

Right, Black leaders made the obvious choice ... I guess that's why Adam Clayton Powell endorsed Eisenhower in 1956. And sure, only Democratic supporters of civil rights were liberals, not Republicans. It's not like Nelson Rockefeller was regarded as a liberal even at the time, and one who genuinely believed in civil rights and backed up his actions with deeds. Of course he did! As governor he actively pushed through a pro-civil rights agenda and was given a hero's welcome during a 1960 campaign stop at four Black churches in Brooklyn. By contrast, JFK and his ilk were utterly uninterested in the civil rights movement as such and only in how it could translate into Black votes. His subsequent "embrace" of civil rights was an entirely cynical political calculation, and his famous phone call to Coretta Scott King a complete accident of history that almost didn't happen. I'm a Democrat, and I am proud of our party's history, but you cannot look at JFK Democrats as "liberals" in the sense of today's liberals; they largely weren't.  It cannot be understated how opportunistic and craven it was for JFK to belatedly take a stance on civil rights nearly indistinguishable from that of Nixon's.

I guess I am genuinely not sure what your snark hoped to accomplish ... I will try, in good faith, to respond, but it's hard to do when you are not upfront with a point.

Cherry picking Black leaders' endorsements doesn't seem to prove much to me (but again, I don't know what you're trying to prove).  Eisenhower received significant Black support, and I never said otherwise ... however, after signing the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, enforcing Brown v. Board and running against a ticket with a literal segregationist on it, Ike lost the Black vote by over 20% both times.  According to Timothy Thurber, author of Republicans and Race: The GOP's Frayed Relationship With African Americans, 1945-1974, this infuriated many Republican leaders (including Eisenhower) and was effectively the final straw for them in regard to chasing Black voters.  They saw them as "bought and paid for" by the Democrats in a post-New Deal America.

Regarding Rockefeller, I will first say that obviously there have been bonafide liberals and progressives within the GOP ranks throughout his history; neither NC Yankee, I or anyone else who maintains that there was never this clean "party switch" has ever really disagreed with that ... our disagreement comes usually in the forms of 1) that not meaning that the GOP was necessarily ever, overall, to the "left" politically of the Democratic Party, 2) that these left-of-center Republicans ever outnumbered their centrist and right-of-center peers or 3) that this implied that a majority of left-leaning politicians weren't still Democrats in the contemporary time period of said liberal Republicans.  However, I do not believe this describes Rockefeller.  Even if I accept your assertion that Rockefeller's support for civil rights is inherently "liberal," that does not describe his entire ideology.  In the same way that many Democratic partisans today would not describe Charlie Baker or Larry Hogan as necessarily "liberals" but many partisan conservative Republicans might, Rockefeller was largely "liberal for a Republican."  While seeking the nomination, he said (perhaps agreeing with your assertion that support for civil rights had now become seen as "liberal") that he was an "economic conservative and a human-rights liberal."  I was simply maintaining that your average "liberal Republican" was not necessarily Hubert H. Humphrey with an R next to his name but rather a product of a left-leaning state, district or city in which he had to make concessions to simply be elected.  I really don't think it would have been much different from us calling Phil Scott a "liberal Republican," an assertion that Democrats scoff at today (instead insisting that he is simply a "moderate" and that "liberal Republicans don't exist"), and they scoffed at it back then.  Democrats have been more or less accusing the GOP of betraying its heritage as the "Party of Lincoln" since the second FDR won the Black vote, from what I have seen.

All "we" (the various people I recall you conversing with in that thread about party continuity) have ever alleged is that this is a lot more complicated than people make out, and relying on surface-level indicators (e.g., "supporting emancipation is inherently progressive," "supporting segregation is inherently conservative" or the worst, "the GOP used to support big government and the Democrats used to be a small government, states' rights party") will lead one down a path where they perform the wrong type of analysis for the period, giving politicians anachronistic labels that I humbly think they would disagree with.  For every dumbass Republican you see say, "The GOP freed the slaves!  The Democratic Party started the KKK!", you quite honestly see at least three or four nimrods on social media comment sections saying - as if they are bestowing long lost ancient knowledge on the rest of us and nobody has ever heard this hot take before - "ACTUALLY, the GOP used to be a progressive party, and the Democrats used to be the conservatives, and they switched in [insert arbitrary decade or year]."  Few credible historians place the Federalists to the left of the Democratic Republicans, and few place the Whigs to the left of their contemporary Democrats ... so the burden lies on those alleging that the Democratic Party of the mid- and late 1800s was clearly to the right of the GOP of that time period to articulate how exactly that came to be and how exactly it stopped being the case, and my humble opinion is that if that explanation relies too heavily on the rights of Black Americans, it will probably fall flat, especially if it fails to analyze the motives for which each party supports what it does.  Again, even if supporting an end to slavery or segregation IS, though I disagree, inherently progressive or liberal in all situations, that can still lead to a circumstance where there are conservatives supporting it and liberals opposing it.

I agree with most of what you’ve said here. My only quibble is that I do think that, speaking in terms of political philosophy, a genuine belief in civil rights and racial equality is inherently liberal, if we take liberalism to be the ideology which believes in freedom and equality for all. This does not mean that support for civil rights cannot be paired with conservative positions on other issues, but it is the liberal position on the issue of race. Of course one could argue that pre-1932 both parties fell broadly within the classical liberal tradition, but that is another debate...

[Alcibiades]

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.

What is interesting is that these Puritans’ views, while not themselves liberal, had a profound influence on liberalism in both the UK and the US, with as you mentioned a strong sense of fairness/morality and a certain egalitarian and ‘common good’ spirit.