1840 in Deep South

[Sumner 1868]

I had always assumed the Whig overperformance in the Deep South that year came mainly from future Unionist strongholds. But a look at the county map shows otherwise; the areas were slavery was less prominent held out for Van Buren; while the present day Black Belt of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi where slavery was most common mostly voted for Harrison.



I can't wrap my head around it. I know the Whigs were hardly an abolitionist party, but surely most slaveowners knew that Democrats were more supportive of the "peculiar institution" than Whigs. In turn, why did Van Buren do so well in areas outside the Black Belt?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think Truman said this a few weeks/months ago. Because the Republicans were founded as an abolitionist party and they replaced the Whigs as the primary party of business/elites, there is a tendency to backwards apply and thus misunderstand the Whigs.

To understand the Whig versus Democrat divide, you have to think in terms of class though there are exceptions to that. In the South generally as a whole, Whigs were either Mountain Vote and/or Southern Planters. Democrats were often poor upcountry whites, which was Andrew Jackson's base for the most part.

The Whigs and the Federalists before them were heavily represented among the planter aristocracy and thus conceptualization of them as "Abolitionists" or even "abolitionist lite" fails to understand this. Only the Civil War realignment produced anything to the contrary. This is also a good time to point out that the realignment of Thurmond support tends to follow a similar pattern and is a return in a sense to the Whig Era political alliance of rich elites against the plebian masses, this time in the form of the New Deal (again party flip theory is bs).

Another thing to point is to remember that the quitessential Jacksonian Democrat was someone like Andrew Johnson and he despised the planter aristocracy, many of whom in Tennessee would have been "State's Rights" Whigs.

Like Whigs the world over, they were dominated by factions even here in the South.

1. Nullifiers - didn't hang around long but were the epitome of Southern Planter elite
2. State's Rights Whigs - The people who voted for Hugh Lawson White in 1836, again largely composed of planter elites and represented on Harrison's ticket by John Tyler. 
3. Clay Whigs - Mountain Vote and Kentucky Planters who wanted river improvements (as Truman always talks about).

The first, second and part of the third joined the Democrats before/during/after the Civil War and the middle 20th century realignment was the story of them leaving their uncomfortable shotgun wedding to a restore a more normal class based divide during the period from say 1952 to 1992.

[Mr. Smith]

I had always assumed the Whig overperformance in the Deep South that year came mainly from future Unionist strongholds. But a look at the county map shows otherwise; the areas were slavery was less prominent held out for Van Buren; while the present day Black Belt of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi where slavery was most common mostly voted for Harrison.



I can't wrap my head around it. I know the Whigs were hardly an abolitionist party, but surely most slaveowners knew that Democrats were more supportive of the "peculiar institution" than Whigs. In turn, why did Van Buren do so well in areas outside the Black Belt?

That depends on which Democrats and which Whigs. Ultimately Whigs were the party of the business elite and Dems of the working person and this didn't change just because of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Naturally then, it makes sense that Southern Whigs would be more supported by the plantation class than that of Democrats.

And of course, Van Buren was a Northern Democrat, and not necessarily of the "dough-face" variety like Pierce or Buchanan.

Even in 1836, Van Buren arguably profited off a vote-split in the Whigs as he barely won LA and MS and still lost TN and GA to Hugh White. Only AL and AR were convincing wins. Ergo, he was already vulnerable there when vying for re-election, even in good times.

EDIT: And NCY beat me to it, and put it even better!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The Panic of 1837 didn't help MvB among the elites either...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Does someone have a county map of 1836?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PresidentialCounty1836Colorbrewer.png

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

White's strength in the Mountain region is surprising but considering he was from TN, I guess he had to balance the two factions in his state and hence his strength across the Southern region.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

[darklordoftech]

1. Nullifiers - didn't hang around long but were the epitome of Southern Planter elite
2. State's Rights Whigs - The people who voted for Hugh Lawson White in 1836, again largely composed of planter elites and represented on Harrison's ticket by John Tyler. 

What was the difference between these two?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

1. Nullifiers - didn't hang around long but were the epitome of Southern Planter elite
2. State's Rights Whigs - The people who voted for Hugh Lawson White in 1836, again largely composed of planter elites and represented on Harrison's ticket by John Tyler.  

What was the difference between these two?

Degree of support for state's rights, there is overlap between the two groups obviously. The main differentiation is timing. Most of the nullifiers would have drifted away during the 1830s, whereas the State's Rights wing didn't start to bleed away until the mid 1840's, namely after what happened with President Tyler.

If you want to know a more in depth about the divide. Michael Holt's "Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War" is the go to resource, all 1,000 plus pages of it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

How do you think South Carolina would have gone if it had a vote for President like other states?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

How do you think South Carolina would have gone if it had a vote for President like other states?

Its hard to say. Though certainly Dem by the 1840's.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

How do you think South Carolina would have gone if it had a vote for President like other states?

Its hard to say. Though certainly Dem by the 1840's.

I am thinking it might have been firmly Whig in the 1830s and for the first half of the 1840s on basis of Jackson's response to the Nullifiers movement and the influence of the planter elite in the state.

[Mr. Smith]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

You forgot about Federalist-to-the-bitter-end Delaware. Not a single Democratic vote until 1852.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Indeed, the Whigs were the party of choice for wealthy slaveholders not only in the lower South, but also the border states. Virginia is of course the obvious exception to this rule. I've talked before about river improvements, as Yankee alludes to, but it's so important to remember that before September 1862 the national conversation was not around whether slavery should continue to exist south of the Mason-Dixon line, but the many considerations (tariffs, access to foreign markets, the growth of the native-born slave population, the internal and Atlantic slave trades, and the never-ending need for land) that determined the profitability of slavery. When we think about the plater elite —who did not comprise the whole body of slaveholders or those who used slave labor, but those at the very top who lorded over huge plantations which in the Deep South produced mostly cotton, in the Carolinas rice and sugar, and in Virginia and Kentucky tobacco —this is a class whose livelihoods are predicated on their ability to replace aging and dying slaves and on their ability to export their produce to Northern and European markets. In the Virginian tidewater, with its easy access to the Atlantic Ocean, the main obstacle was the tariff —so the Virginian planter was a reliably Democratic constituency. In Kentucky, the easiest route is via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. New Orleans was the port of departure not only for cotton bound for Europe, but also of the internal slave trade —which after 1807 was the only legal slave trade in the United States. In order to safely navigate the river, you need someone to clear the snags and sandbars that otherwise would wreck your boat and send insurance rates through the roof —no state wants to pay for a project that will benefit their freeloading neighbors, so you need the federal government to finance it, and they'll raise the necessary revenue with tariffs. Hence planters in Kentucky and the Mississippi River Valley were a reliable Whig constituency as late as 1860, when they voted in large numbers for John Bell. In the intervening two decades they backed Henry Clay against James K. Polk in the ever-so-close election of 1844 (and were vindicated when Polk vetoed the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1846), Taylor in '48 (who was himself just such a planter), and even turned out for Winfield Scott in what was otherwise a dismal performance for the Whigs in 1852.

Meanwhile, poor whites were a heavily Democratic constituency. They definitely weren't abolitionists or even remotely anti-slavery (though that didn't stop some abolitionists from seeing them as natural allies and trying to recruit them to the Republican party —more on that later), but they also didn't have a vested interest in the nationalizing economic policies of the Whigs. What use are roads and canals to a subsistence farmer with $200 to his name living up in the mountains away from any navigable rivers? He doesn't have a flatboat loaded with tobacco and hemp bound for New Orleans, but he does have to pay Whig taxes and the higher prices caused by Whig tariffs. He's not exactly friendly with the planters either, most of whom have gone to great pains to shut him out of the political process. This is where you get Union Military Governor Andrew Johnson, who hated blacks but hated the planters more and certainly wasn't going to go to war to protect their "property." When Lincoln died, a lot of Radical Republicans saw this class background and assumed they'd have a firm ally in Johnson —after all, we're all on the same side! Is it really surprising that these people were more likely (though still unlikely on the whole) to oppose a war that brought them no tangible gain, but which they overwhelmingly would be expected to fight?

So while we remember the Democrats as the pro-slavery party because of the 1850s, before then, on the issues that mattered, the Whigs were making the strongest case for the interests of large-scale planters. A lot of those clever moderates like Clay who loved to protest their revulsion with the peculiar institution, were actually very good about promoting the interests of slaveholders west of the Appalachians. In 1861, the constitution adopted by the Provisional Confederate Congress at Mobile upheld the 1807 prohibition against the Atlantic slave trade. Fifty years before, South Carolinian Federalist Charles C. Pinckney had vehemently opposed the measure; but since then, the country (and slavery) had spread West, and the internal slave trade —based on the Mississippi River —came to replace the Atlantic slave trade. So what in Jefferson's day had been regarded as an anti-slavery measure, now served to increase the cash value of slaves already in America and to enrich those who made their living carrying slaves up and down the Mississippi. The twin capitals of this trade? —none other than the good Whig cities of Lexington and New Orleans.

(This is not to say Southern Democrats were not pro-slavery —they definitely were —and while poor Southern whites' interests diverged from those of the plantation aristocracy in the 1840s, when push came to shove, they were ready to fight and die for the Confederacy. This isn't a case of an anti-slavery party and a pro-slavery party, this is the case of two regional pro-slavery parties, one representing large-scale planters and the other small-scale subsistence farmers.)

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

How do you think South Carolina would have gone if it had a vote for President like other states?

Its hard to say. Though certainly Dem by the 1840's.

I am thinking it might have been firmly Whig in the 1830s and for the first half of the 1840s on basis of Jackson's response to the Nullifiers movement and the influence of the planter elite in the state.

Considering how restricted the franchise was in South Carolina, this seems likely —as Yankee notes, the Nullifiers were briefly part of the Whig coalition during this period. Of course, in a genuinely democratic election, South Carolinians —three in five of whom were slaves in 1860 —would have voted overwhelmingly for James G. Birney/Gerrit Smith.

[darklordoftech]

Most of the nullifiers would have drifted away during the 1830s, whereas the State's Rights wing didn't start to bleed away until the mid 1840's, namely after what happened with President Tyler.

Drifted/bleed away from the Democrats to the Whigs or from the Whigs to the Democrats?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Most of the nullifiers would have drifted away during the 1830s, whereas the State's Rights wing didn't start to bleed away until the mid 1840's, namely after what happened with President Tyler.

Drifted/bleed away from the Democrats to the Whigs or from the Whigs to the Democrats?

The latter. John Tyler's alienation from the Congressional Whig party was the trigger for States Rights' Whigs to begin drifting towards the Democrats, a process that culminated with Tyler's endorsement of Polk in the 1844 election.

[Alben Barkley]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

Gotta point out that was mostly due to Henry Clay’s influence for Kentucky.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

Gotta point out that was mostly due to Henry Clay’s influence for Kentucky.

Yes, but Clay was successful in Kentucky politics because his program aligned with the interests of the powerful interests in his state. Andrew Jackson was very personally popular in Tennessee, but once he left office Tennessee did not continue to vote Democratic —indeed, it wouldn't support a Jacksonian for president again until 1856, only coming close when another favorite son (Polk) was on the ballot in 1844.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

Gotta point out that was mostly due to Henry Clay’s influence for Kentucky.

A good chunk of that was organic though. The Whigs were the party of internal improvements and this had appeal in river communities, as they naturally saw rivers as the veins from which the overall economy (and especially their own) could gain vitality and they thus looked positively on efforts to better infastructure, regardless of the impact that this would have on the pockets on wealthy people on the coasts.

[darklordoftech]

I think I read in a reddit post that some Whigs opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War because they feared that the annexation and war would result in the value of slaves decreasing.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The collapse of the Whigs is often stated as a mess of factionalism and a split between two groups that weren't really united to begin with.

This is somewhat over generalized. The strength the Whigs maintained with there river+Mountain coalition, which was held together largely by mutual support for Clay's internal improvements was not a weak coalition, nor was it the case likely for their Northern allies. What it is in reality is a divide largely defined by economic interests that is then forcefully realigned by a cultural/regional divide.

Arguably the same thing happened in the 1990s.

[darklordoftech]

Weren’t the Nullifier/State’s Rights Whigs WINOs (for example, John Tyler vetoed re-establishing the National Bank)? In fact, weren’t they more Democratic than Jackson considering their objection to Jackson was Jackson enforcing a tariff?

Safest D states at the time
New Hampshire
Michigan
Alabama
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Virginia


Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia went Whig 3/4 elections minimum, while Kentucky when 6/6 between 1832 and 1852.

Why would Mississipi, Alabama, and Georgia vote differently from each other?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Weren’t the Nullifier/State’s Rights Whigs WINOs (for example, John Tyler vetoed re-establishing the National Bank)? In fact, weren’t they more Democratic than Jackson considering their objection to Jackson was Jackson enforcing a tariff?

I don't think that's a useful way to think about it. Remember that in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the First Party System, the Republicans split into two main camps: Democratic Republicans* who supported Andrew Jackson, and National Republicans who supported John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. After Adams' defeat, the splintering of these big-tent coalitions produced a variety of smaller parties, broadly identified as either Jacksonian or Anti-Jacksonian; the latter camp included most National Republicans, as well as Anti-Masons, Nullifiers, and what was left of the Tertium Quids (conservative ex-Republicans concentrated in Virginia). These eventually coalesced to form the Whig party after 1834, it's name a reference to the English Whigs who had toppled the tyrant James II and their successors, the American Whigs of 1776. This branding was especially attractive to those who objected to Jackson's disregard for states' rights and legislative supremacy, and they were an important part of the Whig coalition in the elections of 1836, '38, and '40. The fact that they did not share Henry Clay's commitment to the B.U.S. does not make them Whigs in name only because the Whig party was not founded on support for a national bank; it was founded on opposition to executive tyranny and radical demagoguery. While Tyler vetoed the recharter of the bank, he signed off on other Whig economic objectives, and continued to appoint Whigs (albeit of a notably states' rights bent) to his cabinet even after the split with Clay and the Congressional party. We should not privilege the voice of Henry Clay as the be-all, end-all definition of Whiggery, because while Clay was an important leader of the party (and after 1842 its de facto chief until his death), the original party was not welded from his base alone.


* The use of Democratic-Republican to refer to the Jeffersonian Republican party that existed from c. 1792–1824 is incorrect and unhelpful. Jefferson and his acolytes called themselves Republicans, and in some cases were called democrats by their opposition. "Democratic Republican" enters the lexicon around 1828 and continues to be a label associated with the Jacksonian party well into the 1840s. Wikipedia says that Tyler's "National Democratic Republican" outfit was an homage to Jefferson, but in fact it was in reference to a common alternative name for the Democratic party.