More proof that Republicans were not more pro-civil rights than the Democrats pre-1964

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That's a very interesting statistic and quite a good find. The midcentury California GOP had lots of racist Orange County types (look up John G. Schmitz if you want to lose faith in humanity) for every Earl Warren, so it's not too surprising.

The concept of party flip falls apart when under close scrutiny. This is yet one more example of it.

Nah. Today I watched the movie Lincoln, which I hadn't seen since 2012 when it first opened. I know it's only cinema, but I was really struck by the stark divisions the movie made between "conservative" and "radical" Republicans. The conservative Republicans were more willing to compromise with the Democrats and vote against the 13th Amendment, while the Radicals were bitterly opposed to any form of compromise and supported wealth and land redistribution. Thaddeus Stevens had a great line in the film about the Democrats, "the modern travesty of Thomas Jefferson's political organization has the effrontery to call itself the Democratic Party."

The post-1856 Democrats were no Jeffersonians, nor even Jacksonians (though Andrew Johnson thought himself to be one). They were a quite explicitly racist, antidemocratic, and anti-equality party which during the 1850s, 60s, and 70s heavily campaigned on white supremacy. They didn't represent the common man, but the slave power and the planters. In other words, they were a conservative party, at least in the Civil War period. Post-1876 it's debatable since racial issues receded in importance, but the conservative Bourbon Democrats under Grover Cleveland were just as pro-business if not more so than the Republicans.

They opposed the tariff not because of liberal ideology, but because of sectionalism. Cleveland was a fervent goldbug while Benjamin Harrison supported bimetallism. And before you trot out "muh hard money was a classically liberal position", yes, it may have been in Andrew Jackson's day, but no, it clearly was not in the late 19th century. As you like to say, context matters. Edmund Burke's views may have made him a liberal in 1776, but not in 1789. In just the same way, support for hard money may have been a liberal position to hold in the 1830s, but not in the 1890s. Times change, and sooner or later all classical liberals become conservatives unless they change too.

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The Republican Party was founded on the principles of classical liberalism and in opposition to the institution of slavery, and it remained that way for at least the first 20 years of its existence. There was nothing "big government conservative" about the Radicals' support for an entire restructuring of Southern society from the bottom up. Many of them like Thaddeus Stevens were also champions of the Northern working class as well. Karl Marx, of all people, was a huge supporter of the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln. Nearly all of the revolutionary Forty-Eighter German exiles who got involved in American politics were Republicans. The Radical Republicans were called "Radical" for a reason, that word at the time having a near-exclusive left-wing connotation.

Even when the Radical roots of the party were betrayed in 1876, the Democrats weren't obviously more left or pro-working class. Pre-Bryan, I don't see them advocating for labor reform or antimonopolism any more than the Republicans. Post-Bryan, both parties advocated for those policies in varying degrees, Bryan more so than his Republican opponents and Roosevelt more so than his Democratic ones, and Wilson and Hughes about the same. The previous 20 years, however, were far less ideological. I get the sense that the "Democracy" of the Gilded Age was a plutocratic political machine that relied on corruption, intimidation, and voter suppression to win elections for power's sake. Not altogether unlike today's Republicans.

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To expand on my previous post, do you really think Karl Marx would've so strongly supported the Republican Party if they were just a stalking horse for the Northern business class as Yankee is claiming? Of course not. To see what Marx saw in the Republicans, one needn't look any further than the Radicals' plans for Reconstruction. As this passage from Yankee Leviathan lays out, the Radical Republicans sought to fundamentally transform American politics along class lines rather than racial lines, with the result of the poor and working classes, black and white alike, voting for the Republicans against the privileged few of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, this agenda was violently suppressed by the Democratic ruling class in the South through White Leagues and Conservative Parties, and in the North by Democrats on Capitol Hill and Republicans who were all to willing to work with them. Thus the cause was betrayed in 1876, when conservative pro-business Republicans struck a deal in order to prevent even more right-wing Democrats from taking power.
Republican

Edit: Some articles worth reading about the Lincoln-Marx connection and the influence of socialists in the Republican Party:

https://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/lincoln-and-marx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/27/you-know-who-was-into-karl-marx-no-not-aoc-abraham-lincoln/

https://medium.com/@aronzonijr/the-republican-partys-red-roots-c0ff3155c08b

https://isreview.org/issue/79/reading-karl-marx-abraham-lincoln

https://isreview.org/issue/80/karl-marx-and-american-civil-war

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/anti-slavery-solidarity-united-abraham-lincoln-karl-marx-and-british-workers/

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The Republican Party was founded on the principles of classical liberalism and in opposition to the institution of slavery, and it remained that way for at least the first 20 years of its existence.

The Republican Party was founded on opposition to slavery sure, but not on the principles of Classical Liberalism. Indeed, besides the issue of slavery, it wasn't really founded on much at all. This is why the early Republicans had Jeffersonians like Hannibal Hamlin and John C. Fremont in the same party as Whigs like Abraham Lincoln and John McLean. To my understanding, it wasn't until after the war that the Republicans came into their own ideologically as a Conservative party.

I hate to cite Wikipedia, but yes it was. It's literally right there in the third sentence of the article on it. Wikipedia aside though, there's plenty of other evidence I can give. To give one example, the 1856 Republican slogan of "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men, and Fremont" is a classic expression of, well, classical liberalism. If you look at the articles I linked you'll find that the Republican party was home to a motley crew of dissolute socialists and radicals who were well to the left of even liberals.

There was this great essay I once read by a somewhat famous historian, who for the life of me I cannot remember the name of, which basically argued that every political party in the United States descends from the tradition of classical liberalism; and that we are distinct from Europe in that we have always had a sort of "liberal consensus" but never a real Tory or Labor party. He posits that this stems from American nationality being defined by the liberal Whiggish ideas that inspired the Revolution, like "liberty", "freedom", and all that stuff. Suffice it to say, I found it a very convincing argument.

Anywho, if you're going to argue that the Republicans "came into their own" as capital c Conservatives after the war, why not the Democrats too? Yes, on the immigration issue the Republicans were conservative and the Democrats liberal, point well taken. But I've shown examples of conservative policies supported by Democrats and liberal policies by Republicans. I've demonstrated that there were progressives and conservatives in both parties. So I don't see how you can just brush that all aside, and say "in the spirit of my narrative of continuity, it doesn't matter. The nuance is unimportant; I don't care that the Democrats acted as an oppressive ruling class in the South and did best electorally in that most reactionary region, or that the Republicans passed sweeping progressive legislation in the West and did best electorally in that most egalitarian region." Honestly, just typing this out I think I realized why I feel so strongly about this. Looking at electoral maps I'm unable to accept the fact that those damn Southerners were somehow liberals, or not even liberals but supporters of a liberal political party, because they weren't and everything historical I've ever read contradicts that.

Even when the Radical roots of the party were betrayed in 1876, the Democrats weren't obviously more left or pro-working class. Pre-Bryan, I don't see them advocating for labor reform or antimonopolism any more than the Republicans.

If you wanted to make the arguments the Democrats were not more any more anti-monopoly than the Republicans you shouldn't have brought up their opposition to tariffs a few posts beforehand.

The tariff is a complicated issue and always has been. While protectionism was indeed supported by industrial monopolists, it was also supported by the urban working class. Part of the reason Bryan's 1896 campaign failed so spectacularly in the cities was because McKinley was convincingly able to argue that his trade policies would do a far better job of protecting the jobs of industrial laborers. Free trade, on the other hand, hurt these workers but helped Southerners in the cotton business. If the Democrats' opposition to tariffs hurt Northern monopolists, it helped the often more wealthy Southern planters in equal measure. Increased concentration of wealth, not such a liberal idea. But the Republicans were doing the same thing for their wealthy base in the North, which is again why I call this a sectional rather than ideological issue, even as it may have been more ideological in other countries like say the United Kingdom. Also, who was it that signed the Sherman Antitrust Act? Oh right, President Harrison. He also signed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act against the wishes of the Northern business class, but this was quickly repealed once Cleveland began his second term.

Post-Bryan, both parties advocated for those policies in varying degrees, Bryan more so than his Republican opponents and Roosevelt more so than his Democratic ones, and Wilson and Hughes about the same.

It is true that after Bryan showed up both parties adopted these policies to greater degrees, but that wasn't due to Bryan, it was because the entire nation recognized that the monopolies and big trusts had grown too large and powerful. Even then, there was quite a bit of disagreement over what exactly was to be done (consider how Teddy Roosevelt always went to pains to distinguish between good trusts and bad trusts or how he always focused on those trusts which broke the law as opposed to condemning the entire system ala Bryan or Wilson). Speaking of, when you say that Wilson and Hughes were both opposed to monopoly about the same, that's just not true. If you don't believe me, consider the "Business" section of the 1916 Republican Platform

The Republican party has long believed in the rigid supervision and strict regulation of the transportation and of the great corporations of the country. It has put its creed into its deeds, and all really effective laws regulating the railroads and the great industrial corporations are the work of Republican Congresses and Presidents. For this policy of regulation and supervision the Democrats, in a stumbling and piecemeal way, are within the sphere of private enterprise and in direct competition with its own citizens, a policy which is sure to result in waste, great expense to the taxpayer and in an inferior product.

The Republican party firmly believes that all who violate the laws in regulation of business, should be individually punished. But prosecution is very different from persecution, and business success, no matter how honestly attained, is apparently regarded by the Democratic party as in itself a crime. Such doctrines and beliefs choke enterprise and stifle prosperity. The Republican party believes in encouraging American business as it believes in and will seek to advance all American interests.

Did Wilson really "condemn the entire system" any more than Teddy Roosevelt? The Bull-Moose Party platform was pretty damn radical. As for the Republicans in 1916, Hughes was a true progressive at heart who said what he had to say to appease a powerful conservative element within his party. I'd take him any day of the week over that reprehensible, racist authoritarian Woodrow Wilson, even if he may have been slightly less progressive or liberal by the standards of the time.

I get the sense that the "Democracy" of the Gilded Age was a plutocratic political machine that relied on corruption, intimidation, and voter suppression to win elections for power's sake. Not altogether unlike today's Republicans.

Sure, but that doesn't mean it was lacking in ideology. You yourself compare the lust for power in the gilded age to the present Republican Party, but would you deny that they are an ideological party?

I would argue that neither the Gilded Age Democrats nor the present-day Republicans are very ideological, though the latter much more so. They're both far more based on identity politics and racism than any coherent political school of thought.

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^Did you read any of the articles I linked to about the Republicans/Lincoln and Marx/socialism? They make it quite clear to me that the Republican party was founded in large part by left-liberals. When the main issue is slavery, sh!t like laissez-faire vs. the American System just isn’t that important in determining ideology. Still, I can understand your perspective, especially from a post-1876 viewpoint, even though I disagree. If you read those articles maybe you'll understand my thinking better as well.

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That's a fascinating primary source and a great find. Writing in the same year, Frederick Douglass, however, came to a different conclusion regarding the parties:

One represents the culture, the industry and progressive spirit of the North, and the other affiliates with the South and finds its main support in all that is left of an extinct system of barbarism. It sympathised with rebellion; resisted the abolition of slavery; fought against the enfranchisement of colored citizens, and to-day deprives them by fraud, violence, murder and assassination, of the exercise of that Constitutional right, in most of the old slave states.

For Douglass, the choice couldn't be clearer. It is a frank dichotomy of Northern progress on the one hand versus "all that is left of an extinct system of barbarism" on the other.

Parnell abandoning Gladstone and going over to Lord Salisbury, or the Irish people deserting the Liberal party of England and giving their support to the Tory party, by which they are oppressed and tormented, would not present a spectacle more grotesque and revolting than a body of negroes in this country calling themselves Democrats and denouncing the Republican party.

Here we see Douglass make a comparison to British politics, equating the Blacks to the Irish, the Republicans to the Liberals, and the Democrats to the Conservatives. From this passage alone, then, we can see that even at the time there was disagreement over the ideological makeup of the parties. Just as we are arguing about it today, so we see the people of the past making the same points and counterpoints. This is why I don't consider the liberal-conservative divide in the Third and Fourth Party Systems to be a partisan one. Unlike in the Jeffersonian or Jacksonian eras where the Whigs and Federalists were clearly the more conservative party, or since Franklin Roosevelt when the Democrats have clearly been the more liberal party, there was no such partisan clarity in the intervening period.

Geographically and socially and in all its traditions, the Democratic party stands to-day with the men who for two hundred years have bought, sold, and scourged us as they would dumb, driven cattle. That party has never retracted the doctrine that the amendments to the Constitution, making us citizens and investing us with the elective franchise, were revolutionary, unconstitutional, and void [...] The Republican party originated in the Free States. It represents the free schools, the free speech, the free institutions and the humane sentiments that distinguish the North from the South; the civilization of the century, as against the barbarism and race prejudices of by-gone ages.

Have I not made very similar arguments about how it is important to look at the origins of the parties, that they were formed in the West and South respectively and imbibed those regions' values? And yet I have been told that the West and South were too small to matter at the national level, that this was no longer true after 1876 or even earlier, and so on. Would you say the same to Mr. Douglass in 1888?

As a sidenote, Douglass's praise of "free schools, free speech, and free institutions" reminded me of the Southern reactionary George Fitzhugh's attacks on "liberty of the press, liberty of speech, freedom of religion, or rather freedom from religion, and the unlimited right of private judgment" in his polemic against Yankee liberalism.

Perhaps no argument urged by those who would stampede the colored vote in the North to the Democratic party is less entitled to respect than that the Republican party has failed to protect negro suffrage at the South. The best answer given to this complaint is by our Republican candidate for the Presidency. "Against whom hast the Republican party failed to protect you?" In this question there is a whole volume of wisdom. Who but Democrats have by violence prevented the exercise of negro suffrage? Who but Democrats have employed the shot-gun to deter the negro from voting? We say to negro Democrats in the North, if your indignation against the Republican party is hot, it should be ten-fold hotter against the Democratic party. But it is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole moral power of the party has been from first to last on the side of justice to the negro and it has only been baffled in its efforts to protect the negro in his vote, by the Democratic party.

Here we see Douglass appealing to the loyalty of Black voters against charges that the Republicans have abandoned them. I was surprised to see that Democrats were already chasing after Black voters with this argument even in the 19th century.

To vote with the Democratic party is to vote as ballot-box-stuffers, the midnight marauders, and negro murderers of the South, would have us to vote. Is it not plain that every colored man who votes on that side, stabs the cause of his people and makes himself, consciously or unconsciously, a traitor and an enemy to his race? Again we implore you to remember that the whole question of the future of the negro in the South is involved in the election now before you. The negro as a citizen and a voter is not yet beyond question. His title to these rights is not so firmly established as to be out of danger. The Democratic party is controlled by the South. The South is the source of its power. Its policy is dictated by the South.

Throughout these threads I have argued that the Democrats in this period were controlled by the South, and Mr. Douglass would seem to wholeheartedly agree.
Douglass makes similar arguments in these other papers on the 1888 election:

Two opposite ideas of government and of governmental policy confront us. One was born of slavery and of class dominion, and the other of freedom, the dignity of labor, and the equality of man before the law.

Notice how he contrasts the "class dominion" of the Democrats to the equality promoted by the Republicans.

Let it be remembered also that, in examining the claim of the respective parties, we are not to look at them as institutions of a day or a year, or as possessing a character very easily changed. They have a past, as well as a present and a future [...] we choose between parties of opposite policies, opposite tendencies, opposite antecedents and histories [...] One of these parties is historically anchored to the past, and is apparently incapable of adjusting itself to the demands of the present and future. The other is the party of progress. It has behind it a long line of beneficent achievements.

So the party of the past vs. the party of progress...Mr. Douglass seems to think that the Democrats are the conservatives here and not the other way around. He is right to look at the past of the parties, as we are doing here in this thread. But to attempt to draw a straight line from "the party of the past" to the current Democrats and "the party of progress" to today's Republicans, and to argue that their ideologies have been largely continuous this whole time, is folly. Clearly, some sort of flip happened, even if it was in the form of a gradual change that took the course of many decades to manifest itself fully.

I know that the allusion to the past of the Democratic party is very distasteful to the members of that party. They shudder at the mention of it and cry out against it with frantic horror, like beings tormented before their time; and no wonder, for they see behind them a long list of blunders and of flagrant transgressions [...] From first to last the Democratic party has been the chief bulwark of Southern slavery and of Southern pretensions. Today it stands the natural ally of the solid South.
Fellow-citizens:
I would gladly think better of the Democratic party; I would gladly think that the enlightening and softening influences of time and events had created a clean heart and renewed a right spirit within it; but I find it at every turn the same old party, composed of the same elements as 35 years ago, having the same tendencies as at that time. Time and events have made no perceptible change in its character. It is still the party of the old master class; the party of the South. The sheet anchor of its hope is the solid South. On the questions of protection and free trade it stands with the South; on the question of National aid to education, it stands with the South; on the rights of American fisherman, it stands with the South; on the question of State sovereignty, it stands with the South; on the question of pensions to our needy soldiers and widows, it stands with the South; on the question of Constitutional amendment, it stands with the South; on the exercise of the veto power, it stands with the South; in fact, upon all questions of importance, it stands with the South. And why not? The South is the power by which it lives, moves, and has its being.

More proof that the Democrats were still beholden to the South and not in any way a national liberal party. It's hard to abandon the "old master class" when you've been standing with the slave power for so long.

But after all, these economic questions concern me less than these to which I have already referred. The National obligation to protect, defend and maintain the liberties of the people, and fulfill the guranties of the Constitution, transcends all merely economic considerations. What shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul?

Douglass ends his speech, after having talked about the trade issue for a few pages, by stating that the economic issues he has just discussed are less important to him than the defense of liberty and the enforcement of the Constitution. If I have been charged with minimizing the importance of trade and the other economic issues, would you not accuse Douglass of the same thing? I happen to agree with him, and if I lived back then I would like to think that I, too, would consider equal treatment under the law more important than the tariff rates or the price of imports.

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I decided to respond to this post here since it fits better in this thread and I didn't want to derail the other one:

I miss the Republican Party of Calvin Coolidge in so many ways.

When Yankee Conservatism wasn't an esoteric concept that required 18 full length paragraphs to explain how it wasn't just "Liberals before a party flip at magic x date" and Republican Presidents wouldn't be caught dead praising the opposite side of the "voted as they shot" paradigm. When many people were still alive who had parents who were members of the GAR and its indirect influence could still be felt. Simpler times!

I miss the Whig Party of William Penn in so many ways.

When Yankee Liberalism wasn't an esoteric concept that required 18 full length paragraphs to explain how it wasn't just "Evangelicals before a religion flip at magic x date" and republican commonwealthmen wouldn't be caught dead praising popery. When many people were still alive who had parents who were members of the NMA and its indirect influence could still be felt. Simpler times!

One man's revolutionary is the next guy's establishment to be overthrown.

But what if the liberal ideas advanced by those revolutionaries are still being debated hundreds of years later? To quote this paper on the Reactionary Enlightenment of the Antebellum South, the true conservatives, that is to say the Southerners, will soon find themselves "all the way back to a belief in absolute monarchy and a hatred of the Reformation". In this respect then, the Yankees of the 19th century are still liberals. Furthermore, there's another passage from that paper that I found especially relevant to this discussion:

The grim fate of the Southern reaction is reflected too in its treatment by historians. I do not refer now to the neglect into which its grandiose social theory fell when it began to be listed in textbooks as merely the "theory of slavery," a neglect which is happily being repaired by the excellent researches of men like Joseph Dorfman, Rollin Osterweiss, and Harvey Wish. I refer to something more devastating even than this: the fact that our familiar historical categories leave no room whatever for the feudalists of the ante-bellum South. Calling "conservative" men who are actually liberal, those categories shove out into the cold the only Western conservatives America has ever had. If John Winthrop is a "conservative," how should Fitzhugh be classified who denied the right of individual conscience altogether? If Daniel Webster is a "conservative," what are we to say about Hughes who wanted a system of authoritarian industry organized around seven different "sovereignties"? If William McKinley and Herbert Hoover are "conservatives," surely there is no place at all for a man like Holmes who cried over the death of feudalism.

But this is logical enough. Our current historical categories reflect but they do not analyze the American political tradition; and if America was destined to forget the reactionary Enlightenment, those categories were destined to forget it too. Since after the Civil War Bryan and McKinley would pick up the classic battle between American democracy and American Whiggery where Jackson and Webster left it off, since Fitzhugh would look as his beloved Disraeli might look had he appeared for a moment in a tradition exhausted by the difference between Brougham and Cobbett, the fate of the Southerner was practically predetermined. The "conservative" label that he cherished more than anything else would be taken away from him; it would be given to William McKinley whom he would have hated with a violent passion, and he himself would be left nameless. History has been cruel to many thinkers after they have died, and historians have conspired in its cruelty, but there are few parallels for this.

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Well, I don't have much of a response other than to say that you have explained your side well, but I personally interpret the history differently. There's one other thing from the Reactionary Enlightenment article though that I thought you might find interesting. Earlier, you mentioned a sort of "Con-Labor/Radical versus lib political alignment" and the concept of a "red tory" to explain why the Republican party at its founding included a mix of so-called conservatives and socialists. The Reactionary Enlightenment article mentions that dynamic as well, but reverses its application.

According to the author, the Northern abolitionists like Garrison were disciples of Locke and "traditional liberalism" who relied heavily on ideas like the doctrine of consent, while Fitzhugh and the Southern reactionaries ascribed to a form of "Tory socialism" dependent on a "divinely ordained 'controlling power.'" These "feudal socialists" lambasted the North for its "anarchy", while also "lashing out at Northern capitalism in the spirit of Disraeli and Carlyle."

He also agrees with you that the Southern reactionaries were ideologically bankrupt and mixed all sorts of contradictory and inconsistent strains of thought to try to justify slavery, but still thinks they deserve study instead of being forgotten as they have because they "dared to insist that life can be lived in an utterly different way from the way that Hamilton and Jefferson both agreed to live it."